FSRS

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The first of a series of research symposia jointly developed by colleagues in UHI Shetland and the University of the Faroe Islands will be held on the 22 September 2023 1pm to 4pm Online. The Islands Matter Symposium will bring together researchers from the Faroe Islands and from Shetland.

This symposium will focus on the history, culture and heritage of the two island groups, exploring relationships, similarities and differences. There will be a series of presentations of current research, and the opportunity for questions and lively discussion. It will be the springboard for further research and the development of research partnerships, reconnecting the two archipelagos.

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The first Faroes Shetland Research Symposium of the new academic year, The Legacy of Gudrun Sigurdardottir in Husavik and the Legal Situation in the Faroes in the 14th century, will feature a discussion between two leading historians - Andras Mortensen and Brian Smith. This concerns a case at the Faroese lagting in 1407, where a family from Shetland was involved. The discussion will address three questions:

1) What was the case about?

2) What does the case say about the legal situation in the Faroes?

3) Does the case support the suggestion that the Faroes and Shetland in the early days of royal administration were organised as a special judicial district in the Gulating’s jurisdiction?

Andras Mortensen is Associate Professor of History at the Fróðskaparsetur Føroya . He wrote his PhD on Faroese boat-building tradition at in 2001. From 1989 he was a curator and later, from 2006, Director of the National Museum of the Faroes and Keeper of National Antiquities. From 2011 he has also been a director of Søvn Landsins, Faroese Cultural Heritage. He joined his current position at the university in 2017.

Brian Smith is Shetland's Archivist, a post he has held since 1976, and an Honorary Research Fellow with the Institute for Northern Studies . He is also Shetland's leading historian with a prolific output of publications, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Shetland's historical sources.