Shetland literature reflects the history of Shetland: five hundred years of Norse rule, followed by five hundred years of Scottish and British - this, in very simple terms, is the political reality of the last millennium. Before the Norse, millennia of mysterious peoples and an immediately precedent Christian Celtic period; prior to and into the British age, three hundred years of Hanseatic trade with "Dutchies" (usually Dutch, sometimes, Germans). All of these aspects of history have inspired and influenced Shetland's writers - just as the unchanging landscape of the 'Auld Rock', its weather, seasons, its flora and fauna, have provided a touchstone in the midst of sometimes tumultuous change; as the land itself is refuge from that other great favourite subject - the sea.
Read more about Shetland Literature: Norse Literature, British Period
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,—nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)