Mainland, Shetland Explained

Map:	Shetland Mainland locator.svg
Official Name:	Mainland
Coordinates:	60.3°N -1.3°W
Gridreference:	HU414553
Celtic Name:	Mòr-thìr
Norse Name:	Megenland
Meaning Of Name:	Old Norse for 'mainland'
Area:	^[1]
Area Rank:	3
Population:	18,765
Population Rank:	2
Population Density:	19.41 people/km^2
Main Settlement:	Lerwick
Island Group:	Shetland
Local Authority:	Shetland Islands

The Mainland is the main island of Shetland, Scotland. The island contains Shetland's only burgh, Lerwick, and is the centre of Shetland's ferry and air connections.

Geography

It has an area of, making it the third-largest Scottish island and the fifth largest of the British Isles after Great Britain, Ireland, Lewis and Harris and Skye. Mainland is the second most populous of the Scottish islands (only surpassed by Lewis and Harris), and had 18,765 residents in 2011 compared to 17,550 in 2001.^[2]

The mainland can be broadly divided into four sections:

• The long southern peninsula, south of Lerwick, has a mixture of moorland and farmland and contains many important archaeological sites.
  • Bigton, Cunningsburgh, Sandwick,^[3] Scalloway, and Sumburgh
• The Central Mainland has more farmland and some woodland plantations.
• The West Mainland
  • Aith, Walls, and Sandness
• The North Mainland – in particular the large Northmavine peninsula, connected to Mainland by a narrow isthmus at Mavis Grind – is wild, with much moorland and coastal cliffs. The North Mainland contains Sullom Voe, the location of an oil terminal providing an important source of employment for islanders.
  • Brae, North Roe, and Vidlin

See also

• List of islands of Scotland
• List of islands of the British Isles
• Mainland, Orkney

Notes and References

1. Haswell-Smith (2004) p. 406
2. General Register Office for Scotland (28 November 2003) Occasional Paper No 10: Statistics for Inhabited Islands . Retrieved 9 July 2007.
3. Web site: Shorewatch . 3 June 2008 . 3 March 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160303175310/http://www.shorewatch.co.uk/unst/projectinfo.html . dead .