Playing the indigenous card? The Shetland and Orkney Udal Law group and indigenous rights

Abstract

The term ‘indigenous peoples’ generally refers to the original inhabitants of areas of the world colonized by Europeans. Relatively few ethnic minorities in Europe have been recognized as indigenous. A consequence of globalization is that knowledge of rights gained by indigenous groups in different parts of the world has led to explicit or implicit claims for indigenous status by organized groups within some European ethnic or regional minorities. An example from the Northern Isles of Scotland is the Shetland and Orkney Udal Law group (SOUL), which includes on its website links to legal decisions supporting indigenous rights in Canada and Australia. SOUL argues for greater local autonomy regarding the use of resources. The islands were inhabited by Norse settlers from Scandinavia from the 9th century AD and came under Scottish rule in the 1460s. Certain elements of Norse law related to land tenure, in particular foreshore rights, have survived to the present as a form of customary law referred to as udal law. Udal law has been the subject of court cases in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has been presented as symbolizing Orkney and Shetland identity, and brought into public debates on matters of concern to Orcadians and Shetlanders. Udal law is invoked to support a claim for local control over the surrounding sea and seabed, important for fishing, salmon-farming and oil exploitation. These issues are examined in relation to definitions of indigenous peoples applied by the United Nations, International Labour Organisation, and World Bank.