Broch boffins
A NEW display at Shetland Museum and Archives examines the way scholars and others have been inspired by brochs over the centuries.
The exhibition is contained in a case next to the entrance to the archives entitled Broch boffins: how the generations have viewed Iron Age forts.
The centrepiece of the display is a remarkable drawing by Gilbert Goudie of the broch of Levenwick, showing what it looked like before it was damaged by a great gale in 1900.
The drawing is accompanied by a quotation from Goudie: “From my earliest days, the Broch of Levenwick … was a mysterious object of intense curiosity.
“While a schoolboy in Edinburgh, dreams of the exploring of it and the adjoining sepulchral mounds cost me nights of almost sleepless anxiety, and, at the age of thirteen, armed with a spade and “kaishey”, I proceeded to the spot, determined to undertake it.’”
The display also includes the thoughts of a 17th century minister, a skillful drawing by James T. Irvine of the fort at Burgi Geos in northwest Yell, and a photograph of the excavation of the broch at Jarlshof.
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