It’s Deb driving day. ?? On the road at 9am to explore the past, up to about 5000 years past. The Orkneys seem to be a bit like Adelaide – everything seems to be about 30 mins away (make that 20 mins in Adelaide).
Fog and rain greeted our day and continued all morning. So many tourists everywhere. Bus loads of them!
The countryside here, and that is most of the Islands, reminds us of scenes from British police shows set in the countryside or small country towns.
Our first stop was Skara Brae, a 5000 year old village. As we pulled in our driver exclaimed, “Oh, there’s a frigging bus here”, ? there were actually 3 buses, 7 when we left! We don’t like crowds. ?
Skara Brae is a Neolithic village of stone buildings. It was revealed after a huge storm in 1850 removed a lot of sand and soil from the coast revealing the remains of the village. The village consists of 8 houses and is Europe’s most complete Neolithic village. The houses have stone furnishings – beds (bed frames), storage and display structures. They have found many items of everyday life and items that seem to be purely decorative. Away from the village remains is a stand alone house preserved in near perfect form. It gave us a real appreciation for how people really lived over 5000 years ago. Also on the site was Skaill House, the family home of the man that found Skara Brae. The original part of the house was built in 1620, and it has been added onto through the generations of the family. Today the house is set up as a museum depicting how the family lived in the 1950’s. The house was handed over to Historic Scotland. It was interesting to see how life was back in the 50’s, (even had the pink bath ?) far more comfortable than 3200BC!
Next we went to the Neolithic henge and stone circle, Ring of Brodgar. The standing stones are laid out in a large diameter circle, maybe 100m, with a trench around the whole site about 5m further out from the stones. We were a little lucky here, we seemed to arrive between tourist coaches, so only had to share the site with about 20 others. Very hard to get photo’s without people in them! The site had a good feeling / good energy to it.
From there is was a short drive to The Ness of Brodger. It is an active archaeological site, with at least 20 people working on it. We were lucky to get there in time to hear a talk about the site given by one of the archaeologists. It was so interesting. He took us on a journey into the past talking about how the structures were built, what they were used for, a bit about the people and the reverence some areas of the site were shown. He talked about and showed us items that had been found there, from plates and pots to decorative ornamental stone axes. The theory goes, that with the advent of the Bronze age, the inhabitants of the site drifted away, and it was lost in time. For a small donation you could chose a 1m x 1m square on the site and have an update sent to you at the end of the year with what had been found in your bit of the dig! Our plot is J86, we are looking forward to some news on it.
Next it was time for our booked 1pm tour of Maeshowe (pronounced Maes Howe), a chambered cairn used in Neolithic times as a burial chamber / reverent place. It was very important from the time it was built. It was built on an imported clay base to seal it from the elements, it took 20 to 25 years to build (average life expectancy back then was 30 to 40 years). The structure was built from huge stones, some up to many tonnes in weight, and was designed such that the walls and roof were water tight. To this day no water enters the chamber through the walls. The Maeshowe appears to have been sealed and forgotten in time at the start of the Bronze Age with big changes happening in Neolithic mans culture. All the artefacts found when the Maeshowe was first opened by modern man in the mid 1800’s were left on a train and lost.The Vikings broke into the Maeshowe in the 1300’s, smashing a hole in the roof to get in. The story goes that a large number of Vikings took shelter from severe winter storms in the Maeshowe. While they were sheltering inside, some of the Vikings carved graffiti runes into the walls, one of them even carved a dragon which has become the symbol of the Maeshowe. All of the runes have been translated, many of the rune inscriptions are trivial mindless tomes, much like the graffiti of today.(apparently one of the inscriptions is for mature audiences only! Naughty Viking, lol). The roof was sympathetically repaired in Victorian times then a concrete dome put over that repair in more recent times. The engineering in the Maeshowe’s construction is amazing, with stone age tools (stone axes/hammers, bone and wood) that precisely cut the stone used in construction, transported and lifted massive stones into position. The entrance tunnel is about 1m high and 10m long, it has a triangular stone near the entrance that can be moved with little effort to seal the chamber from the inside. At sunset on the Winter Solstice the sun shines onto an angled standing stone (the Farmhouse Stone) some 500m away and is reflected down the entrance passageway of the Maeshowe and illuminates the whole chamber. It is absolutely worth getting yourself organised and booking this well in advance, only about 22 people can go on each tour.
Our final visit for the day was The Stones of Stenness. This Neolithic stone circle is thought to have consisted of 12 to 13 in one large circle with centre hearth and an alter just inside the stone circle on the north point. This circle has an energy to it, not quite as pronounced as The Ring of Brodgar. I felt the N/S axis here and the E/W axis in the lakes district. It was interesting to see that the Maeshowe was directly east from the hearth at the centre of these stones.
We came back to our hotel via the laundry, we now have clothes for the next couple of weeks. ?
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