One of the last things I learned about my father before his recent death was a surprise: that our Anderson surname comes not from the Scottish Highlands but Shetland. This explained the previous surprise of his non-Asian DNA, which showed no Celtic ancestry, only Scandinavian. Having grown up with the Anderson tartan in myriad manifestations—kilts for my mother and sisters and me, sport coats and ties for my dad, and blankets for all—it was a shock to realize that we weren’t those Andersons. Instead, we're the kind of Andersons who wore horned helmets and set ships on fire. The clans, bagpipes and tartans that we took as our Scots heritage were never part of Shetland’s culture; neither was the Gaelic language. Essentially, we're part Norwegian.
One reason my family knew nothing of this is that my father grew up a world away from Scotland. He was born and raised in China, where his father, an engineer from Edinburgh, immigrated as a young man. My paternal grandfather never returned to Scotland and died at fifty in Hankow. When the Japanese invaded China in 1936 my father and Asian grandmother fled to Hong Kong, and all the Anderson addresses were lost. A more curious person might have searched for his family after the war, but my father was notably uninterested in history, including his own. It wasn’t until he became famous in the 1970s that his Anderson relatives—by then living in England—found him.
Strangely, the Shetland connection had been forgotten by those Andersons too. Then in May, one of my father's first cousins reported the discovery that my father’s Edinburgh grandfather, Andrew Anderson, was from Unst, the northernmost of the Shetland islands. Andrew's birthplace, Burrafirth, is the northernmost point in the British Isles.
All I knew about Shetland was that it lay closer to Norway than the Scottish mainland, and that sheep, ponies and puffins lived there. An online exploration turned up photos of green, treeless islands, pristine beaches, Viking ruins and the aforementioned animals. I learned that the islands were part of Norway until 1472, when they were transferred to Scotland as security for the unpaid dowry of Margaret of Norway, who married James III of Scotland in 1469. Via Wordpress, I discovered the genealogy blog of an Unst woman, wrote to her and learned she was a distant cousin. (Given Unst's population of 600, this kinship seemed inevitable.)
I also found “Shetland”, the BBC series streaming on Britbox. Like “Broadchurch", “Shetland” is a procedural set in a remote, beachy place whose small population generates an alarming number of murders. Despite the limitations of its genre “Shetland” is compelling, and I probably would have found it addictive even if not for my Shetland connection. Douglas Henshall stars as D.I. Perez, a grief stricken widower and highest ranking detective in Shetland’s only town, Lerwick. The rest of the cast features Allison O’Donnell, Steven Robertson and Mark Bonnar, all excellent.
But “Shetland” is also a travelogue. As dead bodies pile up over six seasons, Perez and his colleagues conduct investigations within and beyond the islands, traveling by plane, car and ferry. Perez makes occasional trips to Glasgow to pursue suspects and consult with the National Police. One case takes Perez to his birthplace, Fair Isle, halfway between the Scottish mainland and the rest of Shetland. Despite the island’s population of 71 (51 at last count), there has been a murder there too, at the ornithological center that seems to be the island’s only employer. In Season Three’s arc, the ferry from Aberdeen is the starting point for a complicated series of crimes, including two murders, a shooting and a kidnapping.
Useful information is sprinkled throughout the series. The source of Perez's unusual surname is a shipwrecked ancestor from the Spanish Armada. (This actually happened: the crew of El Gran Grifon washed up on Fair Isle in 1588. Rescue came six weeks later, but some sailors stayed.) We learn that the ferry from Aberdeen takes twelve hours, and that it has cabins and a restaurant. Inter-island ferry service makes it easy for people who live on Bressay to to go pubbing in Lerwick. Best of of all is murder—not the crime but the word--which pops up constantly in various pronunciations. In one memorable scene in Season Three, there are dueling “mur-ders” from Perez and a Glaswegian detective named Iain Boyd (Kevin Mains). It's glorious.
Until I was thwarted by Britain’s ten-day quarantine for Amber Tier visitors, I had planned to travel to Shetland in August. My canceled Scotland trip, the second in two years, comes at time when I’m also out of “Shetland” episodes to watch. Fortunately, I have plenty to do before next summer’s visit: mastering murder in at least three Scottish accents, finding more Shetland kin and changing my tartan (to Lindsay, my great-grandmother’s clan). I’m also investigating a newfound connection to Robert Louis Stevenson’s family. It has to do with lighthouses.