Exploring Ancient Orkney

Exploring Ancient

Orkney

by John Watson

‘Orkades’ The name Orkney has a long etymology. Pytheas named the place Orkas after the early Pictish or Celtic peoples’ name for the island.

Pliny the Roman historian referred to them as the Orkades and it is thought these names echo the Gaelic name Insi Orc - the island of the boars. From Mesolithic to Neolithic times the islands would have been a wooded paradise full of game and wild pigs, so this name is probably the oldest rendition. When the Vikings arrived in murdering hordes in the 780 CE, the Norsemen heard the name ‘Orc’ and assimilated this sound as their word for ‘seal’ which is Orkn. They added a suffix to give Orkneyjar which translated as ‘the seal islands’, not entirely inappropriate for by this era there were few trees left on the wind-scoured islands and even fewer boar. From Orkneyjar it is a lazy ellipsis to derive the modern Scots term Orkney.

Ancient Orkney

Orkney Timeline -8000 Ice Age retreat -7000 Arrival of hunter gatherers -5840 Tsunami strikes Scotland -3800 Farming arrives in Orkney -3600 Knap of Howar built -3200 Skara Brae populated -3100 Barnhouse built -3000 Tomb of the Eagles culture -2900 Stones of Stenness erected -2800 Maes Howe constructed -2500 Ring of Brodgar built -2200 Skara Brae abandoned -1800 Bronze Age begins -1400 Climate change to wetter conditions -1000 Brochs built and Iron Age begins - 385 Pytheas the Greek’s visit 0 Mine Howe in use +84 Agricola and Roman contact +100 Brochs fall into disuse +300 Pictish Orkney +580 Christianity arrives in form of Cormac +780 Viking Raids

Any visitor to Orkney goes through a time warp and emerges on the islands amongst the very houses and temples of our ancestors: Knap of Howar, Maes Howe, Brodgar, Stenness, Skara Brae, Broch of Gurness, the Tomb of the Eagles, Mid Howe. It is a recitation of our first places, where our earliest pre-Celtic ancestors walked the sunkissed turf and beaches, or stooped to finger the delicate purple flower of the Scottish Primrose some 5000 years ago.

The Orkney archipelago is the Neolithic heartland of Europe, where even today exciting new discoveries are being unearthed from the veil of thin topsoil archaeologists are yearly revealing a lost world of sophisticated Stone Age life and what appears to be a Neolithic ‘centre of power’ recently discovered between the iconic stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar. It is becoming apparent that Orkney and its fifteen inhabited islands was once as thriving, populous and sophisticated as the contemporary Egyptian civilization of the Great Pyramids.

Flying into Kirkwall through towering thunderclouds, the dappled archipelago below gives no clue as to its ancestral import - it looks for all the world like a collection of broken green plates that some giant has discarded into the sea off the tip of Caithness. Only the odd long stony shadow suggests that this land will only make sense at eye-level.

The Orkney Islands There are 70 islands in the archipelago of Orkney with the main inhabited islands described south to north as: South Ronaldsay, Hoy, Flotta, Burray, Mainland, Shapinsay, Stronsay, Wyre, Egilsay, Rousay, Eday, Sanday, Westray, Papa Westray (aka Papay) and North Ronaldsay. They lie 10 miles off the north east coast of Scotland, separated by the Pentland Firth, and sit on a shallow sea-shelf 53 miles long and 23 miles wide. Most islands are low-lying mirages on the horizon, though Hoy rises to a height of 479m and has tremendous cliffs on its north west flank, including the famous Old Man of Hoy sea stack.

The archipelago has have been occupied for around 9 millenia and the big skies and empty spaces belie a deep and intricate human history. Hunter gatherers first arrived after the Ice Age retreat in around 7000 BCE and society gradually moved through the millenia and ages, from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic to the Bronze and iron Ages, into the Viking era around 800 CE. Modern Orkney is a busy oil hub as well as a tourist mecca nurturing our earliest civilizations.

Orkney Islands 1. Mine Howe 2. Maes Howe 3. Stones of Stenness 4. Ring of Brodgar 5. Skara Brae 6. Broch of Gurness 7. Mid Howe Broch 8. Tomb of the Eagles

North Ronaldsay Papa Westray

Westray Sanday Rousay Eday

7 Egilsay

Mainland

6

Wyre

Stronsay

5 Shapinsay

4

2

Auskerry

Kirkwall

3 1

Stromness

Hoy

SCAPA FLOW Flotta

Burray

South Ronaldsay

PENTLAND FIRTH

8

Caithness

Mapping Copyright Stone Country

The summer solstice sun skims under the northern horizon prior to rising over the Stones of Stenness...

