Shetland Swine Returns to the Islands
The Shetland pony and Shetland sheepdog are famous around the world, but whatever happened to Shetland’s indigenous pig? Now, thanks to painstaking research at the Shetland Museum and Archives and award-winning taxidermy skills, the extinct Shetland pig will be seen again for the first time in more than 100 years.
On display at the new Shetland Museum and Archives when it opens in May 2007, a reconstructed model of the swine will allow visitors to see what the beast would have looked like when it existed on the islands. The model has just arrived at the museum where it will wait patiently in storage until its place is ready in the displays.
For thousands of years the pig was a familiar sight on Shetland’s landscape. A fierce beast given to attacking lambs, it was kept domestically until its extinction in the 19th Century, when landowners forced islanders to keep fewer swine, and the breed died out. The Shetland pig, or grice as it was called, is the only breed indigenous to the islands that is now extinct, and was similar to some breeds in Scandinavia and Britain. It was as high as a large dog and covered with long stiff bristles over a fleece of coarse wool.
No photographic evidence of the animal exists. In order to reconstruct it, Dr Ian Tait, Curator of Collections at Shetland Museum, trawled through published sources to find various descriptions, and investigated artefact and archaeological findings, whilst his colleague Angus Johnson, Archives Assistant at Shetland Archives, researched 18th century documents. This was put together into a detailed description of what the pig looked like.
The job of bringing the pig ‘back to life’ was then handed to award-winning taxidermist, David Hollingworth. An expert in replicating extinct animals, David used Dr Tait’s findings to replicate the animal. They decided to use an immature wild boar, adding tusks and a ridge of four inch long black hairs down the animal’s back.
Dr Ian Tait, says: “No-one alive today has seen a Shetland grice, so making this reconstruction relied on months of research - finding out how large the animal was and what colour and shape it was. We couldn’t have finished the project without the specialist expertise from David Hollingworth, and the result has been well worth all the hard work. We are confident that the reconstruction is an excellent interpretation of the pig breed that lived in Shetland for many centuries, and we’re delighted that visitors to the museum will now be able to see for themselves an animal that had such a large part in Shetland’s farming history.”
The Shetland grice will be seen on display in the reconstructed house interior at the new Shetland Museum and Archives, showing how people lived with their animals in the 18th century.