Hoy, Stromness, Deerness, and Trowies

A final roundup of photos & stories (fiddlers beware!) from Orkney

On our journey to the north of Scotland, we’ve so far reached as far as Orkney, the islands just north of the mainland. They’re full of beauty, music, and thousands of years of history. We saw the neolithic Tomb of the Eagles, the town of Kirkwall with its 12th century sandstone cathedral, and next door to it, the former musical and social hub called The Reel, which was directed by the great musical duo the Wrigley Sisters. We also visited Douglas Montgomery, a fine fiddler who is one half of the duo Saltfish Forty, and lives not far from the amazing Italian chapel intricately painted inside a double-length Nissen hut by Italian POWs during World War II.

We could have spent lots more time visiting the neolithic sites that underlie much of Orkney but did get a sense of some of the standing stones, the Maeshowe chambered cairn, the surprising discoveries at the Ness of Brodgar and Skara Brae, and the stolid stones of the Ring of Brodgar that have towered over the landscape for millennia.

Before we leave Orkney for Shetland, I’d like to share photos of a few more places we saw there.

First, we’ll take a short boat ride to the large island of Hoy in the southwest of Orkney. This is the location of the iconic Old Man of Hoy, a stack that many go there to see (you might recall the stacks at Duncansby in Caithness). We didn’t quite get that far on our walk, but below on the left is a great photo courtesy of Northlink Ferries, who run large overnight ferries between Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland. We did run into some hikers and rock climbers, though, who had just climbed to the top of the Old Man stack and back down again.

To the right of that photo is the view of Hoy as our boat arrived.

On our walk there we came across gorgeous views such as seen below. The middle photo is a blue butterfly I spotted — maybe someone knows the name of it?

The photo on the right shows a very tall waterfall (seen here from very far away) streaming constantly into the sea. I was told there is a view of this waterfall in the 2016 Spielberg movie BFG (Big Friendly Giant).

Near Hoy, on the mainland of Orkney (i.e., the largest island, where Kirkwall and many of the neolithic excavations are located), is the lovely town of Stromness. Here is where the great Scottish poet and author, George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) lived and wrote poetry, novels, short stories, and plays. I recommend his work — it’s innovative, insightful and very readable.

Below to the left is a photo of a Stromness street. It’s a small but really nice town built by the sea and partly up a hill. Like Kirkwall, the stones of the main roads double as both streets and walkways.

In the center is a photo I took at the art museum there. One of the nicest framed works were the windows, with their bright views of the surrounding scenery!

On the right is a plaque placed on an old well.

That well was sealed in 1931, but it was where ships of the Hudson Bay Trading Company made their last stop to fill up with water (and probably also to add Orcadian sailors and workers) before heading over to Canada between 1670 and 1891. Many Orcadians worked for Hudson Bay Trading, which at one point pretty much controlled a huge swath of North America. The plaque also points out that Capt Cook’s vessels used that well before departing across the Atlantic in 1780, as did John Franklin before his fateful 1845 exploration of the Northwest Passage in Arctic Canada.

Inside the Stromness historical museum are many displays of wildlife, and artifacts from the Hudson Bay Trading Company, such as the beaded moccasins shown below.

On the right, also on display in the museum, is one of my favorite signs. It threatens all drivers of horse, cart, or carriage, that if they exceed four miles an hour in the town of Stromness, they will be prosecuted for Furious Driving and charged 40 shillings for each offense!

One of the heroes of Orkney was John Rae (1813-1893). We saw a reclining marble statue of him in the cathedral in Kirkwall; he is buried outside the cathedral in the churchyard. Rae worked as a surgeon for the Hudson Bay Trading Company, treating Europeans and indigenous workers alike. He learned from the native people how to live like them, designed his own snowshoes, and was well known for his extensive explorations on foot and by boat while living off the land.

Below is a display of John Rae’s fiddle, and in the middle, a copy of a tune commissioned from Orcadian fiddler Jennifer Wrigley to honor Rae’s 200th birthday. On the right are several unusual items, including a metal violin!

Now let’s take a jaunt to the east side of Orkney, to Deerness, where the Wrigleys grew up. There, we took a beautiful loop walk by the coast and up through fields, at one point coming across the ruins of a 10th century chapel.

Below is a gloup we came across on that walk. This kind of geological formation is related to the geo we saw at Duncansby, except geos are sharp-edged, steep inlets cut by the sea. A gloup is enclosed by land — the sea manages to cut its way underground into a channel while leaving the ground above the channel intact. But a short ways inland, the roiling water cuts out a cave, causing the collapse of the land above it. Eventually, the seaward side of the gloup will presumably collapse too, and the formation will become a geo, open to the sea. Gloups are odd because you feel like you are on land, standing at the edge of a deep pit, but then you hear the surf roar in through a tunnel far below. In some gloups, the sea comes in and out underwater, so you can’t even see or hear it.

The view on the left is from the seaward side; the view on the right is looking back toward the sea and you can spot the little cave at the bottom where the water comes in and out. If you look closely, you can also see two figure at the top, directly above the cave. Those are people, just for scale.

Below are some views of the coastal part of our Deerness walk. Just amazing views everywhere. Again, on the left, you can barely spot a person standing on top of the rock, to give you a sense of how huge that cliff is.

The lower left photo, above, is one I took of some of the rocks we walked on — like a striated sidewalk, and almost scaly-looking.

Finally, I’ll share a few photos of the little strip of sand that connects the mainland of Orkney to Deerness. This strip is called Dingieshowe (pronounced Ding-gis-how-ee, as you’ll hear in the story linked below). The name indicates it was an important assembly ground for the Vikings.

It’s a beach with a large mound above it, underneath which are many layers of neolithic and later settlements.

The mound also gave rise to many stories of the trowies, who like to live in little mounds and come out at dusk. They apparently have greater power in midwinter and midsummer, especially in places which are neither land nor sea, like the part of the beach exposed by low tide.

I brought out my fiddle and played a few tunes there at Dingieshowe, inspired by some of the stories of fiddlers who have played there. One was named Tam Bichan, a well-known fiddler in the area, until the day he decided to enjoy playing music on that beach, and was approached by a five-year-old. Well, not really a five-year-old — this small person had a long gray beard and moustache. It was a trow, one of the magical little people.

The trow liked Tam’s playing very much, and invited him to come inside the mound to play for a trowie dance party that night. Deep inside the mound was a chamber where Tam was seated on top of a large keg of heather ale. He was given as much as he wanted to drink of this ale. It tasted absolutely delicious and made him play better than ever.

The problem with playing for a trowie party is that when you come out in the morning, more time has passed than a single night. In some trowie stories, the fiddler emerges only to discover that the world around him is a century older and he is not. In Tam’s case, he learns that after playing one night for the trowies, he has actually been away for 14 years.

If you’d like to hear this story told by an Orcadian storyteller, here’s a link for you! The storyteller’s name is Tom Muir; he has a site full of info and tales of Orkney. At the end of the story, he points out the similarity to Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.” As it happened, Irving’s father came from Orkney, and no doubt told his young son lots of stories from back home.

The photos below were taken at the Dingieshowe beach. The one in the middle is of a dead gannet and a dead puffin, victims of the avian flu that was rampant at the time we were there.

I’ll leave you with another image from that beach, as the sun was just going to sleep for the night.