Neolithic Orkney

A UNESCO World Heritage Site

Standing stones still stand in many parts of the Celtic world, in areas where people have lived continuously since the last Ice Age. How were these gigantic stones carved? How were they transported? How did people have time to even create such huge community projects?

There are still very few answers to these questions. There’s evidence that people lived in Orkney as far back as 13,000 years ago. Farming came in about 5600 years ago, and archaeologists have unearthed 5000-year-old homes and cairns built of both timber and stone. It is known that the climate of Orkney was a few degrees warmer in neolithic times than it is today, so they may have farmed more diverse and plentiful crops, giving them more time to engage in major community projects.

Enormous and sophisticated buildings have been discovered at the Ness of Brodgar site in Orkney, which was unknown before 2003. It’s a place where many generations of inhabitants constructed, revised and built on top of older buildings, designing sewer systems, multipurpose halls up to 75 feet long, and smaller buildings used for various purposes, often with incised decorations. Evidence was uncovered of a final feast that might have fed 2000 people, considering that the archaeologists found 400 leg bones ceremonially laid out, each representing a different cattle-like animal that had been roasted. This animal was larger than modern cattle but smaller than their ancestor, the extinct aurochs, and may have been a hybrid of the two. It is thought that the giant feast may have celebrated the end of the site’s many centuries of use. It appears they filled it in soon after the feast. What made them move away? We don’t know.

Below are a few photos from our tours of the Ness of Brodgar. It’s impossible to describe the significance of the site’s discoveries in the little space I have here, but you may wish to explore the Ness of Brodgar website, which has dig diaries, articles and photos.

The middle photo is of the dig director telling us fascinating background information about the many buildings they’ve uncovered. Each time we visited the site, we were told how difficult it has been to control the degradation of the stones because exposing them to air made them brittle. Many dilemmas came up as they hoped to learn more about older buildings but they were located beneath the later buildings, so excavating them threatened to destroy the newer construction.

The leaders of the dig have decided to end their excavations after the summer of 2024, even though they know that they’ve only viewed a portion of what’s there. By filling in the entire site, they hope to preserve its treasures until a future year when technology can allow archaeologists to explore the site without destroying its contents. We were lucky to have been able to visit it and learn about it from the director of the dig and others. It’s just amazing the amount of information they uncovered since 2003, changing many perceptions of the history of western Europe in the neolithic age.

Speaking of changing perceptions, it was just recently discovered that the altar stone at Stonehenge was not made from Welsh rock as has always been assumed, but actually came from rock of the Orcadian Basin. This geological area includes all of Orkney, goes north underwater as far as the southwestern tip of Shetland, and south into Caithness, down to Inverness and a short ways along the coast east of Inverness. Somehow the 6-ton altar stone was transported 800-900 miles down to Stonehenge. Of course, this had to be done by sea. Given that Stonehenge was built later than many structures in Orkney, it may be that the altar stone was carved in Orkney, placed on a boat, and sailed down either the west or east coast of Britain to the center of the south coast of England near Bournemouth, which is less than 40 miles from Stonehenge.

Above is a view of two 5000-year-old homes at Skara Brae, a site which was exposed in 1850 by an angry sea during a severe storm. Excavation revealed an egalitarian community where no home was larger than another. Each had a central hearth, stone shelving, thin slabs of stone for bedroom walls, and they weren’t content with everything being a drab stone color — they painted their shelving red for decoration.

Pottery found at the site had distinctive decorative markings, which classify it as “grooved pottery.” This type of ceramic was also found at Maeshowe, a monumental chambered cairn about 7 miles away, on the other side of the Ness of Brodgar. That whole strip is referred to as the “heart of neolithic Orkney” and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

Monumental chambered cairns such as Maeshowe date to 5000 years ago, but many unanswered questions still remain about them. Maeshowe is a mound some 25 feet high and over 100 feet in diameter, as you can see above. It is surrounded by a circle of field, outside of which was a circular wall and ditch without any indication of an entrance, raising questions as to whether it was intended to be used once it was built. The long entrance to the inner chamber is only about 3 feet high, lined with 36-foot long single stones serving as walls and roof. These are basically horizontal standing stones, weighing about 30 tons each.

