It was small, tough and hairy, a pig that could fend for itself on the windswept hills of Shetland, the most northerly outpost of the British Isles. For centuries, Shetland’s native swine survived on roots, worms and ground-nesting birds. The islanders depended on it for meat and much else, yet they never learned to love it. It was an ugly little monster that damaged their meagre crops and killed their newborn lambs – but it was the only pig they had. Then suddenly it vanished. A century after its extinction, the Shetland pig has returned, reconstructed from travellers’ tales with the help of a small wild boar, a warthog and a pair of false teeth.
WHEN the Shetland pig went extinct at the end of the 19th century, it didn’t just die out – it left almost no trace of its existence. No one had drawn or painted it. No visiting photographer thought it picturesque enough to warrant a portrait. After a while, not even its old bones remained: the acid waters of Shetland’s peaty soil destroyed even these last vestiges of a beast that had once been ubiquitous.
So when Ian Tait, curator at the new Shetland Museum, decided to recreate a traditional island home – including the animals that shared it – he found he had a mystery to solve. From medieval times to the end of the 18th century, Shetlanders had lived off what the sea and land provided: they fished for coalfish and pollock, dug peat for fuel, cultivated small plots, and kept a few animals for meat, wool and milk. These livestock belonged to primitive breeds, hardly different from their wild ancestors, except that they had grown adapted to harsh island life. Small and hardy, they could withstand the cold, wet and fierce winds that battered the treeless isles, subsisting on a diet of coarse native grasses, wild roots and what little else nature offered. What puzzled Tait was that while the distinctive variously coloured cows and sheep and pint-sized ponies survive today, the native swine, or grice, had completely vanished. Why?
Advertisement
For a year, Tait and archives assistant Angus Johnson rooted through old books and documents looking for clues. Fortunately, a few visitors to the islands had found the grice peculiar enough to mention in accounts of their travels. The swine also made regular appearances in local court reports: its bad behaviour made it the subject of numerous grievances and a string of edicts designed to curb its antisocial activities.
Scottish landowner Arthur Edmonston recorded his observations in 1809: “They are of a small size and a dusky brown colour… Their bodies are covered with a profusion of long, thick bristles, which give them a singular appearance.” In 1822, geologist Samuel Hibbert wrote his account of the islands’ “curious features”, one of which was the “revolting” Shetland swine that roamed uncontrolled over the common lands. “He is a little ugly brindled monster, the very epitome of the wild boar, yet not much larger than an English terrier…” This miniature monster had a “nose remarkably strong, sharp pointed ears, and a back greatly arched, from which long, stiff bristles stand erect.” They could be a dunnish-white, brown or black, and despite being so small had tusks as long and unattractively yellowed as a wild boar’s.
The grice was indispensable. As Edmonston observed, it was “the only species of animal food which the poorer classes of people can afford to bring up for their own consumption”. And although the pig was small and scrawny, its meat was “sufficiently sweet and delicate, and when cured forms excellent hams”, according to Hibbert.
“The meat was sweet and when cured formed excellent hams”
Living a subsistence lifestyle, people had a use for most of the rest of a grice too. They made footballs from their bladders, and windowpanes from intestinal membranes, scraping them clean and stretching them over a frame of driftwood until they were thin enough to let in light. The grice’s long, strong bristles made good thread for sewing leather, and were especially sought-after for making ropes, particularly by the climbers who scaled the cliffs each summer in search of seabird eggs and chicks.
Shetland swine were also a nuisance, however. “The swine are too often suffered to roam abroad, and to root up turnips, potatoes, corn and other herbage,” wrote Hibbert. They hollowed out “deep furrows and trenches in the best pastures” and attacked poultry. Farmers tried to protect their crops by building dykes and banishing the pigs to the hillsides for the summer. But there were too many pigs and they were speedy and athletic: it was a constant struggle to keep them away. On the hills too the swine did their worst, destroying the nests of plovers and curlews and killing and eating newborn lambs.
People constantly grumbled about their neighbours’ grice, and although the courts could confiscate troublesome pigs and impose hefty fines on their owners, few took much notice, says Tait. The visiting worthies who arrived in the early 19th century intent on improving the islands’ agriculture had as little effect. On the mainland the campaign to improve livestock had begun a century earlier and had transformed agricultural production. Now, the improvers had reached Shetland, where they exhorted the natives to trade in traditional breeds for more productive ones.
There were a few attempts: but “improved” sheep couldn’t survive the winter cold, while “better” breeds of cow needed better grazing than subsistence farmers could provide. The main obstacle to improvement, however, was poverty. “Islanders didn’t have the wherewithal to buy in new breeds,” says Tait. “So while the improvers wrote about what they should do, it didn’t help and they didn’t do it.” At least, not for many more decades.
In the second half of the 19th century, the islands saw dramatic changes that eventually did for the pig. After so long following the age-old island traditions, Shetlanders suddenly became more aspirational, and began to look to the mainland for guidance, says Tait. “One of the things that rankled most was how almost every visitor tut-tutted about the way they kept cows and pigs in their homes. They wanted to improve.”
At the same time landowners realised they could earn more from their land if they made some of the suggested improvements. A few turfed off their tenants and stocked the land with sheep. More enlightened owners realised that if they could persuade their tenants to improve the productivity of their land and livestock, they could charge higher rents. “Landowners leant on their tenants to keep fewer grice, but even they found it hard-going,” says Tait.
Finally, the passing of the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act in 1886 introduced rent controls and other restraints on unscrupulous landowners. This new security gave Shetlanders an incentive to improve. At the same time, a boom in the herring fishery brought an injection of cash to the islands. At last people could afford to import better breeds of animal. The number of grice plummeted. Where Shetlanders had once had herds of small, scrawny pigs, they now bought a piglet or two from the mainland and fattened them up in purpose-built sties. There was more meat on one huge pink pig than half a dozen native grice. By the turn of the 20th century, the Shetland swine had gone.
Back then, no one had mourned the passing of the pig that had ravaged their fields and killed their lambs. Yet the animal was a fundamental part of the islands’ history and Tait wanted one for the museum. He turned to David Hollingworth, an award-winning taxidermist based in the Pennine town of Glossop. Without a specimen, Hollingworth would have to create one from scratch.
Lacking any pictures, Hollingworth had to work from the old descriptions Tait had dug up. He started with a young wild boar. “It was the right weight but it had to be stockier, with an arched back and a stronger snout.” After removing the hide, he sculpted a new pig from the bones, wire and modelling clay. From this he made a mould and pumped it full of high-density expanded foam.
With the hide stretched over the foam pig, all that was left was to add the finishing touches. Young boars don’t have tusks, so Hollingworth cast a pair in dental acrylic and stained them a suitably horrible yellow. Next came the mane of stiff bristles that ran from the nape to the middle of the back. “I used the long hairs from a warthog, which are the right length and colour.” Last but not least came the tail. “The grice didn’t have a curly tail like a pig or a straight one like a boar. It had a tail with a bend in it,” says Hollingworth.
Tait is more than happy with the result. “It may not be the real thing,” he says, “but it evokes the animal very well. I think it’s as close as we are ever likely to get.”
