Broch of Birsay Norse Settlement, Skara Brae Settlement, Skaill House, Maes Howe Cairn/Tomb & Stromness Stones

Our next travel day was absolutely packed with stops and sights, and mostly not having too much time at any of them. I would love to return to actually be able to slowly stroll and explore all of these sights. Since typing into Blogger on the iPad is impossibly fussy, I’m not writing as much as I’d like, but honestly, there hasn’t been too much time for reflection anyway. I did find the total lack of trees and miles of farmland on the Orkneys a bit…sad, I guess. But also seeing that much sea and sky is freeing, and also makes one feel very humbly small. The puffins are all out to sea, apparently they only come to land for a short time in the summer months to nest and then live almost exclusively at sea, so we didn’t get to see any. We did see some cute seals doing their banana pose, or “banana-ing” as they say here. We went to the Broch of Birsay Norse Settlement, which was absolutely incredible. It was nestled in one of the most glorious, rocky, seascapes I’ve ever seen and it obviously can only be traversed when the sea is low. The guide told us that the walk along the causeway can be very treacherous so we walked with great care. It was all worth it, check it out: 

 

Broch of Birsay Norse Settlement, and the view of the incredible sea and rocks. You can look closely to see if you can spy an amazingly huge looking cave. Would love to return to explore this site more!

These uploaded all goofy, will have to try to make adjustments once home and maybe add more context for these sites. But basically these photos are of an ancient settlements date back to I think 4,000 years ago, and juxtaposed with the posh residence that was built near them. I loved all the ornate embroidery! You can even see the Queen’s signature on a visit in 1983!

Maes Howe burial cairn. They didn’t allow photos inside, but you can watch a Rick Steves video where you can see the interior. The most amazing thing, besides the way it was built in relation to the winter solstice light wherein it shines like a huge pillar of bright light, was the Nose runic graffiti found carved inside it. This is a Stone Age structure that was then broken into much later by Viking raiders, who were escaping a terrible 3 day storm and desecrated it by breaking into the top, throwing all the bones out and carving some pretty lewd graffiti in runes on the walls. It was fascinating! They used a combination of runes from the Younger Futhark, and an older more rare kind of tree rune alphabet (though not the Celtic Olgham alphabet but I can’t recall the name of it).

We finally got to meet the Standing Stones of Stenness at the very end of the day. Unfortunately, a cruise ship that had landed late was descending upon the place right as we got there, so I maybe got three minutes before the place was overrun with tourists treating these magnificent beautiful power stones as dither for selfies on Instagram! These are incredibly ancient, sacred stones, thought to be the oldest on the British Isles, and I was so hoping to sing a couple of songs and make prayers, but our tour folks had breezed through them and were all waiting on me and John to come back to the bus, and there were about 75 people crawling all over them like ants. It was really sad to me to finally get near enough these sacred stones to touch them, and to have to rush through and to see people treating them so disrespectfully. It’s an insult! Anyway, more resolve for me to plan a return journey with a group of folks who will appreciate their sacredness.