[siubhal] Orkney
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Evonne
Mar 8, 2009, 12:05:14 PM3/8/09
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Before starting, I thought I would mention the very Halifax-y February I had - seeing both Share and Jenn Grant live and getting Rose Cousins' latest album in the mail. (Furiously looking forward to Rose's upcoming album, which Garrett's sister pre-ordered for me for Christmas - thanks Liv!) Share put on a really good show at The Bowery, just a block from my flat. Jenn, who played after Kevin Hearn of BNL fame, was fantastic. They played at a little pub in Leith and it felt like we were all sitting around in a living room; there was even some audience sing along action on Jenn's Sailing by Silver Ships. Quite the opposite end of the spectrum from the show (audio) she had played just two weeks before. Who knew I'd have to come to Edinburgh to get so much East Coast goodness! (Quelques photos from Jenn's show at http://flickr.com/photos/44821698@N00/sets/72157614719600627)
Orkney (map)
January 2-5, 2009
After a few days hanging out in Edinburgh, Garrett and I hopped a tiny plane and flew up to the Orkney Islands, an archipelago just north of mainland UK. There are some things that can be said about travelling to a relatively remote region the day after New Year's.
It's an awful idea. The 1/3 full plane complete with depressed stewardess start the journey with this feeling. And apparently people need two days to recover from the new year celebrations. As a result, things are closed on January 2. Things that are kind of important like car rental companies and bus companies and restaurants. Brutal.
BUT... it's also a fantastic idea. No cars to hire or buses to transport means that you turn to a tour company to get you around. You meet a friendly tour guide (whose wife is Canadian!) and get to see things you may not have seen otherwise. No restaurants means you get to go to a full-sized grocery store (unlike our tiny Tesco in Edinburgh) and cook a delicious dinner of Orkney beef... mmm!
We arrived in Kirkwall and received the most beautiful welcome ever:
Walking about the 7000-person town that day felt more like being in a ghost town with nary a soul around and all the stores literally barricaded shut.
The next day, Saturday, was a bit livelier with Kirkwallians emerging out of their homes for a chilly weekend. Picked up (slightly late) by Michael and his van, we made our way south across the Churchill Barriers off of Mainland Orkney. The Churchill Barriers were built in WWII to protect Royal Navy ships anchored in Scapa Flow after a battleship was sunken by a German U-boat. This is the beautiful view from one of the barriers. Visible is one of Orkney's several wind turbines behind the mast of a blockship used to keep protect the harbour before the barriers were built.
Crossing over four barriers and three islands, we arrived at the Tomb of the Eagles. Discovered by a farmer in 1958 looking for stones to build a fence, this neolithic chambered tomb sits at the top of a cliff. We had to crawl on hands and knees into the tomb that was lit by sunlight - and how cool to stand in a room built thousands of years ago and used for many years after! Not far from the tomb, there is also a Bronze Age Site on the family's land. People are still trying to figure out what exactly this site was - a house? a place of worship? - and it was neat to visit and make our own hypotheses.
Heading back to the mainland, we stopped at the Italian Chapel on the island of Lamb Holm. This structure was amazing put together by Italian prisoners of war (in Orkney to build the Churchill Barriers) using what little material they had: a Nissen hut, plaster board, paint, concrete, and leftover iron. Even the holy water font is made of a giant spring and the lamps are made from old tin cans!
Come late afternoon, our first day with Michael came to an end when he dropped us off in Stromness. Stromness is the second largest town in Orkney and is centred around one main narrow street winding its way past old stone houses and storefronts. Interestingly, this road is only cobblestoned on a strip down the middle - much easier for the horses while the carts cruised along the paved sides.
Sunday saw our second day with Michael and we hit all the highlights of the Neolithic Orkney proclaimed in the tourist brochures.
The first sight was Maeshowe, a chambered cairn and one of the four stops we would make within the "Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site". This incredible tomb is seeped in mystery, made only more interesting with features like the alignment of the tomb entrance with the setting winter solstice sun. You can read all about it on the previous link so I won't bore you with the details. I will mention two neat things we learnt on that visit: 1) Maeshowe has one of Europe's best collections of runic inscriptions. Carved by Vikings who had raided the cairn, many of these inscriptions read as simple as "Ottarfila carved these runes" - not so different from a modern-day "Sven was here" in the public toilets. 2) On a recent dig to reroute water seeping through the walls, the archaeologist found a buried coin from 1954. Apparently it's not uncommon for archaeologists to drop recently minted coins in their digs as a calling card of sorts to let future discoverers know when the area was last unearthed. We weren't allowed to take photos inside but there are some nice ones at http://www.maeshowe.co.uk/, along with a live video feed of the Winter Solstice sunset.
