Ancient Fellowships on Orkney: Tales by the Fire

Paella time!    

We had taken a cliff walk along the Ceredigion part of the Wales Costal Path. We were pooped by the time we got home, but luckily the fire pit was ready to light and the veg for the paella all picked from the garden and ready for our supper.  

Call us old fashioned and gender-oriented, but it was the boys prepared the fire while the girls took a trug round the garden to pick a selection of veggie produce; broad beans, peas, runner and dwarf beans, courgettes, Calvo Nero, onions, garlic and baby carrots plus herbs which we prepared in the kitchen and took out to cook. We fried them gently in butter and olive oil over the fire once it had burnt into  white hot coals. Once they were soft, we added pints of veg stock and threw in the paella rice. It was manna –– rustic cooking is even better than barbies! We thought there would be loads left, but we managed to almost eat it all; a tiny bit left for the very nose hens. 

This is our clever method of getting the guests to do all the work; build a fire, pick veggies, stir the food, eat, drink, perhaps a bit of drumming, and the chance of a story or a reminisce.  It was a balmy night and we were able to stay out for hours, telling stories to each other.

We talked about a visit to Orkney, some years ago. 

We'd gone to to these Scottish Isles  on a quest to learn more about the ancient pre-history of the islands, where ancient peoples lived in abundance, and in fellowship, and, in fact, not on the 'edge of the British Isles' as we think of Orkney now, but in the heartlands of a sacred community.

Our first pilgrimage, once we’d unpacked in our Orkney croft, was a drive to the very bottom of South Ronaldsay, to the Tomb of the Eagles. This passage grave contained evidence that the burials in the tomb included the bones and feathers of the sea eagle, a bird that was thought extinct in Britain but is now coming back to us.

Set at the edge of the raging sea at a place called Isbister, it’s a remarkable site. The passage grave had been discovered by the farmer of that land while moving stones to use for walling. Suddenly, he was staring at a line of skulls and realised he’d discovered something unique. This was in 1950 – right away, he informed the Ministry of Works. Twenty-five years later, he rang them again, to ask when they were going to come and even look at the remains, let alone excavate the tomb. They said they wouldn’t be long…but ten years later Ronald Simison gave up hope of seeing them and asked a team of student archaeologists if they’d like the job.

Because of this anomaly, the tomb, and the bronze age site discovered later, still belong to Ronald Simison, and he is generous with his discovery. There is a small museum, where visitors are allowed to handle the artefacts. The tomb was packed with grave gifts – bowls, buttons and pins, some food, but mostly remains of sea eagles. We held an eagle’s talon – 5,000 years old and as thick as a toddler’s finger .  Visitors are allowed to handle the artefacts and crawl around the remains. Ronald is old now, and sits in the Orkney sunshine, just outside his back door, watching his barley grow, but he’s about to receive the OBE for his contribution to archaeology and a special function was being held at the Town Hall during our stay.

Half a mile up the wild coast, under its fur coat of grass, is the tomb itself. To get into the tomb, we had to lie on a modified skateboard and scoot our way in on our stomachs! The tomb was packed with grave gifts – bowls, buttons and pins, some food, but mostly the bones of the Sea Eagle. This has been extinct in Orkney for many years now, but in the last few, has been seen again around the coast. It is a regal bird, with massive a wingspan, and must have been the clan’s totem. In the little museum, the guides took us through what we would see at the tomb, and let us handle the eagle’s talons – 5,000 years old and as thick as a toddler’s finger – as well as stone tools and pot-shards. In one of the chambers, 

four of the skulls are laid out behind a Perspex screen, giving us some idea of the shock Ronald must have had as he harvested stone all those years ago. 25 separate sets of bones (none complete) were found in the tomb, which was used for over 600 years.

On the walk back to the car, we passed a bronze age site was equally remarkable. It was clearly a roundhouse, but no one’s sure of its use. In the centre was a watertight stone ‘bath’ which would have been heated from the hearth on one wall, by rolling red-hot stones into the water. It was big enough to hold a man, although rather deep, and we did think about a sauna, hot tub or sweat lodge, but had to come down on the side of the more mundane cookhouse – until quite recently Orkadians boiled their beef and mutton as an entire animal, taking it apart as it cooked.

We spent a day on  the Ness of Brodgar, a thin spit of land that links two of the stone circles we saw when we were there, the amazing Ring of Brodgar stone circle and the standing stones of Stenness. Frustratingly we went to Orkney in 2009. The following year, archeological work started on the Ness of Brodnar  and we had no idea (nor did they!) of what they would find. I write about what they did find Here.

Stones of Stenness

This is a lovely circle, partially lost, which stands at the edge of a loch. From its centre, on can see Maishowe, the Barnhouse settlement and the first menhir of a lost avenue that led to the Ring of Brodgar. In the distance, the pudding bowl shape of Maishowe can be spotted. These World Heritage sites are at the very centre of Mainland and their dates are very close – the same society that build the Tomb of the Eagles.

