Christina Jamieson

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Christina (Tina) Jamieson, a poet, essayist, folklorist, political activist in women's suffrage, was born on 30th June 1864 at Cruisdale, Sandness, the second of nine children. Her parents were the Sandness schoolmaster and scholar, Robert Jamieson (1827-1899), and his wife Barbara Laing, the daughter of Robert Laing, schoolmaster in Gulberwick and tutor to James Stout Angus amongst many others. Robert Jamieson had, largely by his own efforts, raised the funds by public subscription to erect the new school at Cruisdale in Sandness.

A number of Christina’s siblings were to become eminent in their fields: Frank, as Chief Inspector of Schools for Scotland; John, as professor of Anatomy and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Leeds; Edward (E. B. Jamieson), demonstrator and lecturer in Anatomy at Edinburgh; and James Peter Speid Jamieson, as a doctor, botanist and politician, in Nelson, New Zealand.

Christina stayed with her parents and her invalid sister Ann, and, after her father's death in 1899, left Sandness to move with the remainder of the family to Twageos House in Lerwick. There she was a well-known figure, respected as a poet and expert on Shetland’s history and folklore. She contributed stories and articles about Shetland to the Scotsman. Jamieson was a founder-member of the Shetland Folklore society in the 1920s. Along with E. S. Reid Tait, and with help from her nephew, the young Communist Bertie Jamieson, she collected material for and edited several volumes of The Hjaltland Miscellany.

In her seventies Tina emigrated, in 1937, to join her brother James in New Zealand, where she lived till her death in 1942.

External Links

The Shetland Museum has a number of photographs of the folk dance troupe Tina Jamieson was involved in, and there is a group photo of the Jamieson family in the 1920s.