Celebrating Valda Grieve this International Women’s Day

Later this month, Shetland Museum and Archives will open ‘Outwith: Valda, MacDiarmid and Whalsay’, a new exhibition exploring the years poet Hugh MacDiarmid and his wife Valda spent living in Whalsay, and how island life shaped their lives and work.

Hugh MacDiarmid (pen name of Christopher Grieve) spent nine highly creative years in Whalsay, but it was Valda’s strength, resilience and independence that helped sustain the family.

This International Women’s Day, we celebrate Valda Grieve.

Valda was an incomer to Whalsay in 1933, when she moved there with her young son Michael to join her husband. Born in Cornwall in 1906, she made the long journey to Shetland where she stayed with her family between 1933 and 1942. Valda was incredibly resourceful and adapted to Shetland life in order to survive years of poverty and illness. Her story not only sheds light on some of the most difficult years of her and her family’s lives, but it also reveals a vulnerability that is akin to the experience of all Shetland women at the time.

Valda’s personal letters, knitting jotters, replicas of her patterns, personal items and family photographs will be on display from 28 March in our landmark exhibition with National Library of Scotland, ‘Outwith: Valda, MacDiarmid and Whalsay’.

Photo of Valda with her son Michael in Whalsay
©️ Grieve Estate