Skara Brae – Moonshine Mohair at Keldaby Farm

Skara Brae and Peat Fire Folktales

Tues, May 2

The sky is blue! Off we head to the Bay of Skaill for a bit of beach combing. The water near land is a bright turquoise, farther out a deep ultramarine blue. The gulls swoop and skim the water as we walk along the sand until we are just below the cliff where Skara Brae lies above us.There are some enticing rocks but none that compel me to carry them back to the car. I’m waiting for Waulkmill Bay for that.

Bay of Skaill

After some debate we decide to go to Skara Brae as we are so close. We buy our tickets, then have tea and scones in the little restaurant before going through the museum then out to the neolithic village itself. While burial mounds and cairns, stone rings and henges are fairly common worldwide, there are very few instances of residences from five thousand years ago and this place, a world heritage site, is probably the best preserved and most extensive.There are eight “houses” and two other spaces, workshops perhaps, linked by passages. Once these houses most likely would have been roofed over with skins or thatching. Because there was so little wood available on these islands after farming became the way of life, stone sites here in Orkney were preserved. At Skara Brae the structures were buried under dunes for more than forty centuries until a storm in 1850 uncovered them.

Remarkably the houses, constructed of unmortared stones, do not differ greatly from the two and three century old farm museums we have visited. Stone cupboards, dressers, beds, water tanks and a central hearth are the common motif. It is believed this was a community of about 75 to 90 people. Although it has been removed now, the village was originally surrounded and cocooned within its own midden heaps, both to protect the villagers from the weather–that incessant wind!–and to hide them from any marauding bands of enemies. Skara Brae was inhabited for 600 to 1000 years!

https://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/skarab2.htm

We leave the village and walk up to the nearby Skaill House, home of the Graham family since 1620. The seventh laird, William Graham Watt, discovered the ruins of Skara Brae after that storm of 1850 and undertook the first excavations.

Skaill House

We head back to Stromness, still exclaiming over all the tiny lambs and their mothers in every field we pass. I have forgotten to mention, but this trip, because we have arrived two weeks earlier, right after lambing, we see that many of the babies are sporting little biodegradable poly jackets which disappear after a couple of weeks but which keep the newborn lambs dry. There are no sheds or even protecting trees for the animals to shelter under.

We have our BLTs–will we ever tire of them–and I and (I think) Jill, spend the rest of the afternoon knitting. The others go for a walk up to Brinkie’s Brae.

Jen, Lynn and Michael

This is from the official Stromness website:

From the top of Brinkie’s Brae and along the western coastline there are spectacular vistas across to Graemsay and Hoy. It is quite unlike any other town in Orkney, partly because its geology is so unusual.

Stromness Brinkie’s Brae is formed from granite-schist, unlike the fine-grained sedimentary rocks of the surrounding area. This is one of the only places in Orkney where rocks like these, more characteristic of the western Highlands, are exposed.

View from Brinkie’s Brae

Jill and Jen make dinner: lamb chops from Dounby, steamed new potatoes in herbs and butter, salad and Orkney ice cream. After dinner we drive to the Orkney Folklore and Storytelling Centre where we hear Lynn O’Brien Barbour tell stories of selkies and finmen as she sits by a peat fire in her traditional Orkney chair . It’s another magical evening.

Lynn Barbour

Two guests from Sweden

https://www.orkneystorytelling.com/peatfire-tales/

We decide we will want to hear her again, next time at the Stromness Hotel in the Whisky Bar.

Brough of Birsay

Tues, May 27

We learn that the owners of our cottage, Rosemary and her husband live in South Africa. This is a real surprise as we have been thinking that they live on Mainland, probably in Stromness. Rosemary has sent an email (by the way I now get email in the cottage with no difficulty. Such are the vagaries of this digital era) saying that Lynn may take one of the many conglomerate stones that are placed around the courtyard. She tells us that she and her husband usually stop at one particular beach in Scotland on their way north and these rocks have come from there.

