Last week, professors from the University of Nottingham visited the isle as part of their project called Ragna’s Islands.

See their blog here : https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasislands/

They held a school and community event to explore Fair Isle’s Viking roots. Judith spoke about her current work on translating Orkneyinga Saga. We looked at Viking artefacts like a brooch, a comb with runes carved in it and a soapstone mould for making brooches. We wrote our names in runes and also discussed place names around the isle that come from old Norse.  When in Shetland last week, we selected some Viking books from the library. We learned in one of them, why runes were made of straight lines. This is because it was easier to chisel into wood or stone. We decided to chisel our own names in runes at our woodwork station, along with ‘Fair Isle.’ It was lovely to spend the morning with others in our community, and to enjoys some refreshments (cake of course)!