Viking Boys

Jessie Margaret nee Edmondston Saxby (1842-1940), was born into a prominent family in Shetland, which had sprung from one of the Scottish ministers who acquired land in the islands in the 16th century, one Andrew, of Crail in Fife. Jessie married Henry Saxby, a doctor and a naturalist, at the age of seventeen, and lived with him at Halligarth and later at Ernesdaal in Baltasound. The family moved to Inverary in Argyllshire in 1871, but Henry was already ill and Jessie was widowed in the summer of 1873, just two days after the birth of her sixth child. She moved to Edinburgh, where she was president of the Orkney and Shetland Association, and there became a professional writer, supporting her family by means of a huge output of literary works, ranging from poems and novels to journalism, articles and pamphlets. She was a mentor to the brilliant young Unst poet, Basil R Anderson, who died tragically young, and edited a volume of his work posthumously.