There’s evidence that the passage was blocked by a heavy triangular stone. Some say this partial blocking served to focus the rays of the sun during winter solstice, turning it into a spotlight when, during the 2 weeks on either side of the winter solstice, the sun reaches down the long entrance corridor and lights up the back wall of the tomb. For many years, starting in 1997, there was a webcam set up to let people view the lighting of the wall during winter solstice via internet. I am not sure if the webcam is still in operation today, but more info about the site and its solstice alignment can be found at this YouTube link.

It appears that the alignment with the sun may have been set up by the square of four pillars inside Maeshowe, one in each corner. These appear to have been standing stones that may long predate the building of the tomb itself. Interestingly, these standing stone pillars serve no architectural purpose, supporting none of the structure, so it appears they may have been incorporated into the building, perhaps out of reverence for the ancient stones.

In the 12th century, Viking crusaders broke into Maeshowe, apparently escaping a blizzard, and spent enough days there to cover the walls with graffiti, just like a modern day men’s room, except their graffiti consisted of medieval runes. These runes were written in two different systems, as shown below.

The runes at top are even signed by the writer; they say “Crusaders broke into Maeshowe. Hlif, the Earl’s cook.” The runes below it show the alphabet of a different kind of coded rune, where the number of lines on the left show which one-third of the alphabet the letter comes from, and the number of lines on the right show which letter it is. Sometimes the rune-writer would write these tree-like runes backwards or reverse the sections of the alphabet, just to make the writing more cryptic, or to enhance their reputation. In Maeshowe, one writer used these elegant runes in order to boast that he was the “best rune-writer of the western ocean.”

Another set of runes in the tomb is written high above the doorway and reads, “I can write higher than anyone.” Another rune uses lewd puns to refer to a woman among them. Others speak of treasure, or allude to sagas and poetry.

Several drawings were also carved by the Vikings into the interior stones of Maeshowe, including an elegant stylized lion. When we first visited the site, we could inspect all these carvings as closely as we wished; in later visits, we were not allowed to get to close, for fear of eroding the carvings. Now the entire site is closed to the public.

There are more fascinating ancient sites in Orkney than I have space to write about. Between Maeshowe and the Ness of Brodgar is a settlement called Barnhouse. Below are a couple of photos from there.

Beyond that is the Watchstone, a huge standing stone right at the edge of the water and of the road leading toward the Ness of Brodgar excavation. Below at left is that stone, and on the right a field of several others nearby.

Beyond the Ness of Brodgar site is the Ring of Brodgar, a huge circle of standing stones surrounded by the usual ditch that always seems to have been built around stone circles. Of course, people usually speculate that the ditch had a religious or defensive purpose. I like Dorothy’s theory that the ditch was simply worn into the soil by the feet of generations of dancers circling the stones in regular dance parties! Why not? After all, why do anthropologists always presume everything they find was part of a religious ritual? This mindset reminds me of the parody book Motel of the Mysteries, which lays out a scenario in which avalanches of junk mail bury our civilization, and 5000 years later, archaeologists uncover a motel. They speculate that we revered animals because they find ruined metal vehicles outside the hotel with animal names like Impala, Barracuda, Mustang, Beetle, and Colt. Inside, the religious shrine is obvious to them, since all chairs in each room faced a special box with a screen. A round ring-type object found in a small attached room, on a seat next to a special water tub, was presumed to be a sacred collar that must have been worn at religious rituals, of course!

Below are some photos of the standing stones of the Ring of Brodgar. In the first one, see if you can tell which is Dorothy and which is the standing stone... and in the second one, which one is my daughter? Prizes for the right answer!

I’ll finish today with a beautiful view from Skara Brae.