Michael had forgotten his camera the day we went to Skara Brae, so this morning we head back there so that he can surreptitiously get some shots. The rest of us go into the gift shop and Jill falls in love with a bracelet and we convince her that it is okay for her to buy something for herself, though she reminds us that she has indeed bought things for herself already. She loves it, does buy it and we congratulate her. The local craftspeople should love us!

Today we are prepared with tide information so now we drive up to Birsay again. The tide is still high and about half the causeway is still under water. We watch seals swim back and forth over the roadway.

We are the first to walk out onto the road to the brough and the ruins of the Norse settlement there. I walk across when there is still about eight inches covering the causeway and catch this photo of a small whirlpool caused by a hole which allows water to flow out toward the sea.

Eddy along the side of the causeway

Settlements on the brough began as early as Pictish times (6th c) when a small monastic community lived here, built a chapel with a graveyard and a few homes but the ruins seen here today are Norse, the older settlement being buried under it. A Pictish monument was found, in pieces, and a replica made from it while the original bits are in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Replica of a Norse monument stone,,,original is in Orkney Museum — Replica of a Pictish monument stone, Lynn peeking around it

Remains of a Norse settlement — Remains of the 12th c church in this Norse settlement

Looking back toward the headland and causeway. The ruins of the bishop’s palace are in the background.

Although current weight of opinion is that Earl Thorfinn–for you Orkneyinga Saga readers–had his seat on Mainland, there are those who believe this was his base. In any case, it was a large and thriving and important Norse community.

We happen upon this nest made of smooth flat pebbles–the parents are shrieking overhead and trying to lure us away–nestled next to one of the walls. Several people have now walked their dogs over the causeway and have unleashed them, much to our dismay. We are still wondering if these eggs will survive to hatch.

We climb a stile, open a gate and walk up the hill toward the lighthouse. The view back to Mainland is spectacular, all the way to Hoy.

We sit for quite a while first on one cliff then another watching the birds and the waves. It’s a beautiful day.

Back in our car we eat our BLTs this time enhanced with field sorrel we have picked on our walk.

Another stop in Dounby for the delicious coffee. We ask our waitress, who grew up not far from where Jill spent her childhood in north England, what she thinks of Orkney. She has come here because her father “came here to die” which really seems to mean he has retired here. She says there is nothing to do on Mainland but she will stay because she really can’t imagine any other options. She has no concept of the world and is amazed to hear there are other time zones. At the Dounby Butcher we buy beef for the upcoming Guinness Beef Stew and more of the lamb chops, this time the really thick ones. The young woman who waits on us throws in the fifth and last one for free!

In Kirkwall we pick up another ring (rings, not earrings, seem to be a theme of this trip and certainly unusual for Lynn and me who are earring junkies) that Jill has ordered to her size. Let’s see, I’ve bought two, Lynn two and Jill one!

Back in Stromness I go back to Harray Potter to buy a knife for Bob, hand forged with a horn handle. Neither Andrew (the Harray Potter) nor George (I think her actual name was Georgina) is willing to tell us where it was made, but not in the Orkney islands we gather. Scotland? Though there was also talk of France.

Dinner tonight is fish, this time we skip the chips, while Michael eats up the rest of the vodka linguine. Knitting and a movie, Holiday with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz, round out the day.

Skara Brae and Kirkwall

Sunday, May 18

We are all feeling a bit dopey and lazy this morning so for a while we curl up on the sofas and knit. We’ve brought our various projects and, as if she had read our collective mind, the owner has provided us with a wicker basket by the fireplace filled with balls of yarns, needles and half-finished knitted swatches. I can’t sit still long though–much too expensive a trip to do what we do at home!–and despite the cool, grey weather we set off for Skara Brae, the 5000 year old neolithic community about ten miles north of Stromness right on the Bay of Skaill. It’s a World Heritage site and quite full of tourists on this Sunday morning but not so many as to spoil the illusion of stone-age life. The weather is perfect for transporting us back through, as people love to say, the mists of time.

