Explore the real-world places that appear in Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Ravenswick, Lerwick Police Station, Lerwick Town Centre, Shetland Museum and Archives, Magnus Tait's Croft and 9 more.
South Mainland, Shetland — Magnus Tait's croft and the murder scene
Ravenswick is the brooding heart of the novel. On New Year's Eve, Magnus Tait sits alone in his croft here, nursing his loneliness and hoping for visitors who never arrive. The next morning, the body of teenager Catherine Ross is found in the snow nearby, a raven circling above. The proximity of the corpse to Magnus's home makes him the immediate suspect in the eyes of both police and community, setting the novel's central tension in motion.
Ravenswick is a small settlement on the South Mainland of Shetland, a landscape shaped by millennia of Norse and Scottish settlement. Crofting — small-scale subsistence farming — has defined communities like this one since the Viking Age. Remote settlements on the Mainland were long isolated by poor roads and harsh weather.
Ravenswick remains a quiet rural area on the South Mainland. The area is accessible by the A970 road and is representative of the traditional Shetland crofting landscape, with stone buildings and open moorland that fans of the Vera and Shetland TV adaptations frequently seek out.
Visit: Shetland South Mainland Scenic Route (landmark)
Church Road, Lerwick — Jimmy Perez's base of operations
Inspector Jimmy Perez operates out of Lerwick's police station, the institutional centre of law enforcement for all of Shetland. It is here that he coordinates the murder investigation into Catherine Ross's death, liaising with mainland detectives who arrive from Inverness and resisting pressure to simply close the case by pinning it on Magnus Tait. Perez's quiet, methodical persistence — so different from the mainland officers — is established through his work here.
Lerwick has served as the administrative capital of Shetland since the 17th century, when Dutch herring traders helped establish the town. The police station on Church Road serves as the headquarters for Police Scotland's Shetland division, covering the entire island chain.
The police station on Church Road, Lerwick remains the operational headquarters for policing across Shetland. It is not open to the public but is a well-known local institution and a frequent filming location for the BBC Shetland television series based on Ann Cleeves's novels.
Commercial Street, Lerwick — the social hub of Shetland life
Lerwick's compact town centre serves as the backdrop for the social fabric Perez must navigate during the investigation. Gossip, speculation, and fear about the murder spread through the close-knit community here. Perez understands that in a place this small — where everyone knows everyone — reputation and rumour are as powerful as evidence, and he must read the town's social currents carefully.
Commercial Street, the main thoroughfare of Lerwick, was built on reclaimed land and has been the commercial heart of the islands since the 18th century. The town grew significantly during the herring boom of the 19th century and later during North Sea oil development in the 1970s.
Commercial Street remains the vibrant centre of Lerwick, lined with independent shops, cafes, and the Shetland Museum. It is the main destination for visitors to Shetland and the focal point of the annual Up Helly Aa Viking fire festival held every January.
Visit: Lerwick Commercial Street (landmark)
Hay's Dock, Lerwick — repository of island history and memory
The deep past of Shetland — its Norse heritage, its isolated communities, its long-buried secrets — weighs heavily on Perez's investigation. He comes to understand that Catherine's murder cannot be understood without understanding the island's history of rumour and injustice, particularly the historical accusations that once circled Magnus Tait. The archives and collective memory of the islands function almost as a character in the novel.
The Shetland Museum and Archives at Hay's Dock opened in 2007 and holds the definitive collection of Shetland's social, cultural, and maritime history. The site itself is a restored historic boating dock dating back centuries, central to Lerwick's fishing heritage.
The Shetland Museum and Archives is one of the finest regional museums in Scotland, housing artefacts spanning 5,000 years of island life. It is free to enter and includes a working boatyard, gallery spaces, and a café with harbour views.
Visit: Shetland Museum and Archives (museum)
Near Ravenswick, South Mainland — the outcast's home
Magnus Tait's croft is the most emotionally charged location in the novel. A strange, reclusive man regarded with deep suspicion by his neighbours, Magnus spends New Year's Eve alone here, a ritual of annual solitude. When Catherine's body is found close by, the croft becomes a symbol of his guilt in the community's eyes. Perez visits the croft and begins to sense that the clumsy, odd Magnus may be more victim than perpetrator — a man haunted by a past accusation he could never escape.
Crofts like Magnus's have existed across Shetland for centuries, typically small stone-built dwellings with attached outbuildings for livestock and storage. In isolated communities, eccentric or solitary individuals were often the targets of superstition and social exclusion, a pattern with deep historical roots in island life.
