Vagaland

Who was Vagaland?

Vagaland, is arguably the greatest Shetland poet of the 20th century, was born Thomas Alexander Robertson at Westerwick at the southern tip of the parish of Sandsting, his mother’s home. He was the second son of Thomas Robertson of Skeld and his wife Andrina Johnston. Tragically his merchant seaman father drowned before his first birthday, and his mother moved with her two sons to Stove in Waas.

Here the poet grew up, in no little hardship, though his deep love for the land and the people overcame that - it was to be the old Norse name for the area that he adopted as his nom-de-plume. A shy boy who adjusted with difficulty to the rough and tumble of school, he was nonetheless able both at physical and intellectual pursuits, and in time he excelled. He took his MA at Edinburgh University and was offered the possibility of postgraduate work at Oxford, which he turned down for financial reasons, instead becoming a teacher at the Lerwick Central School and carer to his ailing mother.

In 1953, he married Martha, daughter of the Reverend Robert Andrew, Church of Scotland minister in Walls for over forty years, a girl he had known in childhood. She became a colleague and collaborator on many fronts, and together they edited Da Sangs at A’ll sing ta Dee, a collection of dialect songs and music. One of his own lyric poems, Da Sang o da Papa Men, written from the perspective of the Papa Stour fishermen 'rowin Foula doon', has become a favourite Shetland song, to music composed by T.M.Y.Manson.