The Hjaltadans Stone Circle

If you are fortunate enough to navigate the rugged, peaty, boggy landscape of Vord Hill on the remote island of Fetlar, you might be rewarded with a closer look at the Hjaltadans Stone Circle. Many visitors and even local residents who have attempted to visit the circle come away disappointed.

The Hjaltadans Stone Circle is considered to have been built in the Neolithic period and consists of a ring of 38 stones with two stones in the center. The story goes that the two pillars are the remains of a fiddler and his wife who got so carried away playing music, the sun rose and turned the two of them to stone. The surrounding stones are considered to be the immortalized guardian trows (Shetland Island equivalent of trolls). 

The name Hjaltadans has been said to originate from another way of spelling Shetland. Hjaltland may also derive from the old Norse word for the hilt of a sword, hjalt. 

On one of the aerial photos, you can see the vestiges of the most northern part of the Finniegirt Dyke, a wall supposedly built by the magical race of people called the Finns. This ancient wall cut the island (uncannily accurate) into two parts: east and west. Parts of it are still visible across the island. Myth has it that the Finns were shape-shifters, and there are many stories attributed to them across the Shetland Islands and further afield in Europe; however, Fetlar boasts of having more Finn stories attributed to it than any other island on Shetland.

Nearby, and even harder to reach is the Fiddlers Crus. This stone circle consists of three rings of stone and was likely to be the place of a "Thing" where local justice was carried out before it became centralized on the mainland of Shetland.

The Hjaltadans and the Fiddlers Cruss stone circles feature strongly in a fictional Fetlar novel series called The AdderStane. It is replete with fact and fiction and according to one of the guides at the local museum/Interpretive Centre has been said to be a "reference work" for the island of Fetlar.