Jenny Sturgeon in Shetland
Folk on Foot
Matthew Bannister
4.8 • 526 Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2021
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The singer, songwriter and artist Jenny Sturgeon has made her home on Shetland, a group of wild and wonderful islands in the North Atlantic. Her latest album “The Living Mountain” was inspired by the classic book about the Cairngorms by Nan Shepherd. On our atmospheric walk, with seabirds calling and waves crashing, Jenny reflects on finding inspiration for her music in nature as she performs songs from “The Living Mountain” and a new composition written in lockdown.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I bet you thought when we went to Orpney that we couldn't go any further north on for comfort. |
| 0:09.0 | Well, you were wrong because now we're in Shetland, this archipelago of islands in the North Atlantic, which is imbued with history. |
| 0:19.0 | The Picts were here before the Vikings came along and then the Scots. |
| 0:23.4 | And you can still see the marks of that history in the landscape here. |
| 0:27.5 | The weather is wild and windy sometimes, |
| 0:30.3 | but sometimes the sun breaks through and it's just absolutely glorious. |
| 0:34.9 | There's tradition here. |
| 0:36.3 | There's music and craft handed down from family to family, |
| 0:40.4 | and there's wildlife. And I think that's probably what attracted our guest today. Jenny |
| 0:45.3 | Sturgeon makes delicate, beautiful music, which is inextricably intertwined with the natural world. |
| 0:51.8 | And it's not surprising that she's made her home here on Shetland. |
| 0:55.7 | It is a wet day. It's a windy day. |
| 0:57.9 | So let's go and find some shelter in Jenny's home. |
| 1:11.6 | Music Hello, Jenny, lovely to see you. Come on in, thank you. |
| 1:26.6 | Can we come in? Thank you. What a lovely house, Jenny, and what an amazing view from these picture windows looking out over the sea. |
| 1:39.3 | What can we see out here? |
| 1:41.3 | Well, we can look right into Leavenwick Bay and there's an amazing old graveyard there with it. It's kind of mounded up. I've heard people say that they think there's a Viking boat under there, but based on the land and the way the land goes, the graveyard shouldn't be that shape, but that's kind of to the south, and there's the sandy beach of Leavenavenwick and then we actually look straight out over the sea |
| 2:01.7 | and the next stop would be Norway and a bit further north we've got no-ness which is that spit of land |
| 2:07.9 | and if we were a little bit higher we'd be able to see the island of Musa where there's the best-preserved |
| 2:14.1 | brooks in Scotland so that's just a brook is a Pictish building i believe so yeah yeah |
| 2:21.3 | so you you sense the history here yeah you can see the sheep here too your neighbors have got sheep |
| 2:27.3 | yeah john's sheep and sheep are important to shetland don't they yeah very much so for eating and for |
... |
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