Day 8 – Post-Neolithic Pre-WW2 Orkney

Today we go north on Mainland Orkney and our first stop is the Broch of Gurness. On the Covid-internet this is shown as being “temporarily closed” (ie for the foreseeable future) but in fact the ticket booth is closed and the Broch itself is open and gloriously empty of anyone else.

This is a village built in rather similar style to Skara Brae in that the houses are dug down into the earth. These date from 3,000 years later (so only 2,000 years ago), they are not completely below ground level and had roofs maybe three feet above ground. The settlement seen from above has a wheel shape around the central broch tower which seems to have been mostly a look out post and maybe had some defensive purpose. This one might have been 13 metres high, with a well dug into the rock beneath. The spoil taken out from the houses was added to the ditches and ramparts that make up the village defences. The houses share walls with each other and the tower. The people who built here are described as Picts. Where Skara Brae was Stone Age this is Iron and Bronze Age. There was a foundry on site.

With the island across the water completely undeveloped, you can stand here alone and see what the people then saw. Apart from a cat who proclaimed its mastery of the site and then tried to adopt us.  But Sid and Doris are made of sterner stuff.

Though many of the brochs are by the sea archaeologists did not find much by way of fish bones. Here at Gurness they found Roman pottery, which might have found its way north by trade. There is also a Viking grave dated to about 900AD by which time Orkney was under Norwegian rule. Most place names here are Norse.

We are on our way to the Brough of Birsay, a hill home of the Picts that is the other end of a short causeway. We could get across but the tide will soon be too high to get back. Inland at Birsay village Earl Thorfinn the Mighty built a Christchurch cathedral for his new Bishop. Either they were religious on Sundays or had given up much of their Viking. Or perhaps when they overtook Iceland and Greenland in 1264 the Vikings were on a mission from God to erm, ah, ‘Bishop please could you bless this heavily armed band of beardy chaps and that long boat with the gaily coloured sail’?

Here also is a later Earls’ Palace, built for Earl Robert Stewart and then lived in by his son. Built around 1574 it seems to have been abandoned by the end of the 1600s. Why did the locals not just live in it? We do some more ‘not knowing’ and set off on our nature walk.

We are dressed in stout (but not stout enough) boots, waterproof trews, waterproof coats, hats and gloves. The rain is cold and wind driven. We walk along the sea shore. There are small brown birds dribbling about in the brown kelp.  We may have seen birds that were not shags. After that we have little to report except the extreme excitement of seeing two seals – who we would not have noticed except that they “harrumphed” at us to gain our attention.  We squelch on knowing that we are in touch with nature.

As always Doris is keen to avoid an “out and back” walk, and although that means we trudge down a main-ish road for a bit (dryer underfoot, says the ever-positive Doris), it also takes us past this extremely neat garden observatory.  Not much to observe today admittedly, but we believe that the skies are clear here sometimes.

And, for that lone reader who may remember the Tyre Challenge on the EuroEpic19, it also scores points for Most Creative Use of Kart Tyres.

Driving back to Kirkwall we pass the site of HMS Tern where they took the planes from carriers anchored in Scapa Flow. ‘Bishop, please could you see your way to blessing these Supermarine Seafires and that wobbly looking Walrus’?