Notice of a Charter of Confirmation by King Frederick the Third of Denmark and Norway (1662), and other Documents in the Norse Language relating to Shetland

The documents now submitted, seven in number, range in date from the middle of the sixteenth to the early years of the seventeenth century; one, dated in 1607, being the latest known instrument of any kind framed in Shetland or Orkney in the old language of the North. The other deeds in Norse, formerly known as preserved in the Islands, are only nine in number, so far as I am aware. Of the multitude, therefore, of such documents which must have been produced in the Islands in early times, only sixteen appear to have come down to us, all of these relating to Shetland except one (Kaup-bref, 1552), which records a sale of land in Papa Westray in Orkney. 1 Besides these, however, a number of other documents in Norse, of various kinds, having reference to the islands, are preserved abroad, either in the original, or as authenticated copies; and are to be found in the Diplomatarium Norvegicum, the great Norwegian collection, and a few also in the Diplomatarium Islandicum, published by the Icelandic Literary Society, Copenhagen. Of the documents now before us, one (the Eoyal Charter) is drawn and executed in Denmark, and three in Norway; the others are apparently native Shetland papers

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