Hamnavoe and the herring boom

In the years before the First World War Hamnavoe on West Burra was one of dozens of "country stations" supporting Shetland's herring fishery. Drifters lay alongside the piers and gutting crews — many of them women travelling the British coast with the boats — packed cured herring into barrels by the thousand. The name itself is pure Norn: hamna voe, the haven inlet. The boom collapsed in the 1920s when the Russian and German export markets disappeared; the bridge that finally linked Burra to Mainland came only in 1971.