The area of the excavations (begun with the discovery of stone walls in 1850 when a particularly bad storm unearthed some) is small, much smaller than I had imagined. We pace off the perimeter and figure it is no more than about a quarter acre but archaeologists think that 50 to 100 people once lived in these eight dwellings.

Looking out over the Bay of Skaill which would have been much farther away 5000 year ago

One of houses which once could be seen by the public is particularly complete but being judged “very fragile” has been resealed and a replica built.

A stone-age home with hearth, beds , shelves and room dividers. This is the replica

The stonework is amazingly complex and beautifully fashioned. Stone slabs divide rooms, form shelves and enclose beds; the original ceilings were elegantly corbelled with a hole at the top to allow smoke to leave from the hearth. Having read several Icelandic and Scandinavian novels over the years I suspect that life did not change much from 3000 BCE until about 1900! How very dark, smokey, crowded and smelly the homes must have been!

Our tickets also let us into 17th c (and more recently) Skaill House, home of the local laird. It was the seventh laird, William Graham Watt, who on being shown the exposed ruins undertook the first excavations of Skara Brae. The furnishings are mainly Victorian.

Hard to see, but the Queen has signed the book

As all roads on Mainland lead to Kirkwall, the capital, we head there next. We eat at The Reel where I can finally get my email–WiFi at the cottage does not seem to work–and Michael for some reason does not have to pay for his lunch (he argues with them but they prevail and he is about 8 pounds ahead of the game) and we go across the street to Judith Glue’s (both these places have been recommended) and I decide that Michael should treat us to cones of Orkney ice cream. Later he claims he was about to offer anyway. St Magnus Cathedral is just across the street. Jill and Lynn head over and sit on a bench while Michael and I stay and get the cones. Michael takes his and Lynn’s, I follow shortly with mine–yumm, it is good–and Jill’s. I’m sure you can guess there is a story coming….

So, I start up the steps toward the cathedral, a cone in each hand…and trip. I crash down, bang my left big toe sharply on the edge of the step, and yell out a very blasphemous phrase, especially given the location, which I will simply refer to as the J…F…C incident.This is bad enough one would think but no, I top even this. My cone has broken and I am clutching its various pieces in my left hand. Jill’s cone has lost about half its ice cream but following every mother’s three-second rule, I scoop it back onto her cone, then getting up limp over to the bench and give it to her. Jill hasn’t seen what I have done, the others have. She begins to eat it and Lynn, aghast, says “Why did you give her that cone!?” Still in shock–honestly–I respond “Because I had already licked mine.” Now we are truly in hysterics. Everyone who has witnessed this debacle politely looks elsewhere. We are totally beside ourselves; we cannot, are physically unable to stop laughing.

At last we regain some dignity and sobriety and visit the church which is truly lovely, Romanesque in style, begun in 1137 to atone for the murder of Earl Magnus. The story can be found in the Orkneyinga Saga which is a must-read for everyone visiting Orkney. (Unfortunately and inexplicably it is not in the newish Penguin collection Sagas of the Icelanders but can be found as a separate Penguin book.)

Spite & Malice again in the evening…Michael loses a game and tsk, tsk, tsk, he is one sore loser! The sides of his mouth went right down…very grim!

Michael’s Exceptionally Tasty

Crock Pot Pot Roast (on low all day long)

Potatoes peeled and quartered

Carrots ditto

Onions ditto…how much simpler can it get?

1 small rump pot roast rubbed with salt and pepper

1 small can of tomato sauce

1/2 c water

Put the vegetables in the bottom of the pot, cover with the meat, pour the tomato sauce and extra water over the top, sprinkle with oregano, basil. This oh so simple recipe is delicious and we served it was a Spanish rioja wine and a small green salad.

Category: Skara Brae

Skara Brae and Peat Fire Folktales

Brough of Birsay

Skara Brae and Kirkwall

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