This old man
A regular contributor to Here to Help, Stonewater customer Andrea Preston is back, this time sharing a fascinating read mixing personal experience with history, geography, archaeology and tourism.
Take the Northlink ferry from the port of Scrabster, near Thurso, to Stromness on the Orkney mainland, and you’ll pass an impressive old man.
He’s attached to the island of Hoy, 449 feet high and a magnet for climbers. The old man of Hoy is well-known, but there is much more to Orkney than this solitary, if interesting, old red sandstone rock stack.
Red sandstone breaks down into very fertile soil, making the islands ideal for cattle and sheep farming. Orkney beef and lamb are both of high quality, and North Ronaldsay sheep graze on seaweed, which gives the meat a distinctive flavour.
Shellfish adds to the islands’ produce, as does farmed salmon. Oil and gas have played a major part in the economy, though energy is now in competition with tourism and hospitality - in 2019, Orkney welcomed nearly 200,000 visitors!
The capital, Kirkwall, hosts cruise ships and small boats ferry passengers into the town for a shopping spree or a bus-tour history crawl. A holiday on Orkney doesn’t have to be organised though; I have visited twice, arranging everything myself.
History goes a long way back on Orkney
Rousay, not a large island, has 124 prehistoric sites. Mainland is home to several of the most important Stone Age monuments - Skara Brae with its rooms complete with furniture, Maeshowe chambered tomb, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, which is one of Britain’s largest stone circles - so large it makes Stonehenge look like a Lego model.
Farther south, South Ronaldsay has a spectacular Bronze Age site. In 1958, a farmer was digging for flagstones when he found bones and skulls. A professional dig revealed a tomb in which human bones and eagles’ talons were found. The site was opened as a museum. I remember my 1990 visit well, not least because visitors had to lie on a trolley and be pushed inside because the doorway was too low for entry any other way; it was all very dignified. The site closed in 2020, but the finds are now on display in the main museum in Kirkwall.
On the north-east coast of the Mainland is the Broch of Gurness, an Iron Age village which would have housed a sizeable number of people.
Skara Brae was invisible until 1850, when the thick layer of sand which had covered it for centuries was blown away in a storm. The village would have been home to fishermen, and today it is possible to see the rooms in their houses, their stone box beds and ingeniously built 'dressers' also made from stone blocks. Approximately 5,000 years old, the village seems to have been abandoned around 2,500BC for reasons unknown. Climate change could have meant wetter conditions, which made the coast unsuitable for living, or possibly a storm which was responsible for covering it with the sand layer.
Maeshowe looks like an upside-down pudding bowl. A very low, narrow corridor leads into...what? Was it a tomb or a kind of calendar? Three weeks on either side of the winter solstice, the setting sun shines down the corridor and strikes the rear wall. By observing this, the local shamans - in effect the 'wise men' of the settlement - would know what time of year it was and could advise farmers when they should put their rams to the ewes and when to sow and plant. In cold areas, rams are put to ewes on 1st December - three weeks before the first solstice sunset. So here comes the beam striking the back of the chamber, and it's go for it, lads!
There is a third theory, which I find interesting: it was common for local leaders to have their children born around the winter solstice, and, because they may have believed in reincarnation, Maeshowe could have been a birthing chamber where the spirits of the ancestors would enter the infants at birth. I mentioned this to the tour guide. He said someone else had suggested this, and a lady in the group said, "If anyone thinks a woman that far gone could get down that passage, it proves they've never been pregnant." Er, back to the drawing board....
The Romans didn’t get to Orkney, but the Vikings did
The islands, along with Shetland, were ruled from Denmark until 1469. Following the leasing of Orkney and Shetland to James III, both island groups became part of Scotland in 1472. This was intended as a temporary arrangement, but despite attempts by Denmark to reclaim them, they remain Scottish, politically if not in spirit. You won’t find many McDonalds, McKenzies or Frasers up here; the local names have a Scandinavian flavour – Evison, Simison, Mowat (pronounced ‘Mort’.)
Maeshowe has Norse graffiti on the inside walls, and St Magnus, Norse Earl of Orkney who was martyred on the island of Egilsay in 1118, has a church dedicated to his memory on the island as well as the cathedral in Kirkwall.
During World Wars I and II, Orkney played an important part in national defence
In 1919, ships of the German High Seas Fleet were scuttled in Scapa Flow. In 1939, huge causeways were built to block the eastern side of the Flow, and they still exist as the Churchill Barriers. Visitors arriving on the ferry from John O'Groats drive over them, from the southern tip of South Ronaldsay to the mainland over Lamb Holm and St Margaret’s. They were built by Italian prisoners of war who also constructed a beautiful chapel on Lamb Holm.
While waiting beside the beach for the boat back to Westray I talked to two German students; one waved her hand at the stunning seascape and said, “What more could you ask for?” I seconded that.
That is a potted history of the islands; what about the geography?
They are basically flat. The only island with hills is Hoy; the name means ‘high island’. There are few trees, though there was a solitary palm tree in the garden of the first place I stayed, in Stromness in 1990, and Betty, who owned it, was very proud of it.
The beaches are superb. Shetland drew the short straw for cliff scenery; Orkney got the beaches. The farmers cultivate to the edge, so field boundaries are often right on the coast. There are cliffs, particularly at Yesnaby on Mainland and on Hoy, and both areas are spectacular, the gradients are pretty gentle - but don’t let flatness be off-putting. On my first visit, I took a ferry from Kirkwall to Westray, crossed the island by bus and went on by boat to Papa Westray. Noted for its birdlife, I opted to walk around the island rather than taking the organised bird-spotting tour and on my circular route, I saw the oldest stone houses in Britain, at Knap of Howar, and a Viking hog-backed tombstone outside St Boniface Church.
While waiting beside the beach for the boat back to Westray, I talked to two German students; one waved her hand at the stunning seascape and said, “What more could you ask for?” I seconded that.
Inter-island hopping is not so easy on Orkney as on Shetland. The islands are farther apart, so voyages take longer. Information on ferry services is available online. Accommodation must be booked in advance. Although tourism is a rapidly growing industry, the islands don’t have a wealth of places to stay. Factoring in the cost of getting there, having somewhere to lay weary heads each night, getting fed and paying entrance fees, as well as the optional extras like the presents and souvenirs we absolutely must bring home, means a holiday on the Orkney Islands is not a cheap option, but both of my trips there were worth every penny.
I wanted to make it a hat trick in 2020, but….we all know what happened in 2020. After that, I was busy preparing to move, then exploring the south-west (which was why I ended up in Gloucestershire), and Orkney was placed at the back of the travel shelf. So, for now, I stay with my photographs and memories. But you never know…
Photograph copyright: Andrea Preston
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