In the centre of the Stones of Stenness is a square defined by kerb stones. We would see this again, in many places. To the east side of the circle is a small ‘cove’ – three waist high stones. I’m not sure what these inclusions are, and neither was the guide pontificating to the little crowd of people he’d brought to the site. But he told them (and I was lying on my back in the centre square at the time, looking up at the intense blue of the sky), that one night, unable to sleep, he’d come here in heavy mist. He’d got out of the car and become quite disorientated in the mist, not even able to see the stones until up close to them. But when he lay in the square in the centre and gazed up, the stars were clearly visible above him.

The Ring of Brodgar 

Originally, 60 massive sandstone monoliths stood in a vast circle between two lochs, surrounded by tumuli. There are still enough standing stones to make the heart skip a beat as one circles them, touching them, listening to them. The centre is filled with the purple of heather and dreamy puffs of cotton grass. Each stone is taller than two men, and have slanting tops as if pointing towards the sky, although this is the natural way the stone breaks, apparently. The sandstone is quarried very thin, and has the appearance of wafer biscuits. It will split in the same way as slate, and this same stone is used as stalls in tombs, as flat surfaces in Neolithic houses, and as roofing for crofts.

The Barnhouse.

This might not be quite as spectacular a sight as Skara Brae, but it is just as interesting. Only in Orkney, it seems, did Stone Age man build in stone. Originally, there were several roundhouses built of dry stone walls, and one of these has been excavated. They felt cosy inside, with space for seating and central hearths. They would’ve had thatched roofs. 

They are not as spectacular as the houses at Skara Brae – there were no cosy high-sided stone beds, warmed and softened with heather and sheepskins, or fancy stone dressers that take up an entire side of the main room, where the pottery and jewellery of the household can be displayed. But they had a lovely atmosphere of homeliness.

Two larger, rectangular buildings with perfectly rounded corners had been built towards the end of the people’s stay at this settlement. One seemed to be a feasting hall, the other possibly for a sacred use. It was double-skinned - a second wall had been build around it, with the entrance on a 90’ angle to the inner door. This must have made it much warmer. The entrance to the feasting hall would have taken the sun at midsummer – the entrance to the largest building would have taken it at midwinter.

Maishowe.

This Neolithic chambered cairn is billed as the best passage grave in the Western Hemisphere. Although the grass-covered mound is round, inside it is build on a square, with a very high ceiling, as roomy as a cathedral. There are three high, small chambers off the central chamber, which surely must have contained the bones of the population for the centuries it was used, from 2,750 BC. But no remains were found. When opened, the tomb was empty, save for runic graffiti left by Viking warriors. They had inscribed the stonework all over the tomb – some were inane scribbles, telling us that women they fancied made them feel horny, or that they were the best warrior with the strongest arm and sharpest blade, but others proclaimed that they had come here and taken away with them ‘fabulous treasure’. This is a puzzle, as the Neolithic remains would not have looked like treasure the Vikings. But I wondered if the tomb had also been used in the Bronze Age – in Ireland massive golden collars, belts, torcs and other jewellery have been found in tombs, and the reopening of these old cairns by later people has been known. I like my little theory, and can imagine the round eyes of the Viking men as they gazed upon such a trophy.

On the afternoon of the final light of the year, the Winter Solstice, the sun shines directly through the entrance onto the stones at the backof the main chamber. I found this sad and compelling. After those rays had died, there would be almost no daylight for days and days…there had been little since Hallowe’en, if fact, and the sun would not properly return until Lammas. This was not a celebration. It was as if the people wanted their dead to experience the dying of the sun.

Skara Brae

Skara Brae neolithic village...you know, the one that has cavity walls, stone beds and even stone Welsh Dressers!  won’t try to describe Skara Brae physically – everyone’s been there or at least seen the pictures. Instead, I tried to express what I felt in a poem:

Whether I am in the hills

Hunting boar,

Or on the sea

Hunting fish

Or in the fields

With the barley or the beasts,

When the sun moves down,

I begin to think of Cadd,

Too heavy now with our second child

To stray far from the house.

I think about how the fire will be blazing

Before I reach the outer wall,

How, as we crouch to share out the shellfish catch

She will be heating the water and tearing herbs.

The day has been cloudless across the sea.

My face is burnt with sun and wind

My hands chilled as stone.

I stride through the passageway and Nitta comes running,

Grasps my knee, hugs and giggles.

She is the one that swells my heart.

When I went to find a stone for my mattock,

Nitta followed, singing to the flowers,

Gathering purple, yellow and white.

Cadd sat with her and named their gifts –

Which plants ease pain, which brings up a fever.

She spoke them after, like an echo of the cliffs,

With such clear intent 

It brought more water to my eyes

Than the passing of the Old One

Five moons ago.

The sun will go down red tonight,

As if bleeding into the hills.

After the fish is baked on the stones of the fire

And we are warm and replete,

I will take Cadd out.

We will lie on the soft heather and stare at the sky.

I will tell her the stars 

Are like the flowers of the land.

Both are scattered and purposeful and named.

And when she speaks them in her voice,

High as a bone pipe,

I will not mind if water comes again to my eyes

Reading this out in the darkened circle around our fire pit was a lovely memory