JUST over four months from now, the sports pages will be reporting on the excitement of the Island Games from Scotland's Shetland Islands. That dateline will be almost as interesting and unique as the talented participants ? including more than 100 athletes from Bermuda ? who will converge there from 24 different island nations.

Neither the Shetlands nor their distant neighbouring Orkneys are exactly household words. And it's not likely that the average travel agency is historically as inundated with inquiries about them as Glasgow, Edinburgh or Inverness. So it seemed an appropriate time to write about them.

Those fabled islands, with their ancient Viking connections, had early on attracted this traveller's curiosity and interest far more than Scotland's major cities. As someone with a passion for seeking out remote destinations, those islands were my next target after a first exploration of the Outer Hebrides in 1968.

A subsequent return showed much has happened in the North Sea since that first trip. Discovery of oil brought more prosperity, improved connections and accommodations. But the landscape and character that makes these islands so distinctive remains unchanged.

Two factors are certain to come as an immediate surprise. One is an almost total lack of trees . . . Bermudians used to a lush semi-tropical vegetation may at first feel this setting bleak. But further exploration will reveal a different kind of beauty, a dramatically wild seascape with a restless coastline swirling against often sheer, weirdly formed rock cliffs.

It's no exaggeration to say there's also history here unlike any other in the world and a collection of ruins associated with that storied past that will have those interested scrambling across moors and headlands.

The other unique factor, one the athletes will have more trouble getting used to, is a day that never seems to end. The game dates coincide with some of the longest days of the year and it's something difficult to explain until experienced.

Although I'd been to Alaska and experienced the "land of midnight sun", and other such places in my youth, none seemed to have the same impact as summer visits to Scotland. On Shetland, you're on the same parallel as the southern tip of Greenland, Canada's Hudson Bay, Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, Siberia, Oslo, Norway and St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1967 I sat transfixed one July night watching fishermen from the picture window of my Inverness hotel room. Knee deep in the River Ness, they were obviously enjoying themselves. It was hard to believe it was long after midnight, yet bright as noon.

that was nothing compared to a few summers later even farther north in Mallaig overnighting before catching the morning ferry to the island of Skye. No matter how the heavy drapes were arranged, annoying light seemed to invade the room and it became a night-long obsession peering out to see if there was any sign of approaching darkness. There wasn't.

By the time the first trip to Lerwick, Shetland occurred in 1970, night seemed even brighter because it was still farther north. I remember walking along the pier one evening after a very late dinner marvelling at the level of activity.

"How does anyone ever get children to go to bed at this time of year?" I asked. It was 2 a.m. and it was as active as early afternoon. So be prepared. Take sleep eye masks (the kind they used to hand out on Atlantic flights), earplugs and be rested before arrival.

The athletes and accompanying family will have the benefit of special planning. I'd arrived . . . just barely . . . from Aberdeen accompanied by a member of the British Tourist Association's press department. They'd found most journalists mainly interested in big cities, so when my enthusiasm for more obscure locations became obvious, they were eager to guide me there.

In fact, they admitted no one in the department had actually been there themselves, so guiding me was a sort of familiarisation trip for them. Tourism to such off-trail sites was very much in its infancy then, mostly limited to mainland Scots.

Weather can be temperamental, as all islanders know, often depending on the sea's mood. And one is not too far below the Arctic Circle here. Close to landing, the pilot had regretfully announced we'd be forced to turn back because conditions were too overcast and dangerous to land. What a bitter disappointment after coming so far.

Then suddenly clouds cleared momentarily, land was visible and we made a safe landing. But his caution was understandable . . . it was a very short runway with a hill obstructing one end. There was absolutely no room for error.

But please, don't let any of the above discourage you from travelling there. This traveller would happily return yet again and has been looking at cruise itineraries that include those islands . . . or possibly a detour there from the Highlands.

Although what islanders call "summer dim" takes some getting used to, there's the added bonus of more time for sightseeing. Those who travel anywhere in autumn or winter know what I mean. Days are so short, possibilities for exploring are much more limited and time seems to evaporate.

Anyone vacationing in summer state-side or in Europe know how much more they're able to do when it's still light at nearly 10 p.m. in northern areas of those regions.

What to do here? A bit of history is needed to set the stage for why both Shetland and Orkney are very different than any place you've visited . . . also very different from each other.

Although both are often mentioned together as though twins, the 100 islands that make up Shetland are spread out over 70 miles. Only 20 of them are inhabited and you'll notice they usually appear in a separate box set off on a far corner atop Scotland's map. That's because they are 112 miles offshore stretching up towards Norway.

You'll notice I haven't called it Scotland's mainland for the simple reason it's never referred to that way. For islanders, the "mainland" is their own major island, centre of their chain. In Shetland, it would be the one containing Lerwick.

Someone who plans to go there from one of the other islands would say: "I'm going to the mainland." If they're going to Scotland's mainland, they say: "I'm going to Scotland."

It very much reminds me of my travels in the Yukon Territory where residents described a trip to Edmonton as "going outside".

ven local politics on that earliest visit was very attention-getting. My guide was an employee of the British Government. Personable and exceptionally capable, she had the kind of very upper class public school accent that spoke volumes about her background.

Her father was president of the London Stock Exchange and when my brother Jim and I had been invited to the family "country place" outside London on several occasions, it proved to be a worthy home for the likes of Prince Charles, complete with stables, lush gardens and pools . . . the works.

Somehow islanders picked up on all this instantly and she was under constant interrogation about Britain's treatment of their islands . . . all done quite politely, but rather relentlessly. As though she was somehow personally responsible and in a position to do something about it.

Jim and I were in Scotland during the "Yes Yes" vote that gave them more political autonomy. So this is now probably part of the past. And because of their Norse heritage, many residents do consider themselves more Norse than Scot. Festivities with Viking origins continue to be a major part of the calendar.

proximity to Norway accounts for its unique Viking history. They were not frightened away by wild seas that prompted early Roman explorers to "discover and subdue" Orkney but avoid Shetland only 60 miles distant, yet totally different in character.

Any visitor to the Shetlands is certain to be exposed to the words of Roman Caius Cornelius Tacitus whose description of them endures after almost 2,000 years. He named that archipelago Ultima Thule and wrote:

They've never forgotten the good times under Norway's King Harald, nor bad times after Denmark's King Christian included them in his daughter's dowry to King James III of Scotland. Scottish feudal barons did not treat residents well and it's never been forgotten.

You'll find people living here have been hardy survivors with settlements dating back a remarkable 4,000 years. Many such ancient ruins and excavation sites can be visited and we'll be talking about them next week.

Yes, you're not that far below the Arctic Circle, but the Gulf Stream keeps the climate more moderate than one would imagine. On my last visit, which was in June, we picnicked along some of those dramatic cliffs watching seascapes that were absolutely mesmerising.

4 The many attractions of the Shetland Islands