Britain’s northernmost community believes that it has more in common with Norway than with the United Kingdom, or even Scotland.

Shetland has a five-millennia history of romance, of terrible hardship and self-sufficiency; it has a dialect language of its own, its own architecture and even, since 2005, its own flag. Perhaps to emphasise its incomparability, Shetland’s new museum has been devised not only to tell the stories of the isles and the islanders, but also to be an evocation itself.

Shetland is a rugged place and its landscape has been shaped by people’s use of it for more than 5,000 years. So the building of the £11.6 million Shetland Museum and Archive, which opens on Saturday at Hays Dock in Lerwick, reflects both Shetlanders and their environment.

The museum, a ten-year project by the Shetland Amenity Trust, which was helped along in 2002 with a £4.9 million Heritage Lottery Fund grant, is all newly built. The three gable ends of its main building are modelled on the boathouses that used to stand on the quays of Lerwick when the islands’ fishing and whaling were at their height. Adjoining is the boat hall, housing the last surviving “sixareen” fishing vessel; the hall’s four sides are in the characteristic shape of the boats’ sails.

The dock has been restored as part of the development, and timbers from two sunken boats recovered by archaeologists have been used to create the museum’s foyer desk.

Iron from found anchors and chains has been used by craftsmen to make door handles, hinges and handrails, and oak and pitch pine from wrecks have been recycled to become flooring and display cases, while flagstones of different colours, textures and sizes have been gathered from around the islands to form the foyer’s floor.

Most inventive in the recycling idiom of the museum has been the use of glass bottles to create pavers both inside and outside the new building.

The most innovative recycled flooring used in the building, however, are the pavers produced by the Amenity Trust’s own Enviroglass. Here, a patented process has been used to recycle glass bottles into an attractive, hard-wearing surface. Some of these pavers, which appear both inside and outside the building, have been inlaid with crushed serpentine, which a local artist, Alan Hart, has used to depict parts of boats and Shetland place names.

Even the stone of the building itself comes from demolished buildings, in particular from North Ness and Quendale, and the Dock Walkway is made up of recycled granite cobbles that were previously laid on the Lerwick Promenade. The stonework in the “early people” displays comes from archaeological excavations at Old Scatness Broch, the Bronze Age settlement excavated in the 1990s.

“The Shetland Museum and Archives project is the living embodiment of our rich cultural and natural heritage,” says Jimmy Moncrieff, general manager of the Shetland Amenity Trust. “By using recycled materials throughout the building and in various aspects of the project, we are demonstrating our commitment to the environment in a tangible way.”

The museum is the latest and by far the most ambitious project of the Amenity Trust, which also operates the public areas of the Old Scatness Broch, the Crofthouse Museum and the Böd of Gremista, Lerwick’s 18th-century fishing station.

The new museum’s gallery displays show more than 3,000 artefacts in 80 display cases, and include the reconstruction of an 18th-century Shetland croft interior. One highlight is a display tracing the development of Shetland’s famous textiles, and archaeological finds on show include the Pictish symbol stone from Mail in Cunningsburgh, which dates back to the early 7th century.

Five boats hang in the three-storey boat hall, and visitors will be able to see other vessels being restored using traditional techniques in recreated boat sheds next to the main building.

Shetland’s substantial historical archive, ranging from the 15th to the 20th centuries, is also brought together for the first time in the museum.

But the object that has been exciting most interest has been a small stuffed reconstruction of the “grice”. This is the wholly indigenous Shetland domestic pig, once ubiquitous in island households but not seen for more than a century. A vicious and omnivorous beast, it had a tendency to devour valuable lambs, and when this habit became intolerable it was allowed to become extinct. No pictures of it survive, but a taxidermist was been able to recreate the grice from documents and archaeological research by museum curators.