The Orkney Islands are an archipelago 15 Km off the north coast of Scotland. Orkney comprises approximately 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, Mainland, is often referred to as "the Mainland". The largest settlement and administrative centre is Kirkwall, where we docked, but did not have time to explore it.
The islands have been inhabited for at least 8,500 years, originally occupied by Mesolithic and Neolithic tribes and then by the Picts. Orkney was invaded and forcibly annexed by Norway in 875 and settled by the Norse. The Scottish Parliament then re-annexed the earldom to the Scottish Crown in 1472, following the failed payment of a dowry for James III's bride, Margaret of Denmark.
Orkney contains some of the oldest and best-preserved Neolithic sites in Europe, and the "Heart of Neolithic Orkney" is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The climate is mild and the soils are extremely fertile, most of the land being farmed. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy. The significant wind and marine energy resources are of growing importance, and the island generates more than its total yearly electricity demand using renewables. The local people are known as Orcadians and have a distinctive dialect of Insular Scots and a rich inheritance of folklore. There is an abundance of marine and avian wildlife.
Orkney was the site of a Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, which played a major role in World War I and II. After the Armistice in 1918, the German High Seas Fleet was transferred in its entirety to Scapa Flow to await a decision on its future. The German sailors opened the sea-cocks and scuttled all the ships. Most ships were salvaged, but the remaining wrecks are now a favoured haunt of recreational divers.
One month into World War II, a German U-boat sank the Royal Navy battleship HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow. As a result, barriers were built to close most of the access channels; these had the additional advantage of creating causeways enabling travellers to go from island to island by road instead of being obliged to rely on ferries. The causeways were constructed by Italian prisoners of war, who also constructed the ornate Italian Chapel. The navy base became run down after the war, eventually closing in 1957.
The problem of a declining population was significant in the post-war years, though in the last decades of the 20th century there was a recovery and life in Orkney focused on growing prosperity and the emergence of a relatively classless society. Orkney was rated as the best place to live in Scotland in both 2013 and 2014 according to the Halifax Quality of Life survey.
Skara Brae
Our tour took us out to Skara Brae, a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland. Consisting of eight clustered houses, it was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC. 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". It is older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid
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 known as "Skerrabra". When the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the local laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after four houses were uncovered, the work was abandoned in 1868. The site remained undisturbed until 1913, when, during a single weekend, the site was plundered by a party with shovels who took away an unknown quantity of artifacts. In 1924, another storm swept away part of one of the houses and it was determined the site should be made secure and be more seriously investigated. The job was given to University of Edinburgh's Professor V. Gordon Childe who travelled to Skara Brae for the first time in 1927.
Originally, Childe believed that the settlement dated from around 500 BC.This interpretation was coming under increasing challenge by the time new excavations in 1972–73 settled the question. Radiocarbon results obtained from samples collected during these excavations indicate that occupation of Skara Brae began about 3180 BC with occupation continuing for about six hundred years. Around 2500 BC, after the climate changed, becoming much colder and wetter, the settlement may have been abandoned by its inhabitants. There are many theories as to why the people of Skara Brae left; particularly popular interpretations involve a major storm.
The site was farther from the sea than it is today, and it is possible that Skara Brae was built adjacent to a fresh water lagoon protected by dunes. Although the visible buildings give an impression of an organic whole, it is certain that an unknown quantity of additional structures had already been lost to sea erosion before the site's rediscovery and subsequent protection by a seawall. Uncovered remains are known to exist immediately adjacent to the ancient monument in areas presently covered by fields, and others, of uncertain date, can be seen eroding out of the cliff edge a little to the south of the enclosed area.
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Skaill House.
Skaill House is a historic manor house that overlooks the neolithic site, Skara Brae, and the Bay of Skaill. In 1977, the house was included in the List of Scottish Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest.
The name Skaill derives from the Old Norse word for "hall". The names of all the surrounding farms are also derived from that language, and it is presumed that the lands have been permanently settled for over a thousand years. After the execution of Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney, for treason in 1615, the lands were given to the Bishop of Orkney. In 1620, Bishop George Graham constructed a simple manor house, the first part of which is now Skaill House. His son became the laird of the estate, and the property was from that time passed down to succeeding lairds. Over the years, the building was expanded. In 1997, after six years of restoration work, Skaill House was opened to the public.
Perhaps the most interesting exhibit is Captain Cook's dinner service. After Cook's death in 1779, the Resolution was sailed back from Hawaii by his crew. It had put into Stromness in Aug 1780. because of the weather: the ship was short of money by then, and the dinner service was sold off and bought by the Laird of Skaill
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Ring of Brodgar
The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle about 6 miles north-east of Stromness on the Mainland of Orkney, Scotland. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Heart of Neolithic Orkney.
Most henges do not contain stone circles; Brodgar is a striking exception, ranking with Avebury (and to a lesser extent Stonehenge) among the greatest of such sites.The ring of stones stands on a small isthmus between the Lochs of Stenness and Harray. These are the northernmost examples of circle henges in Britain. Unlike similar structures such as Avebury, there are no obvious stones inside the circle, but since the interior of the circle has never been excavated by archaeologists, the possibility remains that wooden structures, for example, may have been present. The site has resisted attempts at scientific dating and the monument's age remains uncertain. It is generally thought to have been erected between 2500 BC and 2000 BC, and was, therefore, the last of the great Neolithic monuments built on the Ness. A project called The Ring of Brodgar Excavation 2008 was undertaken in the summer of that year in an attempt to settle the age issue and help answer other questions about a site that remains relatively poorly understood.The results of the excavation are still preliminary.
