Shetland Islands

Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated in the Northern Atlantic, between Great Britain, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost part of Scotland and of the wider United Kingdom. The islands lie about 80 km to the northeast of Orkney, 170 km from mainland Scotland and 300 km west of Norway. They form part of the border between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. Their total area is 1,466 km², and the population totalled 22,920 in 2019. The islands comprise the Shetland constituency of the Scottish Parliament. The local authority, the Shetland Islands Council, is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. The islands' administrative centre and only burgh is Lerwick, which has been the capital of Shetland since 1708, before which time the capital was Scalloway.