Folk of the Famine explores the potato famine which affected Shetland for several years from 1846, and the relief that was organised to address it. The website focuses on the people and communities affected by the crisis, drawing on meal roads worklists, hosiery returns, letters, historical maps and other archive material. The site is aimed at local historians and researchers, including descendants of relief recipients and relief administrators.

How to use this site

• Browse by category (workers, roads, events etc)
• Follow linked narratives - for example, move from a worker to a road they worked on, then to an event associated with that road, and so on
• Sources for the documents and further information

There is also a Search function, but this will not return many results at the moment.  More information and records are being added regularly, so if you don't find the record you are looking for this time, it may be available on a later visit.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements and thanks to Shetland Museum & Archives, Tony Gott and Archaeology Shetland.  Thanks to Janet Smith for sharing photographs.

Folk of the Famine. Joan Fraser, 2026.
Produced as part of the Bagamel Meal Roads Art Project.

This site is built using Omeka S, an open-source platform for creating and linking digital material.