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Short abstract:

This paper explores how Shetland sheep shape and are shaped by hill landscapes as they graze without human shepherding. Moving beyond pervasive views of sheep as habitat destroyers, I utilize ethnographic research with farmers and sheep to understand the complexities of their presence on the hill.

Long abstract:

In Shetland, two sheep populations inhabit two distinct landscapes: the free-roaming Shetland sheep on rough hills, and cross-breeds in managed fenced fields. The diverging management for and by the sheep creates two distinct landscapes. I focus on hill sheep since, unlike their closely tended counterparts, these sheep graze extensive areas, with human handling limited to two days in summer and autumn.

Hill sheep have become the focus of British environmentalists’ campaigns, framing sheep as destructive to bird habitats and the restoration of peatlands for carbon capture. Alongside sheep’s role in the nineteenth-century clearances, their role as a destructive actor, and creators of monotone landscapes, seems set in stone.

Working alongside those that still ‘put sheep to the hill’ in Shetland, sheep emerge as complex actors, shaping landscapes in more than habitat-destroying ways. They are hefted, grazing the area where they were born and raised, as the boundaries of their grazing patch are passed on from ewes to their lambs. Furthermore, sheep’s bodies transform the landscape not merely through eating, but also through walking, as they create and follow paths indented in the shrub. These paths in the landscape facilitate navigation for humans and sheep when traversing their hills.

In light of the theme of making and doing transformations, I ask what it means to ‘put sheep to the hill’ in Shetland in the face of current tensions? And how can arts of noticing landscapes allow us to read sheep’s complex presence in the hills beyond narratives of destruction?