Magic stones of Orkney

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This was published 15 years ago

Magic stones of Orkney

Ward Hill, the highest point in Orkney.

Ward Hill, the highest point in Orkney.Credit: Grant Dixon/Lonely Planet

Pagan rituals, ancient tombs and prehistoric villages draw Dugald Jellie to remote Scottish islands.

"The Orkney isles are such harsh country," she said, "there is such beauty there - the heather and the wild birds crying, and the great craigs and the magic stones."

"Magic stones?" asked Abigail.

Ruth Park's words ring in my ears as the ferry yaws and rolls in deep water and lingering dusk. Petrels dance on the stern draught like string puppets. Dolphins surf a ribbon wake that gleams the colour of whisky.

I leave the highlands behind, sailing from the northern tip of Scotland to an end of the world the Norse called Orkneyjar - seal islands - where wind and water and magic are said to chime together in mysterious anthem.

Already, I do not doubt it.

"That's your first Orkney island," says ship steward Dave Ogden, pointing starboard to the upright sandstone cliffs of Hoy.

"This one looks like it's broken off from Scotland. All them others are different. You'll see."

As I do, from the aft deck of Friday's last boat across the Pentland Firth, from Scrabster to Stromness, flush with locals and holidaymakers, backs to the sharp weather and shrieking as the dolphins break water in unison. The archipelago's largest island - the Mainland - eases into view low-lying and tipping into the water like a drunken sailor.

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"Westerlies bring the worst weather," Ogden says. "A treacherous piece of water through 'ere."

On the map, the Orkneys look like broken porcelain, spreading between the running tides of the Atlantic and North Sea - ancient stepping stones for Neolithic farmers and fishermen, for Picts and seafaring Vikings, a place of fable and pagan stone circles that are older even than Egypt's pyramids.

This faraway land was home also to Abigail's gran in Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow, a staple text for generations of Australian schoolchildren. In the book, it was a place of wonderment, where "winds go through you like a bodkin, taking a stitch or two on the way".

Britain has more than 7000 isles. Of those, 790 lie off the shores of Scotland, chiselled long ago by ice and splintered mostly into the Inner and Outer Hebrides, but also Skye and Mull, and here, off land's northernmost finger, the Orkneys. It's a geographical full-stop: as far as you can readily go on the British Isles without gulping too much seawater. I'm here alone, my first time in Scotland, the land of my forebears.

In the drama of these 70-odd islands, and in the archaeology of its World Heritage Neolithic monuments, I seek epiphanies. I wish this travel to be a transcendental experience, time removed from the everyday to reconsider priorities. I am looking for direction. I want to see magic.

But for now I need a hot meal. Darts and arguments and fishermen and stories go all round at Stromness Hotel. I feel at home. Here are the jutting chins, the fair-freckled skin, the idle banter of my people. They drink well into the night.

Stromness is a place where a skirring wind dries craypots stacked against stone houses; where Arctic whalers once moored; where fishergirls long ago cured and packed herring for shipment to Russia; where sailors crossing the Atlantic called on a northabouts route of Britain to pick up trade winds; where men with names like Flett and Keldie and Linklater have fished and tended cattle and grown barley and drunk whisky.

For three days on the Mainland, I visit sites of pagan ritual, stone houses dating from 3100 BC, read Norse graffiti runes etched in ancient tombs, step inside the pink canyon of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, learn about the arcane game of "ba" played by men at Christmas, talk to fishermen in yellow sou'westers unloading sacks of molluscs sold to Korea, put a pound in the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society collection box and walk on the split flagstones of the prehistoric village of Skara Brae.

I think of these Orcadians as a hardy lot, leaning into the weather, happy with their ways. "It's an amazing place is Orkney," a local tells me. "It's where people have always lived below the wind and above the water."

Orkney's UNESCO sites preserve landscapes of a Neolithic (New Stone Age) civilisation, its magic stones tilted well before those of Stonehenge.

At the Ring of Brodgar, a wide stone circle aligned to the mid-winter solstice, a young woman walks the perimeter anticlockwise - against the tourist trail - with dowsing rods between thumb and forefinger, picking up energy patterns. She's with her husband. They're from Derbyshire. They visited Orkney on honeymoon and are back for their first anniversary.

On the Brough of Birsay, a small tidal island off the Mainland's west coast, I lie on my tummy on a cliff top and watch fulmar petrels (here called mallimacks) spiral above broiling wave-wash. Seals far below bob on the water like bottles, all white flippers and lolling blubber.

