The Shetland Islands, with their rich marine waters, are an excellent place to savour good seafood cooking - the isles are justly famed for the delicious smoked salmon and trout  you can get. Equally well-known are the meats- especially lamb- and the breads and cakes, which are specialties of the Shetlands. Although there are few eateries that serve completely `authentic’  cuisine, many cafés and restaurants, big and small, serve local specialties like saucermeat (sausage meat shaped into patties), `reestit’ mutton (smoked, salted and dried meat), `tattie’ soup, bannocks and `big biscuits’. Local pubs too are a good place to get a taste of the native food, and of course, beer.

If you start to crave other cuisines, the Shetlands have the solution to that too. Among the international cuisines available in restaurants are Indian, Chinese, Malay, Korean and Norwegian, with Norwegian food being fairly popular amongst the natives.

Although the Shetlands have their fair share of pubs and dance clubs, perhaps the best form of entertainment on the islands is the famous local fiddling- truly excellent! Fiddling hasn’t been a part of the Shetlands’ traditions for very long; musicians from Northern Europe first brought their musical instruments to the isles in the early 20th century, but since then, there’s been a lot of development. Music has diversified, with rock and jazz being added to the repertoire of many fiddlers. The Shetlands have a number of fiddling groups that perform regularly at venues not just within the islands, but also abroad.

To promote folk music (particularly fiddling!), annual festivals are held, of which the most important are the Shetland Folk Festival (April), and the Fiddle and Accordion festival (October). They’re both extremely entertaining and lively festivals, with lots of dancing, music and good fun. 

Another interesting celebration, and worth watching, is the annual festival of Up Helly Aa, which celebrates the Norse ancestry of the locals. It’s marked by a parade which includes a longboat (dragged through the streets of Lerwick and ceremonially burnt), a thousand torch-carrying revellers, and men in full Viking dress.

The Shetlands also have a number of museums and galleries, so if you’re looking for entertainment of a quieter kind, that too is available.