As I have walked around Europe in the past three years, being away from home half of the time, I have been much concerned with notions of home,. What makes for a sense of belonging? What constitutes a sense of national and community identity? Language has been a key topic as I have sought to understand and be understood. Coming at a time of great change, as the UK first voted to, and then left, the European Union, I have had many exchanges and considerable dialogue around these issues.
In 2019, I was part of the Audacious Women Festival‘s ‘Travellers Tales’. A small panel of us debated the reasons why women travel. With each other and an audience of perhaps 40 women, we discussed and listened to how women settle in new places, establish friendship and support structures, and negotiate language and cultural differences. It was an unexpectedly lively and moving event with women of all ages taking the stage to speak about their experiences in moving and travelling around the world.
At the time of writing, I am on a virtual visit to Shetland, north of the mainland of Scotland. I am having a series of fascinating chats with women who live there, or who were born there and now live elsewhere, on these topics. I have also been stimulated to reflect on my own and my family’s stories around identity. Women travel for many reasons:
To obtain work
The start of the oil boom saw families moving to Shetland, or young couples settling who then had children there. This was good for the community in many ways, enabling integration and expanding the community. Even when the adults moved away again, some of their grown-up children stayed and continued to build lives on the Islands. Nowadays this happens far less, partly because the trend is for individual oil workers to come for a spell of weeks before returning to their families, and partly because the oil industry is in decline. Many local people who have worked at Sullem Voe, for example, lost their jobs just before the Coronavirus hit, and job hunting was of course, been hard during this time. Will there be an exodus as a result?
Some join the armed forces and the Merchant Navy and travelled the globe. Often they return to Shetland, but others did not, settling in other countries and establishing families and support structures there, their accents and habits changing over the years. In the past, men were also press ganged (1755 – 1845) which had a considerable impact on the Shetland way of life, not least that at one time there was a ratio of 3:1 women to men on the Isles.
When I travelled, I am usually asked where I am from. Scotland, where I have lived for 30 years, and Nicola Sturgeon (who was First Minister between 2014 – 2023) were popular on the continent at that time, so there were smiles when I answered. However, there was usually a pause after that. With a puzzled expression, they would say, ‘But you don’t sound Scottish’. My parents and grandparents were very keen that I spoke ‘good’, or ‘Queen’s, English’ and it hasn’t rubbed off after all these years living in Scotland, much to my disappointment. It betrays my origins!
Marriage and relationships
The Marriage Bar was still in place when my grandmother married just before World War II. She had trained at college to be a PE teacher and secured a position at Benendon College, a school for girls, but on marrying my grandfather, she was required to give it up and travel with him to Africa where he worked. The expectation that she should be at his side extended to the children. She travelled back by ship to have each of her daughters, but had to leave them behind in the UK (in 1937 and 1941) in order to return to him.
The main problem was undoubtedly the attitude of senior officials, but the Marriage Bar also deterred ambitious women from entering the civil service and/or ensured that, once recruited, they were forced to leave.
Women in the Civil Service
Seeking education
There are two high schools in Shetland: Brae in the north west Mainland and the other in Lerwick, further south on the east coast. Young Shetland girls / women (aged 15 years and over) have to attend boarding school or stay in a hostel, Monday to Friday, if they want to continue their education past Standard Grade level. After that, although many now choose to stay on the Islands and attend the Highland and Islands University (which has 13 colleges and research centres, over 70 local learning centres, as well as online tutoring), like many other young people they might also choose to leave home and go to Aberdeen, or other cities in Scotland and further afield.
Other reasons for leaving home and returning that I am going to be looking into are:
- Wanderlust – stimulation – inspiration – curiosity
- Seeking asylum or otherwise escaping injustice or abuse
- Looking to provide one’s children with a particular environment to grow up in which is often linked to happy childhood memories
- To be with family
- Illness
- The landscape and community
I will be examining the challenges to stability and identity that are involved in travel
Language: The Shetland dialect is distinctive and a strong part of people’s identity. There are variations which are closer or further away from Scots and English, and modulations are naturally made depending on who is talking. I will be writing more about this.
- Winning independence in another culture
- Facing the cultural assumptions you grew up with
- Settling and belonging
- Making a home
- Never quite settling down
I have already discovered, personally and through speaking with other women, that a sense of a new identity can emerge from moving to another country, and be liberating. This may surprise both the woman and her family, even disrupt relationships, as parts of oneself changes in response, either being emphasised or stymied. A set of different religious or cultural values may feel liberating or constricting; a change of temperature, climate and daylight (or lack of it) may have a positive or negative effect; opportunities may be greater or fewer, leading to enrichment or a blocking of possibilities. Crossing oceans and borders sometimes requires courage and daring, and other times is easy and natural because of a sense of coming home.
Special thanks to Geraldine Wooley who initiated a meeting between the different presenters of the Audacious Women Festival event. She prompted us to think about the topic in alternative ways, summarised the discussion, and chaired the live session.
Emigration Records can be found on the Scottish Archive Network website.
The building in the title photo is Lerwick’s Textile Museum. Thanks to Isobel Cockburn for her permission to use it.
You may also like:
Research and Preparation About the route I took, Shaetlan dialect, and the aims of my Sense of Belonging project.
Leith to Lerwick Days 1 and 2 Charting my journey northwards and visiting Lerwick’s Textile Museum and Museum and Archives.
Lerwick and Northmavine Days 3 and 4, in which I write about the Press Gang, visit The Old Tolbooth and view Da Lightsome Buoy, then travel to the north west to speak to Helen Robertson about her knitting projects.
Whalsay and Bressay About Sunday Teas, these 2 smaller islands, and about home and a sense of belonging.
Wildie and Lalla, An elegiac film by Catriona Macdonald, Shona Main and Angelica Kroger.
Walking without a donkey 