Beautiful and sobering tribute to the resilience of 'Shetland Bus' heroes
The "North Sea Traffic" of the museum's title is better known here as the "Shetland Bus", the clandestine and immensely hazardous plying between Shetland and German-occupied Norway by converted fishing boats carrying agents and arms to support the Norwegian resistance during Second World War. In April 1942, after two Gestapo men were killed during a skirmish involving agents landed by the "Bus", the entire fishing village of Televg was razed in reprisal, its men sent to concentration camps where more than 30 of them died, its women and children interned.
The music being played at the museum was a newly-written suite of Shetland fiddle music, inspired by the Shetland Bus and in particular by the ordeal of Jan Baalsrud, a resistance fighter who was the only survivor of another disastrous Shetland Bus mission in 1943. Escape: The Story of Jan Baalsrud and the Shetland Bus, now released on CD, is the work of Shetland musicians Jenna and Bethany Reid. Jenna, a protge of Shetland fiddling legends Tom Anderson and Willie Hunter, has carved out a reputation of her own as a player while she and Bethany, a graduate of Strathclyde University's Applied Music degree course, who plays fiddle and keyboard, have constituted half of the band Filska since their schooldays.
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Hide AdEscape, however, is their first joint project. It was premiered at Celtic Connections in January and the recording was launched last month at the Shetland Museum in Lerwick. It receives its Scottish mainland launch on 14 November as part of Edinburgh's Fiddle 2010 festival.
Jenna takes the fiddle lead while Bethany largely plays keyboard on the album, the pair joined by James Thomson on flute and pipes, James Lindsay on double bass and Iain Sandilands on percussion. The music - often suitably dramatic but including some beautifully poignant airs - is interspersed through a narrative of Baalsrud's story, written by Martyn McLaughlin of this newspaper, and narrated in broad Shetland tones by BBC Scotland's man from Yell, Phil Goodlad.
"In Shetland you grow up knowing about the Shetland Bus," says Jenna, "but the Jan Baalsrud story comes directly from David Howarth's book The Shetland Bus. Bethany came across it and we realised what an incredible story it was."
Baalsrud, who died in 1988, was the sole survivor out of 11 when the fishing vessel Brattholm, sailing from Scalloway, was betrayed by an informer and ambushed by a German gunboat as it was landing agents and arms on a remote island north of Troms.Baalsrud, after shooting two of his pursuers, embarked on an epic trek through Arctic conditions, suffering snow blindness and having to amputate nine of his frostbitten toes. Eventually he was assisted across the border with neutral Sweden by reindeer-herding Laplanders.
The Reids' tribute to a modest man who became a Norwegian national hero has attracted attention on both sides of the North Sea: the Norwegian ambassador from London came to the Lerwick launch, while the concert in Televg was attended by Baalsrud's nephew, Nils Ole Baalsrud. A further Shetland presence at Televg was Barbara Melkevik, originally from Scalloway, who was married to a Norwegian killed during a Shetland Bus mission. "So there were a few tears, but it was brilliant," says Reid.
Behind the museum at Televg, the ground drops away to the fjord and its eliminated village, while a plaque describes the grim events of 1942. "It's quite overwhelming, really," recalls the 29-year-old Shetlander. "We came away, after meeting descendents of these people, and thinking that, however much we enjoyed writing and playing that music, nothing properly covers what happened."
• Escape is on Lofoten Records. See www.jennaandbethanyreid.co.uk