Our next two stops were at the nearby stone circles: the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. Once again, I will leave you to explore those two links for details about the history of these ceremonial stone circles. Some neat tidbits:
Finally, we made our way to the first thing that drew us to Orkney: Skara Brae. Walking to the site, one begins a journey back in time, passing marks commemorating major events from the last several thousand years. 5000 years later, we arrive at Skara Brae. This unbelievably well-preserved Neolithic village was uncovered in 1850 when a severe storm ripped through the earth to reveal the stone buildings. It had been protected by the sand covering and, as a result, the village probably isn't so different than it would have been in 3000 BC. The buildings are evidently houses, complete with beds, fireplaces, storage areas, and toilets. To show that humans haven't really come that far in 5000 years, even a sewer system is found weaving under the buildings! And yes it is a real sewer system. There are tunnels connecting all the toilets in the village and twice a year a dam up in the hills is released to thoroughly flush the system out into the North Atlantic.
The last stop before we returned to Kirkwall for the night was the Broch of Gurness. At this site stands an Iron Age broch (or fort) and a pictish farmhouse which overlook Eynhallow Sound, the point above Mainland Orkney where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. Here's a photo of the shamrock-shaped farmhouse in the foreground and the Broch in the background. Apparently the farmhouse was moved, stone by stone, to its current location from where it was found, buried under rubble.
With our flight departing Kirkwall on Monday afternoon, we spent the morning exploring St Magnus Cathedral, the most northerly cathedral in the British Isles. Built by Norse residents of Orkney in 1137, there's a definite Viking feel in the massive sandstone building (including parts of the roof I am convinved were designed to look like the inside of a boat).
To end off this massive post, here is a photo from the Kirkwall Airport gift shop. Looking forward to the day when Honesty Baskets are commonplace :)
Many more photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2188234&id=90402206&l=f1d03
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Posted By Evonne to siubhal at 3/04/2009 04:48:00 PM
Orkney (map)
January 2-5, 2009
After a few days hanging out in Edinburgh, Garrett and I hopped a tiny plane and flew up to the Orkney Islands, an archipelago just north of mainland UK. There are some things that can be said about travelling to a relatively remote region the day after New Year's.
It's an awful idea. The 1/3 full plane complete with depressed stewardess start the journey with this feeling. And apparently people need two days to recover from the new year celebrations. As a result, things are closed on January 2. Things that are kind of important like car rental companies and bus companies and restaurants. Brutal.
BUT... it's also a fantastic idea. No cars to hire or buses to transport means that you turn to a tour company to get you around. You meet a friendly tour guide (whose wife is Canadian!) and get to see things you may not have seen otherwise. No restaurants means you get to go to a full-sized grocery store (unlike our tiny Tesco in Edinburgh) and cook a delicious dinner of Orkney beef... mmm!
We arrived in Kirkwall and received the most beautiful welcome ever:
Walking about the 7000-person town that day felt more like being in a ghost town with nary a soul around and all the stores literally barricaded shut.
The next day, Saturday, was a bit livelier with Kirkwallians emerging out of their homes for a chilly weekend. Picked up (slightly late) by Michael and his van, we made our way south across the Churchill Barriers off of Mainland Orkney. The Churchill Barriers were built in WWII to protect Royal Navy ships anchored in Scapa Flow after a battleship was sunken by a German U-boat. This is the beautiful view from one of the barriers. Visible is one of Orkney's several wind turbines behind the mast of a blockship used to keep protect the harbour before the barriers were built.
Crossing over four barriers and three islands, we arrived at the Tomb of the Eagles. Discovered by a farmer in 1958 looking for stones to build a fence, this neolithic chambered tomb sits at the top of a cliff. We had to crawl on hands and knees into the tomb that was lit by sunlight - and how cool to stand in a room built thousands of years ago and used for many years after! Not far from the tomb, there is also a Bronze Age Site on the family's land. People are still trying to figure out what exactly this site was - a house? a place of worship? - and it was neat to visit and make our own hypotheses.