The stone circle is 100 metres in diameter, and the third largest in the British Isles.The ring originally comprised 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 so-called "Comet Stone" to the south-east. The stones are set within a circular ditch up to 3 metres deep, 9 metres wide and 380 metres in circumference that was carved out of the solid sandstone bedrock by the ancient residents. The ditch appears to have been created in sections, possibly by workforces from different parts of Orkney. The stones may have been a later addition, maybe erected over a long period of time
Examination of the immediate environs reveals a concentration of ancient sites, making a significant ritual landscape. Within 5 km2 there are the two circle-henges, four chambered tombs, groups of standing stones, single stones, barrows, cairns, and mounds The immediate area has also yielded a number of flint arrowheads and broken stone mace-heads that seem to date from the Bronze Age. Although its exact purpose is not known, the proximity of the Standing Stones of Stenness and its Maeshowe tomb make the Ring of Brodgar a site of major importance.
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Scapa Flow
Historically, the main British naval bases were near the English Channel to counter the country’s imperial rivals: the Netherlands, France, and Spain. In 1904 in response to the build-up of the German High Seas Fleet, Britain decided that a northern base was needed to control the entrances to the North Sea, as part of a revised policy of 'distant' rather than 'close' blockade. First Rosyth in Fife was considered, then Invergordon at Cromarty Firth. Delayed construction left these largely unfortified by the outbreak of World War I. Scapa Flow had been used many times for British exercises in the years before the War and when the time came for the fleet to move to a northern station, it was chosen for the main base of the British Grand Fleet – unfortified.
John Rushworth Jellicoe, admiral of the Grand Fleet, was perpetually nervous about the possibility of submarine or destroyer attacks on Scapa Flow. Whilst the fleet spent almost the first year of the war patrolling the west coast of the British Isles, their base at Scapa was defensively reinforced, beginning with over sixty blockships sunk in the many entrance channels between the southern islands to facilitate the use of submarine nets and booms. These blocked approaches were backed by minefields, artillery, and concrete barriers. Two attempts to enter the harbour were made by German U-boats during the war and neither was successful:
Following the German defeat in WWI, 74 ships of the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet were interned at Scapa Flow pending a decision on their future in the peace Treaty of Versailles. On 21 June 1919, after seven months of waiting, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the German officer in command at Scapa Flow, made the decision to scuttle the fleet because the negotiation period for the treaty had lapsed with no word of a settlement (he was not kept informed that there had been a last-minute extension to finalise the details). After waiting for the bulk of the British fleet to leave on exercises, he gave the order to scuttle the ships to prevent their falling into British hands. The Royal Navy made desperate efforts to board the ships to prevent the sinkings, but the German crews had spent the idle months preparing for the order, welding bulkhead doors open, laying charges in vulnerable parts of the ships, and quietly dropping important keys and tools overboard so valves could not be shut. 53 ships, the vast bulk of the High Seas Fleet, were sunk. Nine German sailors died on one of these ships when British forces opened fire as they attempted to scuttle the ship, reputedly the last casualties of WWI. At least seven of the scuttled German ships, and a number of sunken British ships, can be visited today by scuba divers.
Primarily because of its great distance from German airfields, Scapa Flow was again selected as the main British naval base during World War II. The strong defences built during World War I had fallen into disrepair. Defence against air attack was inadequate and blockships sunk to stop U-boats from penetrating had largely collapsed. While there were anti-submarine nets in place over the three main entrances, they were made only of single-stranded looped wire; there was also a severe lack of the patrolling destroyers and other anti-submarine craft that had previously been available. Efforts began belatedly to repair peacetime neglect, but were not completed in time to prevent a successful penetration by enemy forces.
On 14 October 1939, under the command of Günther Prien, U-47 penetrated Scapa Flow and sank the WWI–era battleship HMS Royal Oak anchored in Scapa Bay. After firing its first torpedo salvo, the submarine turned to make its escape; but, upon realising that there was no immediate threat from surface vessels, it returned for another attack. The second torpedo salvo blew a 9 m hole in the Royal Oak, which flooded and quickly capsized. Of the 1,400-man crew, 833 were lost. The wreck is now a protected war grave. Three days after the submarine attack, four Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 bombers raided Scapa Flow in one of the first bombing attacks on Britain during the war. The attack badly damaged an old base ship, the decommissioned battleship HMS Iron Duke, which was then beached at Ore Bay by a tug.
New blockships were sunk, booms and mines were placed over the main entrances, coast defence and anti-aircraft batteries were installed at crucial points, and Winston Churchill ordered the construction of a series of causeways to block the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow; they were built by Italian prisoners of war held in Orkney, who also built the Italian Chapel. These "Churchill Barriers" now provide road access from Mainland to Burray and South Ronaldsay, but block maritime traffic. An air base, RAF Grimsetter (which later became HMS Robin), was built and commissioned in 1940.
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