The specific croft is fictional, but the type of dwelling — stone-built, wind-battered, set against open moorland — is entirely authentic to South Mainland Shetland. Visitors to the area can see similar traditional crofts throughout the landscape.
South Mainland, near Ravenswick — the victim's family house
Catherine Ross is the teenage victim whose murder propels the entire novel. She had been walking home after the New Year's Eve celebrations when she was killed. Her home, close to Ravenswick, becomes the site of devastating grief for her family and the starting point for Perez's interviews. The gap between the Catherine her family knew and the Catherine who emerges through investigation — her secrets, her social relationships — drives the plot's revelations.
The South Mainland settlements of Shetland have long been home to families whose roots on the islands stretch back generations, often for centuries. Community bonds in these areas are exceptionally tight, making violent crime — historically very rare in Shetland — a profound communal shock.
The Ross family home is fictional, but the rural residential character of South Mainland remains unchanged. The area is home to working crofts and family homes set among moorland and coastline, accessible via the A970.
Southernmost tip of Mainland, Shetland — the dramatic southern edge of the islands
The extreme, windswept landscape of Shetland's south — with Sumburgh Head as its most dramatic expression — underpins the novel's atmosphere throughout. Ann Cleeves uses the unforgiving coastal scenery to reflect the emotional isolation of characters like Magnus Tait and Jimmy Perez, both men who exist somewhat apart from the community around them. The ravens that give the novel its title haunt cliffs like these.
Sumburgh Head has been strategically important for millennia. The lighthouse, built by Robert Stevenson in 1821, guards one of Scotland's most treacherous headlands. Nearby Jarlshof contains one of Europe's most remarkable archaeological sites, with layers of settlement from the Bronze Age through Norse and Scottish eras.
Sumburgh Head is now an RSPB nature reserve and is one of Shetland's top visitor attractions, famous for its puffin colonies and dramatic cliff scenery. The lighthouse is open to visitors and houses an exhibition about the site's history and wildlife.
Visit: RSPB Sumburgh Head (park)
Sumburgh, South Mainland — layers of Shetland's ancient past
Jarlshof embodies the deep historical layering that Cleeves uses thematically throughout Raven Black — the idea that the past is never truly buried, that old secrets and old injustices resurface to shape present events. Perez's investigation forces him to excavate not just the recent past but accusations against Magnus Tait that go back decades, much as Jarlshof reveals civilisation upon civilisation in its ruins.
Jarlshof contains the remains of Bronze Age, Iron Age, Pictish, Norse, and medieval Scottish settlements, making it one of the most layered archaeological sites in Britain. It was largely unknown until a great storm in the late 19th century began to expose the ruins, and excavations through the 20th century revealed its extraordinary complexity.
Jarlshof is managed by Historic Environment Scotland and is open to visitors year-round. It is one of Scotland's most significant heritage sites and a UNESCO-recognised location, with an on-site visitor centre and guided interpretation of the multi-period remains.
Visit: Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement (historic site)
Fair Isle, Shetland — Jimmy Perez's roots and sense of identity
Jimmy Perez hails from Fair Isle, the remote island between Shetland and Orkney, and his origins there define his character throughout Raven Black. He is an islander who understands island psychology — the weight of community, the persistence of memory, the way outsiders are treated — but he is also slightly removed from mainland Shetland society. His Spanish surname traces to a shipwrecked sailor from the Armada, a piece of personal mythology that gives him his sense of being perpetually between worlds.
Fair Isle is the most remote inhabited island in Britain, home to a community of around 55 people. The island is famous for its distinctive knitwear patterns and for the Fair Isle Bird Observatory, which records migrating species. The legend of Spanish Armada survivors intermarrying with island families has some historical basis.
Fair Isle is accessible by small plane from Tingwall Airport or by ferry from Grutness. The Fair Isle Bird Observatory reopened in 2022 after rebuilding following a fire. The island's knitting tradition remains alive and its handmade items are sought worldwide.
Visit: Fair Isle Bird Observatory (landmark)
Tingwall Valley, Central Mainland — gateway between Shetland's islands
The small inter-island airport at Tingwall represents Shetland's connectivity and isolation simultaneously. Mainland detectives fly in from Inverness to take over — or attempt to take over — Jimmy Perez's investigation, arriving with mainland assumptions about how a murder inquiry should be run. The airport is the physical threshold between Shetland's self-contained world and the wider Scotland that views it from a great distance.
