Fethaland — the haaf at the top of the world

For two centuries the most northerly point of Mainland Shetland was a summer fishing town. Crofter-fishermen rowed six-oared sixerns from Fethaland up to forty miles offshore into the haaf — the deep open sea — and slept in stone böds between trips. June to August the place was full of men, women cleaning fish, and the smell of curing cod. Steam trawlers killed it by 1900 and the families went home. The walls of the böds, the noosts cut into the beach, and the cobbled drying ground are still there above the tide.