r/Glasgow Tools

The best part is the 'annexation' is a lot more seedy than that suggests

King Christian of Denmark was basically skint what with the Black Plague and the like, and couldn't afford his wedding dowry, so he pawned Orkney and Shetland to James III of Scotland in 1468 in its place, planning to pay it off later

However, Christian didn't really own Shetland under the way the Norse legal system worked, and it wasn't really his to pawn, so when the Norwegian nobles who *did* own Shetland (and had spilt quite some volume of blood to own it) found out about this, they were not surprisingly a bit pissed and made multiple petitions to James and his descendants over the coming 2 centuries to have it back as the rightful owners

The Stewarts successfully held the claim to Shetland by, basically, ghosting them, and in particular paying off the (Norwegian) Earl of Caithness by giving him a chunk of Fife to make up for it, at which point they claimed Orkney and Shetland as forfeit and officially part of Scotland. Previously that kind of brazen attitude might have meant war, but the Norse were too weak at that point in time to do much about it

Which reminds me, I must go and play some more Crusader Kings, that whole era of history is amazing