Celtic and Scandinavian Studies MA (Hons) personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

On the forty-minute school bus from my village to Thurso, I pass Scrabster, Achscrabster, Brims and Forss. For years these were just stops. Last year I learned that Scrabster probably ends in the Old Norse bólstaðr, 'farmstead', and that Achscrabster puts the Gaelic achadh, 'field', in front of it. A single road sign holds two languages layered over each other, and I wanted to understand how that happened. Caithness sits where Norse and Gaelic Scotland overlapped, so the question of who spoke what, and when, is not abstract to me. Celtic and Scandinavian Studies appeals because it treats these traditions as connected rather than separate. I want to learn Old Norse well enough to read the sagas without depending on a translator's choices, and to keep improving the Gaelic I have been learning. I am equally drawn to the literature. Reading the Orkneyinga Saga, I was struck by how much of its drama turns on inheritance and divided earldoms, and how casually it moves between Orkney, Caithness and Norway, as if the sea joined places rather than separating them. I would like to study how medieval writers in both traditions shaped history into story, and what that reveals about the audiences they wrote for.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I am taking Advanced Higher History, English and Geography this year, after Highers in those subjects plus Maths and Modern Studies. For my Advanced Higher History project I am investigating how far the earls of Orkney controlled Caithness in the twelfth century, comparing the saga's account with historians' views on how far it can be trusted. This has taught me to treat a vivid source carefully: the saga was written in Iceland, generations after some of the events it describes, and its author had reasons to favour particular families. In English, close reading of poetry helped when I read a translation of the Mabinogion and noticed how much could rest on the translator's handling of a single word. Alongside school I use SpeakGaelic and attend a weekly evening class for adult learners, which I joined in S5. I can now hold a simple conversation and read short news items with a dictionary. Geography fieldwork gave me a method I later reused. With a classmate, I compiled the names on old Ordnance Survey maps of our parish into a spreadsheet, sorting them by likely origin using published place-name guides. We divided the work: I checked derivations and she designed the map, which now hangs outside the history department. It also showed me how much training I still need to judge disputed etymologies.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

Since I was fifteen I have worked Saturdays and summer shifts at a bakery and café near the harbour. In summer many customers are tourists heading for the Orkney ferry, and I have learned to give clear directions, keep a queue moving and stay calm when the ovens are running behind. Last summer I was trusted to open on Sunday mornings with one other member of staff, which means counting the float and setting up the counter before seven. I play fiddle in a small traditional music group that meets in the village hall. Most of our tunes are Scottish, but we also play some Shetland and Norwegian ones, and learning them by ear from older players has made me notice how music, like place-names, travels and changes as it goes. I help organise our spring ceilidh, mainly by making the posters and running the raffle. At home I help my grandfather with his vegetable garden and listen to his stories about the herring trade, which I have started writing down. Not all of this is academic, but it has given me patience, reliability and the habit of listening carefully, which I expect to need when working slowly through a difficult text in a language I am still learning.