Orkney Book Reviews - Papa Stour (original) (raw)

Delving into the history of Papa Stour Barbara E. Crawford (ed.)

Apart from a few stories in saga and some scraps of skaldic verse, the 1299 document relating to Papa Stour is the earliest written information we have about Shetland. It is the earliest official record. It was the subject of a conference in 1999 (the 700th anniversary) and many Shetlanders saw the actual document on that occasion when it was loaned by the Arnamagnaen Institute in Copenhagen.

The manuscript is beautifully written, it is perfectly legible, and is quite short. It deals with a highly dramatic incident when an angry woman, Ragnhild Simons daughter, confronted the great Thorvald Thoresson, then Governor of Shetland. The argument began in the stofa or best room of the big farm on Papa Stour which belonged to Duke Hakon Magnusson, soon to become King Hakon V of Norway. Next day, there was a second round, when the dispute was renewed out in the fields.

In a heated exchange Ragnhild accused Thorvald of being ‘Judas’ to the Duke. It was an accusation which Thorvald took seriously, since a charge of dishonesty could be damaging to a royal official. He had a record made of Ragnhild’s actual words, he recorded the names of the witnesses, and he made a formal denial, which was ratified by the Shetland Lawting and sent to Norway. The description includes the actual words which were spoken and they are recorded in everyday language, rather than obscured by the Latin which we usually find in medieval documents.

So much is clear – but what was the row all about? The bitter words were part of an on-going dispute, and what has survived is not quite enough for us to understand it completely. Previously historians have also been led astray by not-very-accurate translations, so it is a great advantage to have a photograph of the actual document, a transcription of its Old Norse text, and a scholarly translation by Paul Bibire.

Brian Smith tackles the difficult question of the meaning of the document. Ragnhild quoted rates at which land was rented using pennylands which were a common unit of land measurement in Orkney, but which became obsolete in Shetland – in fact Shetland pennylands were never recorded afterwards. But Ragnhild also described the same land in terms of the merks which were universally found in later centuries. If Brian is right (and he usually is) the 1299 document captures the vital moment when the old system of pennylands was being replaced by the new measurement in merks. Brian’s chapter is as near as we are likely to come to understanding what the argument was all about.

Knut Helle, Professor Emeritus in Medieval History at University of Bergen, describes what is known about Thorvald Thoresson and about the position he occupied in Shetland. Thorvald was probably a Shetlander, but he was also an important man in Norway. For example, he was named as one of four ambassadors appointed to treat with Edward I of England with regard to Margaret, Maid of Norway, who was the nearest heir to the Scottish throne. But it was Thorvald’s role in Shetland which was important. He seems to have been the sysselmann, a multi-functional royal official whose duties included collecting royal revenues, bringing cases to court and ensuring that the decisions of the Lawting were respected.

The same theme of island government is taken up by Professor Steinar Imsen of Trondheim. He describes the 1299 document as typical of Norwegian vitenbrev, a letter of witness, and he looks at the workings of Shetland’s head court, the Lawting, which met at Tingwall. He shows that by 1299, despite some distinctive features, the Lawting was in many ways comparable to other regional assemblies in Norway.

It is interesting to find that Ragnhild was capable of taking on someone as important as Thorvald Thoresson. Not only that, but only eight years later we find Thorvald again embroiled in a legal case in which his adversary was a woman. This 1307 case involved Bjørg of Cullivoe who for some unknown reason was required to pay a hefty fine which she had difficulty in meeting. The fact that Shetland’s two earliest documents both involve women who were acting on their own behalf leads to a re-consideration of the status of women in medieval Shetland. Perhaps Norse Shetland was not quite such a male-dominated society as is sometimes supposed. In a chapter on ‘Women’s Social and Economic Position’, Ingvild Øve comes to the conclusion that both Ragnhild in Papa Stour and Bjorg in Cullivoe fit well into the tradition of ‘the independent strong women described in Icelandic sagas’.

One of the most exciting things about the 1299 document is that there is every reason to believe that Barbara Crawford has discovered not only the farm but the very stofa in which Ragnhild accosted the great Thorvald. Beverley Ballin Smith describes the archaeological investigation which led to the surprising discovery of wooden buildings constructed from imported timber along traditional Scandinavian lines, which are the remains of Duke Hakon’s farmhouse.

Further chapters by Steffen Stummann Hansen, Hakon Christie and Bjarne Stoklund explore the use of timber houses in Norway and in the Norse settlements in the North Atlantic. Shetland wooden stock-stove houses were large and comfortable dwellings, the homes of wealthy members of medieval society. Evidence of houses of this type in Orkney is lacking, although it may be that stove-names preserve memories of similar prestige wooden buildings.

A chapter by Przemyslaw Urbánczyk is rather detached from the rest of the book. He deals with the ethnic origins of the colonists of Iceland, and claims to identify a Slav element. Iceland, however, was settled several centuries before 1299, and its settlement is not immediately related to the issues raised by the Papa Stour document.

On the other hand a contribution from Frans-Arne Stylegar is very relevant. It is relegated to an appendix because it was not one of the original conference papers. He describes yet another dispute involving Thorvald Thoresson, this time in Norway, and it centred on rather similar issues. In Papa Stour in 1299 Ragnhild’s quarrel with Thorvald was about the satellite farm of Brekasaetr (Bragaster) which, at that time, was emerging as an independent holding, distinct from the ducal farm. In the Norwegian dispute of 1292 Thorvald Thoresson was similarly involved in a disagreement about the boundaries of a large farm, this time in Kvinesdal in southwest Norway.

Only a handful of documents survive from medieval Shetland. We are lucky that the 1299 record from Papa Stour is one of them; a good part of what we know about Shetland after saga-times and before the Stewart earls comes from this brief text. There can be few medieval documents which lead off in quite so many different directions. Barbara Crawford’s Papa Stour project was interdisciplinary – and few projects can ever have been quite so interdisciplinary; it has involved linguists, historians, archaeologists, specialists in medieval buildings and experts in law, government and administration. Barbara provides a good introductory chapter which describes the background and sets out the issues.

The Shetland Times are to be congratulated on producing a handsome volume which is attractively illustrated by 55 maps, drawings and photographs.

William P. L. Thomson