Welcome

Our mission is to safeguard, enhance, and promote Shetland's heritage, ensuring it is accessible to be enjoyed by all.

Shetland Amenity Trust constantly strives to preserve and enhance everything that is distinctive about Shetland's cultural and natural heritage, promoting access to it whether physical or intellectual.

The Trust was created in 1983 and has since delivered an extensive range of high quality heritage and culture projects, in partnership with a range of local, national and international agencies.

We continue to be pro-active in seeking new opportunities and identifying new funding sources, to further enhance the heritage and culture experience for local Shetland people and visitors to our islands.

We are part of a community which takes great pride and pleasure in our cultural and natural heritage, embracing traditions, dialect and our physical environment in all of our activities.

News rss

• 25Nov

  Place Names of the Week - Personal names

  Several place-names reflect people who have lived at or been associated with places in the past. Here we focus on a few less obvious and particularly interesting ones.

• 12Nov

  Place Name of the Week - Talking Taings

  The Old Norse tangi, tungi means a point of land and is a common place-name in Norway, Faroe and Iceland. The names are easy to recognise and interpret because there are many parallel taing, teng, tung, tungi or tonga names in Shetland. The place-names describe the location, wildlife or buildings associated with the points.

• 06Nov

  Place Name of the Week - All about burning

  This week as our minds turn to bonfires, I consider some of the many place-names that relate to burning. Old Norse brenna and brandr, a burning, burnt off piece of land, gives brunna, brenna, brenda or brenya place-names. These are places where patches of heathery moorland were set on fire to clear for grazing and encourage new growth