The North Atlantic opens out before me, clear water all the way to the winter ice floes of Greenland and the northern tip of Labrador.

On the island I meet Orkney's head of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He says about 385 species have been counted in the islands, of which 116 breed locally. Bird-watching is big business here, an international crowd puller.

Later I find myself in a bird box looking for whooper swans. They arrive in winter from Iceland. Snow buntings migrate then also from the Arctic to feed on nearby stubble fields. I see none but am glad to be out of the wind.

Of all Orkney's history, all the peoples who've washed over this landscape, from the Norse Orkneyinga Saga to locals who signed up with the Hudson Bay Company in the 1700s and sailed for Rupert's Land (now part of Canada) to trade fur - of all the movement and displacement in this string of islands, nothing affects me as much as a Nissen hut on the isle of Lamb Holm fashioned into a simple Italian chapel.

It was built in 1942 by some of the 500 Italian POWs interned at Camp 60, most captured at Tobruk and Benghazi. They were sent to this remote outpost to construct the Churchill Barriers, a series of causeways protecting Scapa Flow from enemy attack.

Italians laboured on the works and left behind a makeshift church as a memento of Orkney's long and tragic wartime past.

In 1916, the cruiser HMS Hampshire left Scapa Flow bound for Russia with Lord Kitchener, the minister for war on board. It struck mines laid by a German U-boat off Marwick Head. Authorities prohibited locals and the Stromness lifeboat from rescuing survivors, fearing secret documents would be found. Of the 655 men, only 12 survived. Kitchener's body was never recovered.

The German High Seas Fleet, after World War I, was detained at Scapa Flow.

During Armistice talks at Versailles in 1919, Admiral von Reuter secretly ordered the fleet be scuttled by jamming watertight doors ajar and opening portholes and hatches.

All 74 ships sunk. Most were salvaged, but seven are submerged still and remain popular summer dive sites.

HMS Royal Oak lies on the seabed also, an official war grave marked by a green buoy. It was torpedoed in 1939 by a U-boat on a daring night raid at slack water, avoiding blockships, minefields and submarine cables.

Two rounds hit the battleship and sunk it within 15 minutes. Of its 1200 crew, 833 died. This loss prompted the construction of the barriers - linking islands south of the Mainland to create a safe moorage for the British Home Fleet - and by default created an enduring legacy between Orkney and the families of the young Italian men interned here. It's a poignant link. The chapel is one of Orkney's most-visited monuments. An Italian flag flaps stiffly in a hard southerly.

On my last night in Orkney, I camp in the wild. I seek the simple pleasure of being at one with the wind and water and natural world. I pitch a tent on a lowland commons, an ayre (bar) between two bays on the island of South Ronaldsay. The sky darkens. Rain falls and scratches the tent as I cook by candlelight in the door flap. Two mute swans glide on a stippled pond beside me.

At daybreak, on a smooth-pebbled beach on the south shores of Scapa Flow, I listen to the lap of water, to bird calls, to the distant bark of a farmer's dog, to a bunting wind blowing off Pentland Firth. Gulls cut gleaming arcs and circles against a clearing sky.

At noon, I am to catch a ferry from St Margaret's Hope back to Scotland.

The moon is still awake. A rainbow arcs on the water, my heart skips a beat and for a fleeting moment I think in this faraway watery land I have found a heaven on Earth.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

You can fly to Kirkwall, the Orcadian capital, with Loganair (www.britishairways.com) from Glasgow (80 min), Aberdeen (50 min), Edinburgh (80 min), Inverness (45 min) and from Shetland (35 min). Emirates flies to Glasgow, while many European airlines fly to all these Scottish airports. There are ferries to Orkney from Aberdeen (6hr), Scrabster (90 min), Gills Bay (60 min) or John O'Groats (40 min). See http://www.northlinkferries.co.uk, http://www.pentlandferries.com, http://www.jogferry.co.uk.

The best time to go is in May, June and September when the weather is milder: July and August are usually warm (average 12 degrees), but may also be wet. For accommodation see the "special offers" link at http://www.visitorkney.com or accommodation options on http://www.scotland-inverness.co.uk /orkney.htm.

While you're there

Tour the prehistoric sites, go bird-watching and learn about the maritime history at the Stromness museum. See http://www.visitorkney.com for all other tourist activities and information.

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