Orkney Prehistory

Mine Howe

The great Greek traveller Pytheas visited these islands in 325 BCE on his search for the mythical frozen land of ‘Thule’, discovering a long-established culture.

He describes the archipelago as the tip of the triangular land of Pretannike (Britain) and gives us the root of the Latin name for the island group which ‘extends out into the open sea and is named Orkas’. He surely would have been shown the great standing stone circles of Brodgar and Stenness, which at that time were already 2000 years old. To the impressionable eyes of Pytheas, these venerable stone sites would have belittled the history of even his burgeoning empire. By the Christian Era, Orkney had long been trading with Europe and exchanging ideas, culture and goods: this land was a maritime hub rather than a remote backwater. So how long had this contact existed? The answer appears to be ever since the first hunters and travellers arrived here after the Ice Age - they were Europeans.

Near the airport at Tankerness, and at odds with all this modernity, is a recently discovered Iron Age site of huge mystery and significance known as ‘Mine Howe’, which is a suggestive starting point on the journey back to a Neolithic civilization. A BBC Time-Team first helped excavate this hobbit-like mound of grass and earth in 2000, which curious farmer Douglas Paterson had explored the year before on the back of earlier excavation notes from 1946. A deep and mysterious set of 29 stone steps lead down into an isolated dark chamber with a conical ‘steeple’ above. What was its purpose? Its fine architecture of corbelled stones and plinths, as well as its beautiful spiral construction, suggested a deep spiritual significance rather than a common larder or storehouse. A rather foreboding modern shack now squats over the entrance at the top of the green mound or ‘howe’, inviting the visitor down into the depths.

The descent is a narrow squeeze and leads to a drippy cistern - any voices echo and reverberate in the claustrophobic dark and from above this may have sounded like the voice of the Earth, leading some to suggest it had a druidical significance. A dog skull discovered on the first floor echoes the totemic culture of the nearby Finstown ‘Tomb of the Dogs’. Along with bones, ashes, pottery, broken stone hammers and the detritus of late Neolithic/early Iron Age life, an item of huge significance was found: a delicate round fibula brooch from the Roman empire. Its simple but pleasing two-tone design confirms that Orkney was a European member and a metallurgical centre of excellence - this site was an industrious smithy and many crucibles were found in the ruins. The Mine Howe brooch now informs modern Orcadian jewelry design. You can read more about the brooch and Mine Howe in the interpretation centre (an informative Portacabin) and collect your hard hat and torch for the descent into the Earthreverent mind of the early Orcadian.

Scotland was largely free of the grip of the Ice Age by around 8000 BCE and the temperature warmed to around an average much like our present era.

This led to lush forest growth over most of Scotland including Orkney and eventually a drier climate before wetter and peatier conditions around 1400 BCE. The retreat of the ice and the rebound of sunken land in the Mesolithic era meant that Britain was connected umbilically to Europe - a large swathe of land bridging Holland to England once existed over the Dogger Bank. From here hunter/fisher people found it easy to travel the densely forested coast of Britain by boat, setting up coastal homes and gradually moving northward.

Orkney was maybe the last stage of this wandering, but it would have been an attractive land with rich marine life, sheltered patches of woodland containing wild hogs and deer, natural harbours and an ample supply of easily quarried flagstone for buildings. The Mesolithic hunter gatherers are estimated to have arrived on Orkney around 7000 BCE (the earliest carbon dated hazelnut shell from Longhowe), but their coastal settlements are now submerged and buried by higher sea levels so evidence of these early lives on Orkney is scarce.

Also, in 5840 BCE a destructive tsunami hit eastern Scotland and no doubt washed catclysmically over the low islands of Orkney. Orkney’s later Neolithic environment, however, is still impressively visible on the current coastline and in its fertile low amphitheatres such as that around Loch Harray, which would have favoured early barley and crop production once this technology was imported from Europe around 3800 BCE. The stone circles, stone villages, brochs and burial howes that we see today are remarkably well preserved blueprints of a civilization that evolved to its height around 3000 BCE, before the Bronze Age and Iron Age brought foreign visitation, trade, weapons, war, defensive structures and a more insecure world culminating in the Viking era.

