John Rae

I am ending my posts on Orkney with a visit to one of my heroes.

In the 1990s and 2000s, I worked with a brilliant engineer named Hans Muller, who has since passed away.  Hans spent a lot of time hiking in the Canadian North, and he told me about one of his heroes, the Scotsman John Rae. Hans loaned me a wonderful book about Rae called Fatal Passage (by Ken McGoogan).  After I read it Rae became one of my heroes, too.

Rae, born in Orkney in 1813, was one of the most successful of the Arctic explorers and, among many accomplishments, found the final link in the Northwest Passage. Much of his success was due to his use of the clothing and diet of the native people. Rae died in 1893, and is buried in the cemetery of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. Inside the church there is a large memorial to Rae (photo below) that shows him taking a snooze during one of his expeditions, rifle at his side. And so when I was in Kirkwall the first thing I did was go to the cathedral to pay my respects.

For a synopsis of Rae's amazing life see this Orkneyjar link.

And so ends my Orkney journey for 2014. In two weeks I managed to set foot on eight of the islands. It was only a small 'taste of Orkney', as there are about 25 islands in the group that I want to see. So I plan to return.

Quoyness Chambered Cairn - Sanday

Most visitors to Orkney pay a visit to the great chambered cairn of Maes Howe. It is an amazing thing to see. But due to the large number of visitors you have to book ahead to see it; and when you get there your visit is highly regimented. A tour guide herds everyone inside, and then proceeds to give an informative talk on the tomb. No photos are allowed, and once the talk is over everyone is herded back out. Fortunately there are several other spectacular chambered cairns on Orkney that are accessible to travelers who, like me, relish seeing sites like this without the crowds.

I previously described a visit to the massive 'long' chambered cairn on Holm of Papa (see July 6 post). Another impressive cairn I visited last month was Quoyness Chambered Cairn on Sanday.

Quoyness is a smaller version of Maes Howe. As with Maes Howe, the cairn dates to around 3000 BC, and you enter it by crawling along a narrow passageway.

After crawling through the 30-foot-long passage I came to the central chamber. Even standing up I could not touch the roof, as it is 12 feet high.

There are six small side chambers, and I crawled into one to take a close look. One of my disappointments when I saw Maes Howe was that they do not allow visitors to enter the side chambers.

Spending some time alone in this ancient sacred place was a privilege. See this Orkneyjar link for more information on the Quoyness cairn. After seeing it I spent an hour exploring the Elsness Peninsula and the nearby white-sand beach of Sty Wick (the last two photos).

Next time I'll end my Orkney posts with a visit to another, and much more recent tomb. The 1893 grave of one of my heroes: the Orcadian John Rae.

Egilsay of St Magnus

I was hoping to get ashore on Egilsay last month to get some good photos of the round tower church of St Magnus. Magnus was martyred on Egilsay around the year 1117. See this Orkneyjar link for the complete story of St Magnus.

I had visited Egilsay once before, back in 1990. But unfortunately (for me) the tower was encased in scaffolding, which did not make for good photos. (See the Nov 21, 2013 post.) So last month I was looking forward to returning to get better photos, but it was not to be.

Church of St Magnus - 1990

On June 20 we left the Bay of Ham (Rousay), where we'd anchored the previous night. Everyone was looking forward to seeing Egilsay. We slowly approached the pier on its west side, hoping to tie up, or anchor nearby. But a 12 knot westerly was blowing. With no sign of it abating, all thoughts of getting ashore had to be abandoned. We were disappointed, but that's how it goes when you're afloat, you have to go with the flow. And so we turned north to set our sights on Westray. Below are photos of the round tower that I took from the boat. I hope to return someday to try again.

St Magnus Church - 2014

St Magnus Church - 2014

Holm of Papa

During my Orkney cruise we landed on Papa Westray. Once ashore I set out to find the Chapel of St Tredwall, and as I walked up the east coast of the island I noticed a tiny island just offshore. On it stood a large mound, capped with what appeared to be a standing stone.

Holm of Papa seen from Papa Westray

I looked at the map and discovered the island was Holm of Papa, and on it are three chambered cairns. The large one that I could see was marked on the map with the 'Historic Scotland' logo; meaning it was a significant site. But, strangely, there was no 'Standing Stone' marked as well, although there certainly appeared to be one, and a big one at that.

Back on the boat I looked up Holm of Papa in the Island Bible (Hamish Haswell-Smith's The Scottish Islands). In it he mentions that the cairn is of the Maeshowe type, but much older, and possibly connected to the settlement at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray. The cairn is huge, with 12 side chambers, and carved on some of the stones inside are strange eyebrow and cup mark carvings. Later I would learn that the top of the cairn was rebuilt, and a cement roof put in place in 1929. For photos of what it looked like before restoration see this RCAHMS page. The cairn is also known as Diss o' the Holm. (See this link - though I have no idea what 'Diss' means.)

