Giant of Petta Water

Petta Water, a small loch in the Shetland mainland, takes its name from the word for pit or hollow — and local tradition explains the hollow by a giant. The giant lived near the water and was plagued by trows, the mischievous underground spirits particular to Shetland and Orkney. After suffering their torments for too long, he resolved to carry them off and throw them into the sea.

He gathered them into a kishie — the traditional Shetland basket carried on the back — and set off. But the trows were too many or too heavy, and the kishie broke. The scattered trows ran back to their underground haunts across the island. The giant knelt in frustration, and the hollow his knee pressed into the ground became Kneefell. The pit his foot made, or the basin of his footprint, became Petta Water.

The legend belongs to a pattern common across Orkney and Shetland of landscape features explained by the actions of giants, trows, and other supernatural beings — a geography of folklore that reads every unusual hill, loch, or hollow as the trace of something that happened before memory. It also reflects the distinctive Shetland and Orkney tradition of trows as a constant, domestic, almost neighbourly supernatural presence rather than the dramatic terrors of the Highland tradition.