Knap of Howar On the remote northern island of Papa Westray, reached by a minute-long flight from the neighbouring Westray - the shortest flight in the world - there lies our earliest ancestral home: the Knap of Howar. Much like an earlier version of Skara Brae, the houses hunker against the wild coastline but we now know that when it was constructed - around 3800 BCE - the village was further inland protected by dunes.

The lower sea levels meant the island would have been connected in a horseshoe bay to the main island of Westray. Evidence for this includes oyster shell middens oysters require sheltered bays and the current coastline is a lot more open to the elements forbidding such marine gardens. Barley and wheat grains discovered here show early farming was being practised and separate ‘workhouse’ rooms may have been used to hold livestock. The houses would have been covered by a frame made from timber or whalebone and tiled with turf weighted down with roped stones, much like the later Hebridean ‘blackhouse’ roofing. The Knap of Howar village would originally have been sheltered behind now-vanished sand dunes, echoing the situation found at Skara Brae. Inside the main house there still sits the worn barley quern or grinding stone and it looks for all the world like the family will be back at any minute, chatting away and carrying the day’s harvest home for dinner.

Skara Brae Within the broad arms of Skaill Bay on the west Mainland lies a sheltered lagoon bay which held a secret for millennia, until the sea-levels began to rise and eat into the dunes. In 1850, a great storm revealed an intricate wall system under the sands which prompted the Laird of Skaill House - a curious William Watt - to excavate a number of round stone houses with intact stone furniture. The site was eventually completely excavated by the archaeologist Gordon Childe: from 1928 to 1930 he diligently revealed a complete stone village of ten houses that we now revere as one of the world’s most perfectly preserved Neolithic jewels: Skara Brae. Radio carbon dating shows us this village was occupied between 3200 and 2200 BCE before being abandoned, possibly due to encroaching seas.

The village in its day would have sat beside a fresh water lagoon behind a sheltering dune system which gave access to a rich shoreline. The village itself is embedded in sand and midden piles of discarded sea shells - this was a common Neolithic practise to shore up walls and provide insulation in winter, though to our modern sensibilities it would have reeked to high heaven!

Walking round and above the village on its raised walkways, looking into the now roofless homes, it is enlightening to discover a complex architecture existing in Neolithic times to confound our prejudice of a retarded ‘Stone Age’. The sophistication of the stone furniture, the economical layout and sheltered open plan suggests a community at one with its environment, intrinsically solid and communal in spirit. The situation is so perfect and the homes so well dressed that moving in today wouldn’t seem so unattractive!

Each room is connected by covered walkways and alleys. Entering the round house by a narrow doorway leads the visitor into the open centre of family life: a stone hearth in the middle with boxed bed recesses on the left and right, as well as an elegant two-tier stone dresser at the head of the house where food, clothes and valuables would have been stored. In summer on Neolithic Orkney, it is easy to imagine children running round the alleys of the houses and a modern community preparing for seasonal festivals at the nearby Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness. Skara Brae shows us that despite 5000 years, not much has changed!

The Stones of Stenness Some of the tallest and most impressive of European neolithic stone circles, the Stones of Stenness are clearly visible once descending the road from Kirkwall into Stromness. Situated in a natural amphitheatre of low hills and lakes, this entrancing site once had a ring-ditch surrounding the stones, allowing a sort of ‘VIP access’ from the north, framing the hills of Hoy in the background. The nearby neolithic village of Barnhouse now reveals a sophisticated architectural culture existing around 3000 BCE which conceived and built this astonishing array of proud stones and the remarkably geometric stone houses on the banks of Loch Harray. The village is open plan and it takes little imagination to see how cohesive the society would have been: large family buildings with central hearths and a communal open area echoes the nearby cultural hive of Skara Brae. At some point, these people decided to mark their landscape with the giant stones and celebrate their by-then ancient connection to the land. They must have been capable of transporting the stones (up to 6m high) across Orkney, implying deep spiritual and physical resources, technical engineering and a successful hierarchical society to organise all the skills involved. They took pride in their landscape, framing their great stone symbols in the fertile heart of Orkney, on the isthmus sandwiched between Loch Harray and Loch Stenness (the meeting of fresh and salt water). Visiting the stones at dawn on the solstice, the sun travels just under the northern hills to bathe the stones in sudden dawn light, trailing giant shadows to the south. The enclosed space of the stone circle, with its fire hearth in the middle, suggests a place of ritual meaning and celebration. The impression is one of deep connections and centrality within the Orcadian universe, the stones giving a reverberant sense of ancestral time as well as place.

