Synopses & Reviews
The place of women in Shetland society is unique. In this isolated island group off the north of Scotland, women dominated the family, economy and the cultural imagination for 200 years. Here, women were numerically preponderant and economically vital. They maintained families and communities because men were absent. In their minds they constructed an identity of themselves as ‘liberated long before organised feminism was invented. It examines the opportunities and life experiences of women in a place where more of them worked and fewer got married than anywhere else in the British Isles. And it is about the relationship between myth-making and historical materiality and the ways in which the people of this northern archipelago have imagined their past. Reconstructing this ‘womans world from fragments of cultural experience captured in written and oral sources, the author recreates and explores Shetland using its inhabitants material experience and personal testimony.
Synopsis
For over the past two centuries Shetland, Scotland was a place where women dominated the family, economy, and the cultural imagination. Women constructed in their minds an identity of themselves as "liberated" long before organized feminism was invented. Reconstructing this "woman's world" from written and oral sources, this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of social and cultural history, social anthropology, gender and women's studies.
Synopsis
Shetland has a history unique in Europe, for over the past two centuries it was a place where women dominated the family, economy, and the cultural imagination. Women ran households and crofts without men. They maintained families and communities because men were absent. And they constructed in their minds an identity of themselves as 'liberated' long before organised feminism was invented. And yet, Shetland is a place which was made by the most masculine of societies - those of the Picts, Scots and above all the Vikings - and its contemporary identity still draws on the heroic exploits and sagas of medieval Norsemen. This book examines how against this tradition Shetland became a female place, and offers answers as to how, in this most isolated island community, the inhabitants transgressed and reversed their traditional gender roles. Reconstructing this 'woman's world' from fragments of cultural experience captured in written and oral sources, this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of social and cultural history, social anthropology, gender and women's studies.
Synopsis
For over the past two centuries Shetland, Scotland was a place where women dominated the family, economy, and the cultural imagination. Women constructed in their minds an identity of themselves as "liberated" long before organized feminism was invented. Reconstructing this "woman's world" from written and oral sources, this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of social and cultural history, social anthropology, gender and women's studies.
About the Author
Lynn Abrams is Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow.
Table of Contents
List of figures, tables and plates * Preface and acknowledgements * Glossary and note on Shetland dialect * Map of Shetland * Pasts, peoples and selves * Stories * Place * Work * Culture * Sexualities * Power * Reflections * Bibliography * Index *