Walls and Sandness

Walls and Sandness
Shetland
Looking down on Sandness

Walls and Sandness is a joint parish covering the westernmost bulge of the Mainland of Shetland. Once consisting of four parishes, of Walls, Sandness and the island parishes of Foula and Papa Stour, they have been combined, taking in the whole western bulge of Mainland and its neighbouring islands.

Sandness (pronounced with a silent 'd') bears the traces of habited from ancient time to modern: a fort at Garth, a broch at Huxter and a pre-Reformation chapel at Norby, and a school at Cruisdale built at the tireless insistence of Robert Jamieson (1827-1899) (who described his home parish as "the prettiest parish in Shetland".

Walls has a name from the Old Norse Vagar ('inlets' or 'voes'). Its settlement is the hamlet of Walls, at the head of Vaila Sound, sheltered by the islands of Linga and Vaila.