The Ness of Brodgar A recent archaeological discovery, this site has just been unearthed on the cusp of the isthmus causeway between Stenness and Brodgar. Its centrality and huge emerging scale suggest a central temple which forms the spiritual and physical hub to this giant Neolithic arena. In 2003 a crafted stone was discovered and further excavation revealed classic Neolithic stonework and a large elliptical structure with a giant blocking wall. The 30m diameter of the main building and the monumental wall suggests this was not a domestic house but more of an early castle or temple, maybe housing local royalty or at least acting as a meeting centre for the rituals associated with nearby Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. Originally these stone circle sites along with Maes Howe were considered the core and centre of all Neolithic activity, but this new discovery on the Ness of Brodgar may be a wheel within wheels and indeed the hidden heart of Neolithic Orkney.

Maes Howe The burial cairn of Maes Howe, along with the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, forms the centrepiece of the UNESCO World Heritage Site which was granted to Orkney in 1999. On first glimpse it is easily overlooked, appearing much like a small hill in the middle of cow-fields, but this innocuous exterior hides a startling and revealing Neolithic interior. It is so precious that guided tours must be booked to visit the interior and any wandering hands are sharply rapped as the stone work and art is too delicate for the crush and wear of human curiosity. The mound itself has a low cave-like entrance with neatly joined flagstones and a rocking ‘door’ stone which could easily be shifted on its axis to block the entrance again on exit. The low entrance leads in ten meters to a sudden open interior of perfectly corbelled flagstones rising to a conical point, much like a premonition of later Renaissance cathedrals.

However, something exotic and electric alerts the senses much like the interior of an Egyptian pyramid – three perfectly square holes in the west, north and east walls lead off into small hidden antechambers where once the bones of the Neolithic dead were laid. Long since robbed and graffiti’d by the Vikings (humorous runes are scratched everywhere) the reverence of this Neolithic tomb is still overwhelming, especially around the winter solstice, when the dawn sun rises and beams down the entrance corridor in a feat of deliberate engineering that takes the breath away. The golden glow and shaft of winter light beams across the floor and onto the north wall, where once intoned voices would have sanctified the symbolic light of one year passing into the next. This can be viewed online as a podcast at www.maeshowe. co.uk Maybe because of its underwhelming exterior, Maes Howe is an unforgettable experience and the most resonant of the Neolithic sites on Orkney. Preserved so well despite the physical and human ravages of 5000 years, it is an echo of a more perfect world in harmony with its landscape, burying its dead in a chamber so perfectly conceived that the Pharaohs would have been impressed.

Maes Howe

The Ring of Brodgar Approaching the great Ring of Brodgar stone circle from the south we take the same road our ancestors would have walked at ceremonial times. On leaving the Stones of Stenness, the land here narrows to an isthmus marked by the giant ‘Watchstone’. The isthmus is crossed by a causeway between the two lochs, rising gently to a plateau of mounds and the Ring itself: a 130 metre diameter Circle containing 36 of 60 original standing stones. On the long processional walk along the nipped machair turf, the circle appears in silhouette ahead, like a small army gathered on a rise and watchful of those who approach.

On closer inspection it is awe-inspiring in its scale and construction: some of the stones up to 6m high would have taken monumental team efforts to quarry and transport from one of the clifftop quarries on the coast. Some of the stones have been identified as stone from the Skara Brae area at Skaill, where flagstone sills allow easy quarrying and a relatively nearby source for ease of transport. Like Stenness, Brodgar is a ‘henge’ structure or enclosed ditch stone circle. The ditch runs the entire circumference of the stones and has two causeway bridges to the walkway round the stones. Outside the henge ditch lie giant and silent ‘howes’ or cairn tombs, as well as subsidiary stones and circles, which intimate this place was of great ancestral meaning. The stones themselves - of varying sizes, colours, shapes and character - suggest the individual nature of varying times, anthropomorphic contours suggesting prominent leaders or the nobility of kings and queens. The giant and wheeling ring of stones speaks more to our imagination than to a definitive purpose. These stones are the frozen ghosts of neolithic Orkney, unable to speak to us, but mutely standing in place of grander times and ancestral proclamations.

