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.