Da Lodberries — Lerwick's sea-merchants

Walk south along Commercial Street and the road runs between tall stone gables and the sea. The lodberries are 18th-century merchant houses built straight out onto the water, each with its own private pier so cargo could come ashore through a hatch in the floor. Dutch herring boats, smugglers, and later the agents for the Greenland whalers all unloaded here. During the Second World War one of the lodberries became a Shetland Bus drop-off point for arms and operatives bound for occupied Norway.