David Hunter Sandison, Davy, was a quiet, charming individual; a shopkeeper by trade, and a most remarkable writer, poet and playwright — he wrote some of the best sketches that have ever been penned in the Shetland dialect.
D. H. Sandison was born at the Haa o Catfirth on the 31st October 1893, he died in the same house on the 22nd November 1956. He worked for a while in a shop in Lerwick, but soon returned to his native Nesting to work in the local shop, where he remained until six months before his death when ill health forced him to retire. He served in the Scots Guards during World War One, returning home once demobilised. He also served in the Home Guard during WWII. He never married, living at the Friester shop during the week and at the Haa with his sister Mary, who never married either.
It was through his literary efforts that he attained notability. He began with writing short sketches for local production, but went on to write articles for the local press, becoming a frequent contributor to The Shetland Times. He also wrote two serious, full-length plays which were not in dialect. One of these was performed to a most distinguished audience during the Viking Congress in 1950 — it dealt with the conversion to Christianity of the Norsemen in Shetland, and was based on the drowning of Geirhilda in the loch which came to be known as Girlsta Loch. The other dealt with laird oppression of crofters in the days before the crofting laws, and was produced at a local drama festival. Sadly we don't have copies of those plays, but we are very keen to find them — so if you have copies, please get in touch.
We do have many of his other sketches, poems and stories. Two of his articles are Vale o Catfirth and Galemath, there is a third that we have, Vale of Weisdale, but that one is yet to be transcribed... We'll add it once we have it ready. We have eleven of his sketches, plus some fragments of another; we might well try to get them published and/or performed in the future — proceeds to support the Nesting Local History Group. For now here's half a sketch; it needs more work, as they all do, to regularise spelling and grammar (we have versions typed by different people), and formatting (we run text recognition on them — then try to deal with the ensuing chaos!) We're keen to find more of his sketches — please contact us if you have any.
