Norwegians

At midnight on a foggy June evening in 1941, a group of young Norwegians set sail for Shetland from Norway’s western coast in a stolen boat. They were trying to escape the Gestapo. Many Norwegians wanted to leave and Ragnar Ulstein and 16 of his friends were among them.

The group were all aged between 17 and 21.

It was not easy to leave Norway. The Nazis were building forts up and down its western coast. All seaworthy boats were being used in the war.

Ragnar and his friends stole a boat The Ulstein from Ragnar’s cousin. To hide his plan of an escape to Shetland, Ragnar told the authorities he was to be a student in Oslo.

None of the 17 passengers had specialised knowledge of boats but all were desperate to leave. On the night of 16th, the group, one girl and 16 young men, set out for Shetland. Eighteen boats had failed to make that journey, fifty-eight people had drowned. The next morning the engine stopped when they had gone about 60 miles. There was a serious engine fault but none of the passengers knew how to repair it. Then the boat began to drift back towards Norway. If they were caught they would have been shot. Just before they reached the Norwegian coast those on board managed to restart the engine and they steered the boat into an inlet, too small for the German U-boats to follow.

There they discovered a drifter, on which there were some friends. They were told that the German police had already searched for them. One man repaired the boat and after some time the refugees set out once more.

After four days sailing, having expected to see land, finding none, and with little food and water on board, Ragnar remembered an old Norwegian sailor telling him that if you sailed west from the North Sea until you reached the Atlantic, and headed south you would reach land. They doubted it would work but when the depth of the sea reached 125 fathoms, Ragnar was certain the boat was in the Atlantic and they headed south. After two hours, in the mist, they saw land. It was Yell. One boy was in tears.

They came ashore at Whalefirth and saw a crofthouse half-a-mile away at the Herra. At the croft house lived Willa and Andrew Mann. The Norwegians were given milk and bread and then a meal of lamb and cabbage. It was June 22nd.

Ragnar, who became a reporter and then a historian enjoyed meeting the Shetland people again. Among those he met were brothers Charlie and Laurie Spence, who saw the boat coming in and went to meet the passengers as they came ashore, Wendy Gear, whose grandparents fed the refugees, Magnie Mann, whose father was the coastguard who first saw the refugees sailing into Whalefirth, and his cousin Peter, who also saw the boat coming in.

Gremister, late 1950s

We had always looked on Gremister as the main area of the Herra since it had a school, shop, kirk and hall but in the very early times it seems that Graveland with its Haa was more important. When the road was constructed past Raga to Gremister the other areas were not so popular owing to the hardship of living there without transport. With the death of the last inhabitants many houses were left empty and are now in ruins.