Category: Orcadian Folklore

Ahoy, Hoy!

Thur, May 16th 2019

Knowing that we will be spending a long time on Hoy, and because it is definitely cooler today, we have oatmeal for breakfast before heading off to catch the ferry at Houton. We’re on our way, and even before we dock in Lyness it is immediately clear that Hoy has a very different geology from the other islands. There are real hills here and the land lies differently. https://www.scottishgeology.com/best-places/hoy-orkney/

Catching the ferry

We start off widdershins around the coast stopping, of course, for coffee and scones at the first little restaurant we see. Disappointing it is, the coffee is weak and scones unremarkable. We continue on over the top of the island to the town of Rackwick, right on the bay at Rora Head, at the end of the divide between the two high hills of Hoy. The Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack, is nearby, but not nearby enough! so we walk south instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_of_Hoy

We first encounter a building which had been a shepherd’s bothy but is now a hostel where today a half dozen bright orange tents have been pitched. Boy scouts we’re told. We enter, there is a peat fire burning and a very rudimentary communal kitchen; overall it looks much like the farmhouse at Kirbister or Corrigall except for the intrusion of a number of well-worn mid century chairs.

    Then we follow a sheep trail right along the beach side and look out on to the still-brown heather covered hillsides. It’s very windy. We are all bundled up and the trail is tight so we don’t walk very far and soon turn back first to see a bit more of the town and then to eat our lunch in the car. (We are repeatedly glad to have our boxy, roomy Tepec as it is far too windy to sit outside today.)

    This is the Nature Week in Orkney and so on our drive back toward the east side of the island we stop where there is an eagle watch in progress. White eagles have been reintroduced and this pair, nesting high up on the hillside, have two chicks. We all look through the telescopes set up by the roadside but truthfully I can’t say that I have seen them. This is the same place where we walk up to the Dwarvie Stane. There is a small group with a tour guide so we informally join them to listen. Why it is there, how it got there and what it was used for or meant, even its age is mostly conjecture.

    https://www.orkney.com/listings/dwarfie-stane

    When they call it Dwarf’s Stone you can see why. It’s pretty tight, trying to get in to see the two hand-hewn chambers

    The afternoon is passing quickly. We come across a sad little gravestone with its story of a young unmarried woman who killed herself after becoming pregnant and being shunned by the villagers.

    On our coastal drive we see a bay filled with fish farming sites.

    We stop at another tea room cum gift shop, Emily’s, and indulge in more cappuccino. (Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s wrong to drink cappuccino after breakfast!) and this one was very much better. Then we try to find some of the WWII sites–Lyness was the home base of the Royal Navy–but the museum is closed. We do find the building that was the communications center (Wee Fae). I’m sorry to once again miss seeing some of this history. English TV shows like A Family at War and When the Boat Comes In with their references to Scapa Flow have always fascinated me.

    https://hoyorkney.com/attractions/hoy-history/wartime-heritage/hoy-wwii-archaeology/explore-wwii-hoy-and-walls/

    But now it’s time to get back on the ferry and it’s home again. Lynn’s pork stew has been slow-cooking all day–its aroma hits us even before we open the door! It’s delicious and very welcome after a day of bruising winds. Later we watch the rest of RuPaul’s Drag Race to see who won.

    Stromness Museum and More Folk Tales

    Wed, May 10

    Three years ago we did not go into the Stromness Museum just down the road from us because the dusty, faded items displayed in their window were sadly unappealing, especially as it was somewhat pricey to enter. This year with nothing more pressing than the prospect of more BLTs, terrible telly, knitting and Spite and Malice, we decide to chance it. The idea that we spend a day on a different island has no legs, so to speak. (Whether by ferry or plane, with car or without, choosing one island that would make us all happy or breaking up into different groups; it all seems overwhelming to contemplate.) So we don’t. We go to the museum.

    Turns out it’s well worth the visit–and the tickets are good for a week! This is a museum of the old school, the Victorian model of many, many objects on many, many topics, arrayed in small rooms, some reached by winding back stairs. Here are some of the displays: Hamnavoe (Safe Harbor) before Stromness, the town’s distillery, local newspapers, the fishing industry, transportation and crossing the firth to the mainland of Scotland, commercial enterprises along “the street”, World Wars One and Two and the importance of Scapa Bay, lifeboats and lighthouses, the Hudson Bay Company and John Rae Sr (Dr John Jr, the Arctic explorer was born in Orphir which we haven’t revisited), the writer George Mackay Brown, whaling, indigenous birds and plants, astronomy, maps and nautical instruments, clothing, ceramics, paintings, furniture and Buddo, the whalebone figure from Skara Brae rediscovered in the museum’s storeroom last year….

    This year is a special one, the 200th anniversary of the creation of the Burgh of Barony and the emergence of the renamed Stromness as a busy vital harbor community. The celebrations and exhibit are called Per Mare (By the sea) and the museum, with its booklet written by Tom Muir, folklorist we met in Kirbister Farm, has been a real find.

    https://www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/stromnessmuseum/

    We pay another visit to the Pier Art Museum, then head back to the cottage for lunch and knitting. Meanwhile Michael, after hearing Jill rave about the effectiveness of her “sniffy”  when stuffed up, walks down to the pharmacy where the clerks are utterly baffled by his request. “A sniffy?” they say and roll their eyes. “Oh, these Americans!” (As a new owner of one I will tell you that it is an Olbas oil inhalant and decongestant but don’t ask me what olbas is.)

    Monday we met a couple who had come to the house next door to feed the cat while the owners were away.

    We stood and chatted with Fiona and Maggie for quite awhile. They had noticed us particularly because we all were wearing the hats we’ve been knitting so avidly with the Orcadian yarns.

    Fiona has a island connection; her family had raised sheep (those seaweed-eating ones) on North Ronaldsay though no one in her family lives there now. She and Maggie had moved north from England; both are artists. They invited us to come round to their house before we leave and have some wine. Now we buy a bottle to share as well because we are going there before walking down to the Stromness Hotel this evening to hear the folktale teller Lynn O’Brien again.

    Their house, tucked just up the hill a block or so away from #18, is of course charming and they most engaging. We admire the art work everywhere and learn, too late now, that Fiona gives workshops on casting in sand.

     Fiona used to work with fiber

    Now she does metal casting. Here’s a limpet

    Then we head down the street to the hotel and its Whisky Bar where, included in our admission, we get a wee dram of single malt or a beer or a soda. We wait for nearly 45 minutes for all the audience to straggle in from the dining room, far too much time to fill with this wee dram, and by the time Lynn O’Brien becomes the peedie old woman telling tales, the peat smoke has gotten to me and my racking-cough stage cold, and I am forced to leave so I never get to hear the new stories.

    I walk back taking several of the side streets up toward Brinkie’s Brae photographing the harbor and the beautiful stone houses. The sun is low by now and the lights begin to come on all around town and ringing the harbor. I am becoming more and more sure that I lived here in some previous life.

     

    Back at home I find Michael, who hadn’t gone with us, watching Charles III, a wonderfully hypothetical take on the future of the prince after the death of Queen Elizabeth. Amazingly the actors all look very much like their real counterparts and the script is, to say the least, Shakespearean. How the Royals must hate it! Playing Charles is Tim Piggott-Smith  (he of The Jewel in the Crown and many other tremendously good movies) who has just recently and unexpectedly died.

    I’ve still not been able to contact Bob directly but Jen’s Neil has spoken with him and all is well.