Tingwall Airport has served Shetland since the 1930s, primarily providing essential inter-island air services to Fair Isle, Foula, Papa Stour, and Out Skerries. The valley it sits in, Tingwall, takes its name from the Norse 'Thing-vollr' — the field of the assembly — where the Norse parliament of Shetland once met.
Tingwall Airport continues to operate essential lifeline air services to Shetland's outlying islands, run by Directflight. It is a small but vital hub for communities that would otherwise be wholly dependent on ferry services in often extreme weather conditions.
Scalloway, West Mainland — symbol of power, authority, and dark history
Scalloway, the ancient capital of Shetland, and its ruined castle carry the weight of historical injustice that echoes through Raven Black's themes. The novel is concerned with how power — social, institutional, historical — shapes who is blamed and who is protected. Scalloway Castle was built by the tyrannical Earl Patrick Stewart, a figure associated with forced labour and oppression, and it stands as a ruin reminding the island of what unchecked authority looks like.
Scalloway Castle was built around 1600 by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney and Shetland, using unpaid forced labour from local people. Stewart was eventually executed for treason in 1615. Scalloway served as Shetland's capital before Lerwick grew to prominence in the 17th century.
Scalloway Castle is maintained by Historic Environment Scotland and is open to visitors free of charge. Keys are available from the Scalloway Hotel or Museum nearby. The castle stands prominently in the village harbour and is one of Shetland's most historically significant monuments.
Visit: Scalloway Castle (historic site)
Main Street, Scalloway — local history and wartime memory
The broader sense of Shetland's layered history — its Norse heritage, its wartime role, its tight-knit communities — provides the cultural substrate for the world Cleeves depicts in Raven Black. Community institutions like Scalloway's museum represent the way Shetlanders hold and transmit memory, the same collective memory that has preserved — and distorted — the story of Magnus Tait's past.
Scalloway was the base for the famous 'Shetland Bus' operations during World War II, when small fishing boats made secret crossings to Nazi-occupied Norway carrying agents and supplies for the resistance. The museum commemorates this remarkable episode in the town's history.
Scalloway Museum is open to visitors during the summer months and covers the history of the town from the Viking Age through the World War II Shetland Bus operations. It is a small, community-run institution and is highly regarded among visitors to Shetland.
Visit: Scalloway Museum (museum)
Northmavine, North Mainland — the wild northern coastline
The ferocious, primeval coastline of Eshaness represents the outer edge of the world Cleeves has constructed — a landscape of absolute indifference to human suffering. Ravens are among the birds that haunt such clifftops, and the novel's title is embedded in this landscape of dark wings and cold stone. The violence that shatters a quiet New Year in Ravenswick feels, against such a backdrop, both shocking and somehow inevitable.
Eshaness is formed from ancient volcanic basalt lava flows and is considered one of the most spectacular coastal landscapes in Britain. The cliffs drop more than 60 metres to the sea, and the blowholes — locally called 'holes of scraada' — are among Shetland's most dramatic natural features.
Eshaness is freely accessible and is one of the most photographed locations in Shetland. The nearby Eshaness Lighthouse, built in 1929, is now a self-catering accommodation. The area is a favourite for walkers and wildlife watchers throughout the year.
Visit: Eshaness Cliffs and Lighthouse (landmark)
Victoria Pier, Lerwick — the lifeblood of the islands
Lerwick Harbour is the beating pulse of the town that Jimmy Perez navigates throughout his investigation. The ferry connections that bring the mainland detectives and the supply ships that keep the island running all pass through here. The harbour represents the tension at the heart of Shetland's identity — its connection to and dependence on a wider world it also holds at arm's length, a tension Perez himself embodies.
Lerwick Harbour has been central to Shetland's economy since the Dutch herring fleets began trading here in the 16th century. It expanded greatly during the North Sea oil boom beginning in the 1970s and remains one of the busiest harbours in Scotland by tonnage.
Lerwick Harbour handles NorthLink ferry services connecting Shetland to Aberdeen and Orkney, as well as commercial fishing fleets, cruise ships, and supply vessels for the North Sea oil industry. The Victoria Pier waterfront is a public promenade and the social centre of the town.
Visit: Lerwick Harbour Victoria Pier (landmark)
More by Ann Cleeves: All Ann Cleeves books