LERWICK, SHETLAND — Across the Shetland Islands, an archipelago in the North Atlantic between the Scottish mainland and Norway, abandoned small stone houses are scattered around the windswept, almost treeless landscape.

The ruined homes — a sight common in Scotland’s islands, particularly in the Hebrides to the west of the mainland — are the physical sign of the eviction of many crofters in the 18th and 19th centuries and, more recently, of residents’ desire for modern homes with more living space.

But Shetland also contains a growing number of neat, timber-frame and timber-clad homes in the gray-blue and rust shades favored in Scandinavia. They nestle in prosperous communities linked by a superbly maintained road and ferry network paid for, in great part, by revenues from the North Sea oil industry and its port facilities in Shetland.

And more homes may have to be built soon: in 2008 the Shetland Islands Council set an informal target of 25,000 residents by 2025. (The results of a census in 2011 are not yet available, but the council now estimates that there are 22,500 people living on the 15 inhabited islands of Shetland’s scores of islands, islets and barren rocks.)