Ring of Brodgar

Tomb of the Eagles On the very tip of South Ronaldsay, on the Isbister clifftops overlooking the Pentland Firth and the distant lands of Caithness, lies one of our culture’s ‘luckiest finds’. In 1958, local farmer Ronnie Simpson was pulling up flagstones on the clifftop when he unearthed some curious artifacts.

Digging deeper he discovered a chambered hole which led him into an echoing dark chamber. Flicking his lighter the chamber flooded with light to reveal the gawping eyes and deathly grins of 30 human skulls.

Ronnie kept this to himself a while, studied archaeology and digging techniques, then proceeded to unearth what we now call the Tomb of the Eagles. It is a late Neolithic burial chamber which was in operation from 3100 to 2300 BCE. Its low entrance chamber can now be crawled along to the reverent echoes of the chambered cairn itself. Its annexed burial chambers still flare thrillingly when a lighter is struck, though they are now a little disapointingly empty of course! Some of the original contents are still on display at the excellent interpretation centre on the farm where you can handle the skulls of your own ancestors and puzzle over the purpose and nature of their artifacts. Amongst the human remains were also found the bones of 14 White-Tailed Sea Eagles which were once common on Orkney and are now being re-introduced on the Islands.

These magnificent birds identify these people of Isbister as totemic and worshipping the Sea Eagle, which would have given them obvious identity and kudos within the Islands, as well as ensuring boundaries and territory was respected. Evidence was found that the human bones were ‘excarnated’ on platforms on the open clifftops, where eagles and carrion crow would eat their fill of human flesh. The weather-scoured bones would then be transferred to the burial chambers only to be unearthed after 5 millenia of darkness and oblivion to tell their intricate story of soul and landscape. The tomb itself is built to echo the body and outstretched wings of an Eagle, perched on the very edge of the clifftop as though about to take flight into the mythical air. It is a magical site and resonates powerfully, especially in a summer storm when dark clouds obscure the headlands and lightning crackles in the Pentland Firth. If you make it to this outpost of early humanity, scan the skies for eagles - they may have returned to Isbister!

Tomb of the Eagles...

Mid Howe Broch...

Mid Howe & the Brochs By the Bronze Age around 1800 BCE, Orkney was trading with Europe, as Bronze required copper and tin imports. This continued throughout the islands and into the Iron Age around 600 BCE. Throughout this millennium, life on the islands was becoming harsher due to a climate change to wetter and colder seasons. We see the growth of ‘Burnt Mounds’ - small communal areas with a large stone-basin hearth where water was heated for cooking and/or bathing, which would have relieved the commonly recorded condition of arthritis, from which so many Orcadians suffered in the inhospitable winters. The weather continued to close in and peat blankets began to rise like black doughy bread on the low hills and spread over the once grassy plains. Farming became territorial as people moved into the lower lands and it is likely exodus or war was part of most Bronze and Iron Age experiences. However, a large population remained and worked weapons with their new metallurgy skills in the Iron Age smithies such as Mine Howe. They also began to build sturdier and more defensive houses, what we now call ‘Brochs’. These became the dominant fortified village structure around 100 BCE and were sited on prime coastal harbours or strategic points. These giant tiered houses were effectively round castles with double-walling and an architecture which suggested a fierce and stoic nature, possibly against invaders as much as the elements. Their remarkable geometric structures have allowed them to stand almost intact ever since, aside from the stone subtractions of weather and robbery! Sheltered gardens were fenced off with rock walls, livestock were kept on the ground floor and the massive tiered levels of the house echoed the prestige of the owner. This society was reasonably stable as evidence of a strong farming culture outlasted the need for the brochs by about 100 CE. Life within the embrace of the Broch society would have been industrious and prolific, despite the poor weather.

Modernity was coming to Orkney - the dead were buried in simple ‘cists’ and chambers which echo the ‘convenience’ of modern graveyards, such as the impressive communal tomb at Mid Howe on Rousay. Stratified society began to appear and the idea of a ‘clan’ and ‘chief’ probably began around this time as ordinary farming families required protection and desired the benefits of territorial loyalty. The later Scottish landuse of ‘lairdship and the tenanted estate’ is not far from this ideal! Possibly the best examples of the Broch culture can be found at two brochs on opposing island coasts at Gurness on Mainland and Mid Howe on Rousay.

One can only imagine the watchful and seaward eye of Broch chiefs on the mezzanines of these giant roundhouses, gazing through dark storms and wondering at the intentions of foreign shores... the Christians and Vikings were but a few centuries distant.

The Watchstone guarding the Isthmus entrance...