Gordon Donaldson

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Gordon Donaldson, Shetland author, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, was born in that city in 1913. His grandfather was George Donaldson (b.1850), a blacksmith of Hamnavoe, South Yell, who left the isles sometime before 1881 when he is recorded living at 18 Leven Street, Edinburgh. But the Shetland family connection was preserved and Gordon Donaldson grew up visiting the islands, which he continued to do throughout his life, and which he regarded as home.

Donaldson became one of the great Scottish historians of his age and published many books, some general studies and some highly specialized. Titles of specific interest to Shetlopedians are:

Court Book of Shetland, 1602-1604, which he edited with introduction, glossary and index, 1954

Shetland Life under Earl Patrick, 1958

Northwards by Sea, 1966, an account of all the steamers and motor vessels which have plied to Caithness, Orkney and Shetland since the 1830s

A Northern Commonwealth: Scotland and Norway, 1990

Court Book of Shetland, 1615-1629, 1991

Isles of Home : seventy years of Shetland, 1994 , his memoirs

Gordon Donaldson died in March 1993.