Can three Shetland witches armed with folklore and sisterhood stop a Greek Fate from getting her shears back?
The Shetland Witch by Kate Macdonald: Unearthing Magic in Scotland’s Northern Isles
The figure of the witch has haunted the human imagination for millennia, evolving from the formidable sorceresses of classical literature to the complex protagonists of contemporary fantasy. In ancient Greece and Rome, witches like Circe and Medea were portrayed as dangerous, divine figures with transformative powers, establishing tropes that would resonate for centuries. This classical archetype later merged with early modern fears, as scholarly works like Diane Purkiss’s The Witch in History explore, showing how the witch became a cultural carrier for societal anxieties about gender and power, from the tragedy of Macbeth to the hysteria of the European witch trials .
Nowhere is this rich and often dark heritage more palpable than in the folk tales of the British Isles. Recent UK literature continues to reimagine these themes, from the academic magic of Isabel Agajanian’s Modern Divination at Cambridge University to the cosy, contemporary witchcraft of Lucy Jane Wood’s Rewitched in a London bookshop. Yet, to find a landscape truly steeped in the old magic, one must look to the far north. The Shetland Isles possess a distinct folkloric tradition, populated not just by witches, but by trows, the mischievous, night-dwelling hill-folk, and selkies, mythical seal-people who walk on land
The islands’ history is also shadowed by a darker reality that haunts the very landscape Macdonald describes. Between the early 17th and late 18th centuries, Shetland was gripped by the same witchcraft mania that swept across Europe, though thankfully with fewer executions than elsewhere in Scotland. In 1616, following the fall of the notorious Earl Patrick Stewart, a new administration at Scalloway Castle sought to make examples of local women, resulting in the first major witch trials in the Isles.
Three women, Catherine Johnson of Eshaness, Jonka Dyneis of Fetlar, and Barbara Thomasdochter of Delting, were accused, tried by a jury of landowners and ordinary Shetlanders, found guilty, and executed on Gallow Hill above Scalloway. The executioner strangled each woman at the stake before burning their bodies to ashes.
The accusations against them reveal a world where folklore and “reality” were dangerously entangled. Catherine Johnson was said to have slept with the devil for thirty years and, tellingly for readers of The Shetland Witch, was also accused of chatting with trows in the kirkyards of Hillswick and Stenness. Jonka Dyneis, living in Fetlar, was condemned for causing her husband’s fishing boat to sink through witchcraft. She had fallen into a trance outside their home precisely when he found himself in danger six miles offshore. Barbara Thomasdochter, a healer, faced charges that included rendering a man impotent after he refused to marry her.
The most evocative figure from this period is Andrew Stephenson of Califf, nicknamed “Luggie” (likely because his ears had been mutilated for an earlier crime). Luggie’s alleged crime was wonderfully peculiar: he was said to possess a fishing line that could, when dropped into the earth rather than the sea, pull up fish that were already boiled and roasted. On stormy days, he would cross the voe to a knowe at Kebister, still known as Luggie’s Knowe, and lower his line into a deep pit to draw up codlings for his dinner.
Luggie was executed around the same time as Marion Pardone of Hillswick, another well-known Shetland witch of the era. This folklore-infused accusation, of fishing into hills rather than water, of communing with underground beings—resonates powerfully with the trow Tornost in MacDonald’s novel, a malignant creature with eighteenth-century manners who inhabits the Shetland landscape and remains deeply suspicious of anyone hiding things of value in “his” land.
The last executions recorded in Shetland were those of an old woman, Barbara Tulloch, and her daughter Helen, around 1680. The sheriff depute who watched them die reported a grotesque detail: when Helen had hung from the gibbet for some time, “a black pitchy-like ball foamed out of her mouth; and after the fire was kindled, it grew to the bigness of a walnut, and then flew up like squibs into the air… It was taken to be a visible sign that the devil was gone out of her”.
The Gallow Hill where they died, now marked by a new memorial erected in 2024, still bears a layer of peat ash in the soil—physical evidence of the fires that consumed those condemned for a crime that “of course does not exist”
It is against this backdrop of ancient myth and historical weight that Kate Macdonald sets her new novel, The Shetland Witch. The story follows Hazel, an archaeologist in Unst who discovers she is magical and joins the island’s last three witches. When the Greek Fate Atropos arrives, searching for her lost shears, the witches must defend their home using a blend of local tradition and classical power. In this review, we delve into how Macdonald masterfully weaves Shetland’s unique folk heritage into the grand tapestry of Greek mythology, creating a story of magic, sisterhood, and the enduring power of place.
The Shetland Witch: Or, Atropos Wants Her Shears Back by Kate Macdonald
Hazel is an archaeologist, working in Unst, on the most northerly coast of the Shetland Isles.
She’s digging on Ishabel’s land. Ishabel is a retired professor of botany, and one of the remaining three Shetland witches, along with Maggie the artist who is getting too casual about shape-changing in public, and Avril the wildlife warden with too many birds to guard.
Maggie discovers that Hazel is also magical, and she becomes a Shetland witch.
Then Atropos arrives, to look for her shears that she sent into hiding to the ends of the earth thousands of years ago. She has to protect them from Zeus.
How will the witches protect the islands from a Fate and Zeus?
How will Hazel learn how to do magic again?
How will she cope with Tornost, a malignant trow with a penchant for eighteenth-century manners?
The Shetland Witch is a novel about magic, sisterhood and learning to be human. Available in paperback, hardback and as an ebook.
Stories from The Shetland Witch: In Achaea & Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa by Kate Macdonald
In The Shetland Witch, trow Tornost is a thorn in the side of the modern-day Shetland witches, and he is deeply suspicious of Atropos, the Fate from another time and place. In these two novellas the world of The Shetland Witch is unfolded to tell more stories.
In In Achaea, learn more about how Atropos came to Shetland and why the shears were there at all.
In Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa hear how the Haa was built in the early nineteenth century, and why Mrs Sinclair was sent to Pompeii under duress by the mysterious Lady Brae.
Available in paperback, hardback and as an ebook.
Several Worlds: A Middleoak Anthology by Kate Macdonald (Editor)
Several Worlds is an anthology of nineteen SFF stories from the Middleoak writing group, based in the UK.
David Allan
Kate Macdonald
Susan Oke
Sandra Unerman
AD Watts
These worlds are broad and hold multitudes: furry skins, a sea-going clan, an android executioner, ancient gods resisting change, a princess who cannot laugh, an interloper on an excavation, a cursed temple, the emptiness at the heart of a city, a dragon laying eggs, a train found in the desert, angels seeking revenge, a book that cannot be finished … and that’s not all. This collection brings together treasures published in the past and new work, and will take you on a journey from the nearly real to speculation and the fantastical.
Choose your world.
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