The Unst Boat Song

John Stickle, a cooper, a good fiddler in his time and a humorous man with a broad knowledge of Shetland dialect and old Shetland songs, was born in Baltasound, Unst in 1879 and died there 73 years later.

Perhaps the most remarkable of his songs was the Unst Boat Song, an ancient boat song in Norn, a form of Norse-language, whose leader chorus structure indicates that it was once a song for rowing—perhaps on board Norse galleys.

This song is sung in the ancient Nora language. This language was spoken in Shetland, Orkney and Caithness but has now been extinct since around the mid-19th century. The last native speaker is reputed to have died on Unst around 1850 and only fragments of the vocabulary remain today, including this song—a prayer or plea to the sea and to God to look after the fishermen.