A Folk Tale of Brann the Skekler
Long ago, when the nights in Shetland stretched like long black ribbons across the sea, there lived a young crofter named Brann. He was quiet as a mouse in summer, but when winter came, he became something else entirely—something woven from straw, shadow, and old magic.
Brann was the last in his family to keep the ancient craft of skekling. Each year, as the first frost silvered the heather, he gathered straw from his own fields and wove it into a tall, sharp hat and a cloak that rustled like whispering ghosts. When he put it on, he was no longer Brann. He was the Skekler of Winter Gleam, guardian of hearth‑fires and bringer of returning light.
But one year, the winter came early and hard. The wind howled like a hungry beast, and the sea battered the cliffs until even the bravest fishermen stayed ashore. People whispered that the sun itself had grown weary and might not return.
On the longest night, Brann donned his skekler garb and stepped into the storm. He carried a wooden stave carved with runes older than memory. As he walked from croft to croft, he banged the stave on the frozen ground, calling out in the strange, otherworldly cries of the skeklers before him.
At each house, he danced around the fire, straw swirling, sparks rising like tiny stars. Children hid behind their mothers, half‑afraid, half‑delighted. The old folk nodded knowingly, for they remembered the power of such rites.
But when Brann reached the last croft—the lonely one perched above the cliffs—he found the hearth cold and the door hanging open. Inside sat an old woman, shivering, her firewood gone and her hope nearly spent.
Without a word—Skeklers never spoke—Brann knelt and struck his stave three times upon the hearthstone. The sound echoed like thunder in a cavern. Then he fed the fire with straw from his own cloak. It caught at once, burning bright but never consuming the straw fully, as though the flame itself honoured the gift.
The old woman warmed her hands, colour returning to her cheeks. She looked up to thank him, but Brann was already gone, leaving only a faint trail of straw and a warm, steady blaze behind.
That night, the storm eased. By dawn, a pale sun pushed through the clouds, weak but determined. The people said it was Brann’s doing—that the Skekler of Winter Gleam had coaxed the sun back from the edge of the world.
And though Brann never claimed the tale as his own, each winter thereafter, a small bundle of straw was found on every doorstep, tied with a bit of red thread. A quiet reminder that even in the darkest season, someone walked the night to keep the light alive.