Orkney: Stones of Stenness, Ring of Brodgar, Broch of Gurness, Italian Chapel-Scottish Isles and Glens

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Ring of Brodgar

After a wild weather night on Orkney (lashing rain, gale force winds) and after some much needed coffee, our crew is ready to explore some of the Neolithic sites on Orkney.

The rain has let up some but the winds are still roaring, not 50 MPH but a good solid 20-30 MPH. 

Our first stop is to The Stones of Stenness. The standing stones are part of the "Heart of Neolithic Orkney" which consists of Skara Brae, Maeshowe, The Stones of Stenness, and The Ring of Brodgar. These 5,000 year old structures are examples of what the Neolithic people could do with stone.

The Stones of Stenness consist of  four upright stones that originally had 12 stones.


The surviving stones are sited on a promontory at the south bank of the stream that joins the southern ends of the sea loch Loch of Stenness and the freshwater Loch of Harray. The name, which is pronounced stane-is in Orcadian dialect, comes from Old Norse meaning stone headland.


Although the site today lacks the encircling ditch and bank, excavation has shown this site was a henge monument, possibly the oldest in the British Isles.
 
Even in the 18th century the site was still associated with traditions and rituals, by then relating to Norse gods. It was visited by Walter Scott in 1814. Other antiquarians documented the stones and recorded local traditions and beliefs about them. One stone, known as the "Odin Stone" which stood in the field to the north of the henge,was pierced with a circular hole, and was used by local couples for plighting engagements by holding hands through the gap. It was also associated with other ceremonies and believed to have magical power.


In December 1814 Captain W. Mackay, a recent immigrant to Orkney who owned farmland in the vicinity of the stones, decided to remove them on the grounds that local people were trespassing and disturbing his land by using the stones in rituals. He started in December 1814 by smashing the Odin Stone. This caused outrage and he was stopped after destroying another stone and toppling a third.


Remember the famous standing stones of Stonehenge were built around 3100 years ago so these stones predate Stonehenge by 2000 years!



Now that our archeological juices are flowing, we head to The Ring of Brodgar.

We drive by the ongoing excavation site, Ness of Brodgar which is located roughly midway between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness. Orkney College is doing the excavations.

Their excavations have uncovered several buildings, both ritual and domestic. Pottery, bones, stone tools and a polished stone mace head have also been discovered. 


Perhaps the most important find is the remains of a large stone wall which may have been 330 feet long and up to 20 feet wide. It appears to traverse the entire peninsula the site is on and may have been a symbolic barrier between the ritual landscape of the Ring and the common world around it.

Jay and I have been reading Tormod Cockburn's Mysterious Scotland series and were very interested in seeing The Ring of Brodgar as it is central to one of his books, "The Stone Cypher".





This Neolithic henge and stone circle is the only major henge and stone circle in Britain which is an almost perfect circle. Most henges do not contain stone circles; Brodgar is a striking exception, ranking with Avebury and Stonehenge among the greatest of such sites.


The stone circle is 341 ft in diameter, and the third largest in the British Isles. The ring originally had up to 60 stones, of which only 27 remained standing at the end of the 20th century. The tallest stones stand at the south and west of the ring, including the "Comet Stone" to the south-east.




Next on our list of Neolithic site is Skara Brae. But when we get there, we found out that the site is closed because of the severe and dangerous weather. We can walk around the visitor center but that's it.

As the locals say "the white horses are rolling in."


The site was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village. 

Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney".

The site is older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, it has been called the "Scottish Pompeii" because of its excellent preservation. But we don't get to see it.



In the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll; the name Skara Brae is a corruption of Skerrabra or Styerrabrae, which originally referred to the knoll. 

When the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village consisting of several small houses without roofs.

William Graham Watt of Skaill House, a son of the local laird who was a self-taught geologist, began an amateur excavation of the site.





I guess we'll have to come back if we want to see the village up close and personal.

Our guide Graham quickly suggested we visit Broch of Gurness. This site is a bit newer,  began sometime between 500 and 200 BC. 

At the center of the settlement is a stone tower or broch, which once probably reached a height of around 32 feet. 





At some point after 100 AD the broch was abandoned and the ditches filled in. It is thought that settlement at the broch continued into the 5th century AD, the period known as Pictish times.



Is this a Kelpie disguised as a horse? (Google that myth if you are interested...)

We head back into Kirkwall for a quick comfort stop then some of us head out to see the Italian Chapel. The Chapel is a highly ornate Catholic chapel on Lamb Holm.



It was built during the Second World War by 550 Italian prisoners of war, who were housed on the previously uninhabited island while they constructed the Churchill Barriers to the east of Scapa Flow.




The chapel was constructed from limited materials collected by the prisoners in the form of a tin tabernacle, and two Nissen huts joined end-to-end. 

The corrugated interior was then covered with plasterboard and the altar and altar rail were constructed from concrete left over from work on the barriers. Most of the interior decoration was done by Domenico Chiocchetti, a prisoner from Moena in Trentino, northern Italy. 

He painted the sanctuary end of the chapel and fellow prisoners decorated the entire interior. They created a facade out of concrete, concealing the shape of the hut and making the building look like a church. The light holders were made out of corned beef tins. The baptismal font was made from the inside of a car exhaust covered in a layer of concrete.


Only the concrete foundations of the other buildings of the prisoner-of-war camp survive. The chapel was not completed until after the end of the war, and was restored in the 1960s and again in the 1990s.


The skies are trying to clearly but the seas are still very angry. That road is going to get closed, luckily we aren't taking it.

On the way back to Kirkwall, we see a hairy pig on a farm. They aren't native to Scotland but are imported from Eastern Europe.


What a day on Orkney. Tomorrow we ferry back to the mainland and head toward Inverness.

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