April 26: Historic Orkney
Orkney isn’t built for camping. On our first day, we saw a lot of people with camper vans who had come over on the ferry and they were very well-equipped. We were short-sighted and, not for the first time, we regretted going with a car and tent over a camper.
The signs, advertisements and text in the
Lonely Planet guide book for Scotland that all proudly boat of Orkney’s
renewable energy, really should’ve resonated with me more. Even all the times that we told Scottish
people that we were intending to camp on Orkney, they just said things like
“there’s not a lot of tree cover on Orkney, but you’ll find something”. Nobody mentioned that fact that the lack of
trees is due to the unimaginable wind that would knock down anything not
erected in stone. Luckily, everything in
Orkney is made out of stone. After all,
there’s very little wood here.
So we slept in the car next to a field of
sheep, waking up to the bleating of tiny lambs.
Nicholas woke up before I did, because I’d buried myself, wormlike, into
my sleeping bag. I think we’ll sleep in
the car again tonight. We’re currently
sitting in the carpark outside the Food Cooperative in Stromness and the hail
is so heavy it’s a whiteout on all sides.
I can’t even see the electric blue sign that should be 2m in front of
the car. If we ever move to Scotland, we
won’t be looking past heated seats.
They’ve been our savior so far.
Anyway, we woke up this morning and it was
a Sunday and we weren’t sure how much would be open, so we decided to head to
some of the historic sites, like every other tourist. We started off at Maeshowe, which is a very
ancient tomb not far from Stromness.
From a distance it looks like a hobbit-hole with a little door at the
front. As we were approaching, Nicholas
even said, “What’s that? I want a house like that?” Obviously it wasn’t a house, but a tomb.
Somehow we didn't get a picture of Maeshowe. Here's somebody else's picture.
Unlike other tombs, they didn’t throw you
in until you were almost entirely bone, after leaving you out to decompose in
the field first. Robert, who was another
excellent guide provided to us by Historical Scotland, advised us that the
number of bones remaining wouldn’t nearly make up a whole skeleton. “Birds would’ve nicked off with most of your
fingers and the like,” he said.
He showed us a lot of the graffiti
inscribed by Vikings in the 12th century, after the tomb had been
abandoned. One of them featured a
salivating dog, and said something along the lines of, “*Misc Viking Woman* is
the most beautiful”. Another said, in
perfect print, “This was written by the best Viking writer” or something to
that effect. Another simply said, “This
rune is written very high”. They were
evidently a creative bunch. It’s the
largest collection of runic inscriptions in one place in the whole world.
You enter and exit Maeshowe by crouching
and walking along a hallway about 1m high and 7m long. Then you find yourself in an igloo-style
stone dome, with three tombs off to the sides.
When we exited the tomb and found ourselves subjected to the bright
Orkney sun and overwhelming wind, we were greeted by another pair of
sheep. They aren’t kidding when they say
there are more sheep in Scotland than people.
Probably from cold and all the extra
calories required to walk through the gale that is Orkney, we were already
hungry again, so we head to Skara Brae where we assumed there was probably a
café. There was. Their coffee machine was out of order, but
they had an extensive collection of teas, so we had tea. I had a scone. Nicholas had a chunk of ‘fudge slice’ almost
as big as the average glasses case. He
sat in a sugar coma while I finished off my lemon and ginger tea.
Skara Brae Prehistoric Village
Everywhere we go, people ask us where we’re
from. Maybe they keep a tally somewhere
or perhaps my purple Loch Ness Monster t-shirt leads them to believe I’m a
tacky American and they can’t reconcile it with my accent. We’re not sure. Anyway, the chap at the Skara Brae shop asked
where we were from, and he knew someone who lived in Heidelberg but was coming
back to Orkney because she missed Orkney and she missed haggis (why she does,
nobody knows), and then we chatted about animals and Australia and Captain Cook
and videos of huntsmen on Youtube. He
told us about North Ronaldsay sheep, who have adapted to live on seaweed, and
are renowned for salty meat (something neither of us were particularly
interested in) but you can also buy their wool.
He showed us a book about Orkney with a North Ronaldsay sheep on the
front, standing on a rocky cliff with a mouth full of seaweed.
Skara Brae was quite a beautiful site and
the museum that was attached to it wasn’t too bad either. They had reconstructed one of the houses
(Skara Brae is a series of 10 or so interconnected homes that most likely had a
family group in each) to walk through.
Previously you could walk through any and all of the little homes, but
they’re degrading too quickly now so you can only look from above.
The wind was coming in off the ocean
something fierce, and my hands were freezing in my jacket. The Historical Scotland guide who was hanging
around was bright red in the face from the wind and the cold. We had a wander around Skara Brae for quite a
while, discussing how cool the houses were and comparing different tribes and
groups that are nomadic and those that settle.
Looking into the village of Skara Brae
The beach beside where Skara Brae now sits. The shore wasn't nearly so close when the village was first built.
Just near Skara Brae is the restored home
of the man who found the site. We popped
into this house – Skaill House – which was a pretty fancy 1950’s home. They had a tiger skin rug in one room, but
Nicholas and I particularly liked the library, which had three important
things.
1.
A circular window
2.
A bookcase that rotated to
reveal a secret cupboard
3.
A map with sea monsters on it
The secret bookshelf cupboard
The monster on the map (above OCEANVS)
Some books I really wanted to sift through
We decided not to go to the beach near
Skara Brae, and head to the Yesnaby Cliffs, just south of Skaill Bay. We had lunch in the car before we braced the
winds (hiding out behind an old military building to boil water for some cup
noodles) to have a look at the Sea Stacks, or castles, as they’re sometimes
called.
They weren’t too dissimilar to structures
we have at home, like the 12 Apostles.
The biggest differences were the weather and how much it made you feel
like a tourist; like everything in Orkney, the cliffs were cold and extremely
windy, and there were no set paths, only one other couple walking around. This meant that – unlike when you visit the
12 Apostles – you’re not waiting for hordes of other tourists to move out of
your pictures, and you don’t have one wooden platform to view from. There was also the small possibility that the
cliffs could collapse beneath you, because the Scots live dangerously.
Yesnaby, near the stacks
The Yesnaby 'Castle'
He looks like a little robot man with two stubby legs
Sea caves at Yesnaby
From here, we made a detour to pick up some
fresh bread and got stuck in a snowstorm outside the Food Cooperative, as I
mentioned earlier. The mountains over on
Hoy, which we’d been sizing up and contemplating climbing, were now completely
white. The sun was beginning to set,
because it was nearing 9pm, so we set off to the Ring of Brodgar to watch the
sun go down over the standing stones.
One of the standing stones of Stenness - you can see the sun coming through the snow-bearing clouds
Hoy, freshly covered in snow
The stone circle at Brodgar is a set of 36
stones from, presumably, about 60 standing stones. It was a huge circle, with stones standing up
to probably 4m. One had been cracked in
two by a lightning strike in 1980, and its severed piece lay on the floor next
to it. We spent most of the time taking
pictures, because we were losing light quickly.
In the loch across the road, one roundish stone was sitting on another rock,
appearing to float on top of the water.
Given that the wind hadn’t let up, the car
thermometer was reading a less-thank-balmy 1 degree Celsius, and the ground was
wet with snow and sleet from the storm, we slept in the car, overlooking the
loch that housed the floating stone.
The Ring of Brodgar, shortly before sunset
The Ring of Brodgar, during sunset
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