J. J. Haldane Burgess
JAMES JOHN HALDANE BURGESS was born in Lerwick in 1862. In his last year of study for a Master’s degree in Arts at the University of Edinburgh he lost his sight, and completed his final exams orally. Back in Shetland thereafter, he published a significant volume of poetry in Shetlandic, the classic Rasmie’s Büddie, as well as other poems, three novels, and occasional prose pieces. He was a self-taught scholar of Norwegian and a pioneer investigator of Shetland’s Norn variant, as well as a keen exponent of the Norse influence on Shetland’s culture, including assisting with promoting the Up Helly Aa fire festival. He died in 1927 at the age of 64.