Heading back to the mainland, we stopped at the Italian Chapel on the island of Lamb Holm. This structure was amazing put together by Italian prisoners of war (in Orkney to build the Churchill Barriers) using what little material they had: a Nissen hut, plaster board, paint, concrete, and leftover iron. Even the holy water font is made of a giant spring and the lamps are made from old tin cans!
Come late afternoon, our first day with Michael came to an end when he dropped us off in Stromness. Stromness is the second largest town in Orkney and is centred around one main narrow street winding its way past old stone houses and storefronts. Interestingly, this road is only cobblestoned on a strip down the middle - much easier for the horses while the carts cruised along the paved sides.Sunday saw our second day with Michael and we hit all the highlights of the Neolithic Orkney proclaimed in the tourist brochures.
The first sight was Maeshowe, a chambered cairn and one of the four stops we would make within the "Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site". This incredible tomb is seeped in mystery, made only more interesting with features like the alignment of the tomb entrance with the setting winter solstice sun. You can read all about it on the previous link so I won't bore you with the details. I will mention two neat things we learnt on that visit: 1) Maeshowe has one of Europe's best collections of runic inscriptions. Carved by Vikings who had raided the cairn, many of these inscriptions read as simple as "Ottarfila carved these runes" - not so different from a modern-day "Sven was here" in the public toilets. 2) On a recent dig to reroute water seeping through the walls, the archaeologist found a buried coin from 1954. Apparently it's not uncommon for archaeologists to drop recently minted coins in their digs as a calling card of sorts to let future discoverers know when the area was last unearthed. We weren't allowed to take photos inside but there are some nice ones at http://www.maeshowe.co.uk/, along with a live video feed of the Winter Solstice sunset.
Our next two stops were at the nearby stone circles: the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. Once again, I will leave you to explore those two links for details about the history of these ceremonial stone circles. Some neat tidbits:
- Michael mentioned that these two sets of stones may form a Pythagorean triangle with Maeshowe - yay math! - that might be significant for the ceremonies performed involving the sites.
- Speaking from the centre of the Stones of Stenness, one's voice will echo and bounce around in the circle. The same might be true for Brodgar but the centre of the circle is filled with heather to stop people from trampling the grass so we couldn't try it.
- One of the stones in the Ring of Brodgar was hit with lightening (7 years to the day before I was born!), causing it to crack into two big slabs.
Finally, we made our way to the first thing that drew us to Orkney: Skara Brae. Walking to the site, one begins a journey back in time, passing marks commemorating major events from the last several thousand years. 5000 years later, we arrive at Skara Brae. This unbelievably well-preserved Neolithic village was uncovered in 1850 when a severe storm ripped through the earth to reveal the stone buildings. It had been protected by the sand covering and, as a result, the village probably isn't so different than it would have been in 3000 BC. The buildings are evidently houses, complete with beds, fireplaces, storage areas, and toilets. To show that humans haven't really come that far in 5000 years, even a sewer system is found weaving under the buildings! And yes it is a real sewer system. There are tunnels connecting all the toilets in the village and twice a year a dam up in the hills is released to thoroughly flush the system out into the North Atlantic.
The last stop before we returned to Kirkwall for the night was the Broch of Gurness. At this site stands an Iron Age broch (or fort) and a pictish farmhouse which overlook Eynhallow Sound, the point above Mainland Orkney where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. Here's a photo of the shamrock-shaped farmhouse in the foreground and the Broch in the background. Apparently the farmhouse was moved, stone by stone, to its current location from where it was found, buried under rubble.
With our flight departing Kirkwall on Monday afternoon, we spent the morning exploring St Magnus Cathedral, the most northerly cathedral in the British Isles. Built by Norse residents of Orkney in 1137, there's a definite Viking feel in the massive sandstone building (including parts of the roof I am convinved were designed to look like the inside of a boat).
To end off this massive post, here is a photo from the Kirkwall Airport gift shop. Looking forward to the day when Honesty Baskets are commonplace :)
Many more photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2188234&id=90402206&l=f1d03
--
Posted By Evonne to siubhal at 3/04/2009 04:48:00 PM
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