‘It was like a Beyoncé concert’: a cherished festival with sheep in the leading role
The sheep rushed over the hill and emerged through the low mist where the green earth met the gray sky, and ran to the fields below.
They were ready for their big moment.
It was Shetland Wool Weekand visitors from all over the world – most of them women and almost all of them knitting enthusiasts – flocked to the Uradale Farm and other areas of the Shetland Islands, a remote archipelago north of mainland Scotland, to see the famous fleeces.
Founded in 2010, the weeklong festival is both a way to spread a cherished tradition of knitting and celebrate local culture, and a commercial opportunity for the area’s sheep farmers, wool spinners and artisans.
“What Shetland Wool Week did was give us a showcase to an international audience, which we would probably have struggled to find,” says Ronnie Eunson, who founded Uradale Farm decades ago. “It’s a whole new world, these ladies who knit.”
But it is also a celebration that turns the remote island communities into a hub of woolly activity every year.
Knitters were everywhere on the islands, the rhythmic clicking of metal needles providing the background music to island life.
During a dinner at a restaurant, two women compared their observations on the type of yarn to use in a sweater design. In a café on one of the more remote islands, three friends took out their knitting needles while drinking coffee. In a hotel lounge in Shetland’s capital Lerwick, two women complained about the difficulty of getting tickets for the most popular courses on the Wool Week website.
“The site crashed immediately, it looked like a Beyoncé concert,” said Kate Hall, 56, on the day the 2023 dates were announced. Ms. Hall, a veterinarian from Toronto, traveled to Shetland with a friend after talking about it for years.
This year around 800 people attended the festival, with around 60 per cent coming from outside Britain. The visitors were easily recognized by their woolen sweaters and hats with intricate patterns – the colorful designs of Fair Isle knitwear perhaps the most famous – when they visited farms, yarn shops, artists’ studios, community centres, secondary schools and community kitchens and living rooms in Shetland for tutorials, tours and lectures. Some wore the Wool Week hat, a new pattern shared each year with participants, who knit their own version.
Many visitors found their way Uradale Farmallowing Mr Eunson, 65, and his son, Jakob, 26, to set out their organic, sustainable ethos.
“It’s a fragile and precarious system,” the father said, for running the farm and wool business. “But that also applies to life on an island.”
As the sheep descended the hill, his son, with his boots caked in mud, called to the collies hot on the flock’s heels, using a series of whistles and commands as the dogs nimbly propelled the sheep along.
When a tour group arrived, the eldest, Mr Eunson, led the sheep into a holding pen while he explained the history of the Shetland breed. The smell of the cattle mingled with the fresh island air as visitors listened intently.
They then all warmed up inside with tea and biscuits before popping into the small shop next to the living room to view the finished product and run their hands along the colorful balls of yarn.
Mr Eunson and his partner, Viveka Velupillai, introduced their visitors to the different yarns and their Shetland names – such as the flukkra, or snow, for one shade of white.
In the 1970s, an oil boom brought economic changes to this archipelago in the North Sea, which has a population of approximately 23,000. Many Shetlanders left the small-scale farming and fishing that had defined life here for a long time.
But Shetland’s knitting heritage endured. And today it is thriving and adapting.
Many of the experienced knitters here share their designs online and have a wide reach on social media, where they are gaining a large, if still niche, following in the global knitting community, which has only grown since the surge in interest during the pandemic.
Alison Rendall, a 57-year-old nurse who was born in the Shetlands and learned to knit from her grandmother, is this year’s patron of the festival. She said she has long been inspired by Shetland’s beautiful natural landscape in her own designs.
Growing up, Ms Rendall said the island’s culture was often looked down upon, with schools discouraging students from speaking the local dialect, which some linguists say is a separate language. The festival is a way of preserving what makes Shetlands unique.
“People love that there is a unique culture here, and it’s important that we hold on to that,” Ms Rendall said.
In a pub in Lerwick, the largest town on the islands, Judy Klevan tapped her feet to traditional music as her hands moved quickly along her knitting, which was sticking out of a small cloth bag. Mrs. Klevan, 64, and her husband, Mark Nigogosyan, 65, both doctors from Minnesota, sat across from two friends from Australia.
“It’s just a great festive atmosphere,” said Dr. Klevan. “And for me, it’s about seeing the creations that other knitters have made.”
The next morning, travelers on a ferry to the Isle of Whalsay – a 30-minute ride from Shetland’s main island along the dramatic cliffs along the coastline – were decked out in their colorful hats as they enjoyed their Wool Week stay.
“I’m very happy to be here for the knitting, and he likes to wear the hats,” said Pat Blain, 73, laughing as she stood next to her husband, Peter, 72.
On the island, Ann Marie Anderson gave classes from her craft shop and taught visitors how to needle felt wool.
“Being in such a remote place like this,” she said, using the Shetland word for “small,” “they really get to experience island life. And I think there’s something very special about it, you get a real feeling of this place.”
The highlight for many is the makers market held in the main festival school on the penultimate day of the festival, where designers, producers and artists set up stalls and sell their goods.
Elderly Mr. Eunson, dressed in a handsome green tweed jacket, and Ms. Velupillai set up their booth together with balls of yarn and design kits, while dozens of people in knitted hats gathered outside.
Mr Eunson said he is proud that even though the island has come through the oil companies take what they need and go,” Shetland’s native wool culture remains on good terms.
But he knows there is a delicate balance between promoting appreciation for that heritage and sustainable growth.
“It’s not a static culture,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be a mass product either. It’s all still possible in Shetland.”