Gavin Morgan

23 June, 2007

A LONG RUNNING archaeological project of great historical importance to Shetland is reaching a new level with the involvement of Norwegian master carpenters and a skills exchange.

The original excavation of a medieval site on the tiny island of Papa Stour started in 1977 under the command of eminent historian Dr Barbara Crawford and ended in 1991.

The dig discovered the wooden remains of a Norse "stofa" or royal farm, identical to buildings that have been recreated in Western Norway.

Dr Crawford has been working for a number of years with architectural historians in Norway, discussing ways of laying out the Papa Stour site.

They put her in touch with a Norwegian crafts development team at the Voss Academy of Carpentry, who are experts at replicating stofas and preserving ancient skills.

A team led by Ove Atle Marthinussen visited the site in March, measured it out and offered to provide three crafted timbers made in the original fashion.

The notched log timbers will measure a massive 35cm in diameter and 1.5 m in length.

Dr Crawford said: "Ours is not a full replica. That might hopefully happen in the future, but what they are doing is laying out the bottom three timbers of the log building.

"This is so that visitors can see what it looked like, but it won't actually be a building in itself.

"The Norwegian team are the ones that came up with the ideas for this and seem really enthusiastic about participating.

"They have very generously offered to fund the sorting of the timber, its preparation and its delivery to Bergen. What we have to find money for is the transport of the timber to Shetland."

One of the Voss Academy's conditions for taking on the project was to set up an exchange programme, so specific skills could be swapped with Shetland.

Dr Crawford continued: "This is so a couple of the Norwegians can come over and learn about dry stone dyking skills and two Shetlanders can go to Norway and learn carpentry skills and the care of timber structures. They are keen to have three visits next year."

The Papa Stour History Group is seeking further funding to keep up their side of the bargain by getting the timbers to the island and funding the Shetland carpenter's educational trip.

So far they have received £4,000 from Shetland Amenity Trust, but this is not enough to cover their expenses so they have applied to other funding bodies such as 'Awards For All' to make up the difference.

Dr Crawford first became involved in the project after reading Shetland's oldest surviving written document, dating from 1299.

"It was that document that got me interested in the first place. It is really remarkable because it is absolutely complete and entirely legible. It tells about these amazing events that happened in Papa Stour at Easter time in 1299," she explained.

The document mentions the actual stofa that Dr Crawford finally discovered, describing a particularly unusual standoff which took place there.

The story tells of a woman who stood up to a royal official, accusing him twice in public of perjury and embezzling a duke's funds, something that was completely unheard of for a female at the time.

Dr Crawford firmly believes their first confrontation happened in this actual stofa, which has been a major part of her work for more than 30 years.

She concluded: "That is what is so unique about the site and what makes it very significant. More attention should be paid to it, residents should be more aware of it and that is why we have finally got to do something about the site itself."

It is not known what eventually happened to the woman, but the official continued to work for years after the document was written, so her charges clearly did not stick.

The original 1299 document is currently on a three month loan to the new Shetland Museum and Archives in Lerwick from the Armagnaen Institute, part of the University of Copenhagen.

It will be available for viewing at the museum until the beginning of September.