I had to see this amazing thing first hand, so I asked if we could pay a visit to Holm of Papa after we set sail from Papa Westray. Fortunately, on the following day the sea was calm, and so we were able to land. On close inspection what had appeared from a distance to be a standing stone was actually a large square cairn, and on it was the Historic Scotland reader-board describing the tomb below.

Tomb diagram on the plaque

The original entrance to the tomb was blocked up, but atop the mound a steel hatch opened up to reveal a ladder. It was time to descend into the dark tomb.

Original entrance - now closed off

Down we go

Once you get into the tomb it is not so dark, as two thick skylights have been inserted in the roof. 

Central Aisle

The ground was covered with a layer of wet and muddy gravel, and we got quite dirty crawling through the low tunnels that give access to the end chambers (next photo). It was only after we'd crawled through them that we discovered a set of 'crawling mats' stored on a dark side ledge.

The low opening that leads to one of the end-chambers

Inside one end chamber we found the strange eyebrow and cup carvings.

The carvings

We left the tomb via the ladder, closed the hatch securely, and then went for a short wander around the tiny island. The other cairns on the island were in sad shape, but the layout of the northernmost one was just discernible.

The North Cairn

Just before we left, one of the two little airplanes that do the Orkney inter-island flights buzzed overhead, having just taken off from Papa Westray. I'd seen it the day before, and the sight of it strengthened my resolve to make the world's shortest flight - which I'd do four days later (see June 26 post).

Hoy - The Dwarfie Stone

I made a seven hour hike on Hoy last week. One highlight of the walk was crawling into the Dwarfie Stone. It is a unique tomb, consisting of two chambers carved out of a large, flat sandstone boulder. It is thought to have been made around 3000 BC, and I wanted to see the stone because of the writings of two authors: Sir Walter Scott, and the geologist Hugh Miller. 

In his novel The Pirate, Scott made use of the legend that the stone was once home to 'Trolld, a dwarf famous in the Northern sagas.' In chapter 19 there is an encounter inside the stone between Norna of the Fitful Head, and the dwarf Trolld. Norna gets the best of the encounter, and Trolld vanishes 'in a thick and sulfureous vapour'.

The Dwarfie Stone

Hugh Miller, in his book The Cruise of the Betsy, describes how he visited the stone and crawled inside to shelter from the rain. There are two small chambers in the stone. One is a simple round space, the second is a rectangular cell separated from the first by a low ledge. This cell looks like a miniature bedroom, as it has a pillow carved in the stone at one end. There are several names carved in the pillow, which Miller mentions seeing during his visit. And while waiting for the rain to pass Miller decided to carve his own name in it:

'The rain still pattered heavily overhead; and with my geological chisel and hammer I did, to beguile the time, what I very rarely do, added my name to the others, in characters which...will be distinctly legible two centuries hence.'

Miller did carve his name deep, and I found it low on the face of the pillow. 168 years have passed since he carved it, and the name was distinctly legible:  'H. Miller  1846'. Here is a photo of the bed-chamber with its pillow-stone. 

The bedroom - stone pillow at the back

Here's a close up of the pillow (the black line points to Miller's name). The last photo is a highly contrasted black & white which shows his name a little better (but not much).  I resisted the urge to add my own name - I'd forgotten my chisel, anyway.

The pillow - the pointer shows where Miller carved his name: 'H. Miller  1846'

Northern Isles - Egilsay

On my trip to Orkney one of my must-see places was Egilsay. Two things drew me to the island: the martyrdom of St Magnus in the year 1116, and the 12 century church of St Magnus with its round tower. I was pretty naive back then, thinking I could just drive to the ferry terminal at Tingwall and await the next boat to Egilsay. They looked at me like I was from Mars. They said there was no on-demand sailing to Egilsay, and there was also not a lot of demand for regular sailings (this was 1990). But they did manage to get us to Rousay, where we had a 2-hour wait to get on a boat that was going to Egilsay. This gave us time to see some of the chambered-cairns that lie near where the ferry lands on Rousay.

When we finally got over to Egilsay we had two wonderful hours on the island. Egilsay is a beautiful, and quiet island. After finding the monument that marks where St Magnus was killed (first photo), we explored St Magnus' Church and round tower (second and third photo). The photos are marred a bit by the scaffolding that surrounded the tower, so I hope to return to Egilsay in June to get some better photos.

Monument where St Magnus was killed in 1116

St Magnus' Church, Egilsay

Scaffolding on the Round Tower

Looking up through the round tower

When time came to leave Egilsay the tide had dropped, so we had to descend the pier-ladders to get down to the small ferry. On the ride back to Tingwall the only passengers were my wife and I, and the Egilsay teacher returning to her home on Mainland Orkney.

Egilsay Ferry

My wife descending the ladder on Egilsay Pier