Miriam Sentler, who is in the process of finishing her PhD in Petroculture Studies at the University of Oslo, visited the UHI Archaeology Institute during an EARTH Scholarship in April and May 2025 and has written about the experience:
During my dissertation project, I investigate how Shetlanders encountered different forms of energy throughout history, utilising their creative island culture to “translate” oil, wind, peat, and other energy industries operating in the context of the North Sea and Northern Atlantic.
My interest in the visualisation of energy transitions in coastal communities brought me in contact with Antonia Thomas and the TRANSECTS team, and in April and May 2025, I was lucky to spend a fieldwork period in the Orkney Islands.
The research stay was supported and funded by the EARTH scholarship, organised by the Scottish Graduate School for the Humanities (SGSAH) and funded by the British Research Council. It helped me to map the broader context of energy production happening around Shetland and brought me in contact with other researchers in the field of Energy Humanities, different sites of energy production in the North Sea and Northern Atlantic, and alternative industrial histories of oil, wind, tidal, and peat that have shaped the neighbouring islands of Shetland.
During my stay, the TRANSECTS team and I jointly visited material remnants of energy production sites in Orkney during a couple of “energy tours”. Most of the energy industry sites visited were just a few decades old, yet already dismantled and falling apart.
Working with archaeologists during this part of my fieldwork made me realise what it means to engage with fairly recent energy history from a humanities-centered perspective, and that, even though material remnants of energy industries can only be fifty years old, they can already be overgrown and forgotten by the local community.
Seeing this process of industrial decay in the lively context of Orkney’s energy landscapes made me realise that the archiving of energy transitions is an overlooked necessity in today’s society. Too often, we forget to take note of how industries have shaped communities and environments, as we rush to ‘bury’ past industries in the quest for ever-greener, ever-more efficient, and ever-more promising energy futures.
As I am originally from Limburg, a former coal-mining area stretching the borders of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, I have experienced firsthand what it can do to a community when the industries that shaped it are dismantled too quickly. An old mineworker once told me how, when the mine tunnels were closed and the mine building was torn down, the social cohesion in the town-community quickly evaporated.
While the old mining centres became overgrown and forgotten, local government officials did their best to build new town centres, yet the affected communities often never recovered economically and socially. Some Belgian towns saw what happened over the border and decided to redevelop the industrial buildings into cultural centres — a decision that kept the memories of the industry alive and tangible in the community.
Nowadays, the Belgian ex-mining towns, with their old infrastructure and town centres still intact, are successful examples of cultural transformation, while many other places lost their industrial ‘heart’ and turned from some of the richest economic centres in the nation to the poorest.
The grassroots way in which the community of Flotta archives its oil-related past is a successful example of industrial preservation, and it was truly inspiring to see the museum and archives held and governed by some enthusiastic members of the community. Also, the energy exhibition at Stromness Museum forms a good example of how a community can keep the memory of its industrial past alive, and I saw some amazing artefacts here — like a wooden wind turbine — that deepened my understanding of how energy can be archived through objects and material artifacts in general.
Lastly, I also got a more sensory understanding of energy as a research material in Orkney, as I cut, smelled, and felt peat during a visit to the Kirbuster Farm Museum and saw a tidal energy generator for the first time during a boat trip to Flotta.
Taken together, my experiences in Orkney connected to past experiences from my childhood growing up in an ex-mining town in meaningful ways and, by doing so, reinforced my attention for the need to approach energy transitions through community archives.
By attending to the material, sensory, and communal dimensions of energy histories, my future research will subsequently seek to highlight what is at risk of being forgotten in the shift toward green and future energy systems.
