Hope you are well.

Thought I would share some more images from my summer 2016 trip to the Orkneys. My recent posts have focused on the stone age sites on Orkney. Today I change the era and take a look at The Broch of Gurness.

The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village on the northwest coast of Mainland Orkney. It is thought to have been inhabited for perhaps 3 or 4 or centuries from about 200 BC onwards.

Come explore the place with me.

Hope you enjoy the images.

Richard

Brochs

The word Broch is a Scots term meaning fort. They are a peculiarly Scottish structure and found pretty much no where else. They are stone round houses from the Iron Age circa 500 BC to 250 AD. The distribution of brochs is centered on northern Scotland with a predominance in Caithness and the Isles.

The Broch of Gurness is thought to have been built circa 200 to 50 BC. 1st century Roman pottery has been found there. Curiously there is a historical reference to contact between a King of Orkney and Emperor Claudius. Could that king have once lived here?

The site was used for several centuries until eventually the central fort was abandoned and in time the site was merely a farm by the 8th century and later a burial site.

Central Fort

The iconic feature of a broch is the central stone roundhouse. This has hollow walls usually in which are built stairs to a higher level. A wooden floor above ground level would have allowed for more accommodation – bed rooms etc.

The outer part of the fortress (outside the round house) was divided into smaller dwellings, workshops and storage areas.

The broch was approached through a central (defendable) doorway and passage that would be difficult to storm.

Central Chamber
At the heart was a central chamber – a gathering place for the inhabitants with a hearth to warm them on those cold winter nights. Around this are smaller rooms.

Outside the Central Tower

The site is surrounded by three ditches cut to the bedrock and stone ramparts. The site is 45 metres diameter. Within the ramparts are the remains of numerous small stone dwellings, yards and sheds.

There is a small museum on the site with helpful information and even a small quern or hand mill you can try yourself.

Thinking of visiting? Find out more here: Broch of Gurness

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. Hoping 2017 is a good year for you.

Thought I would share some more images from my summer 2016 trip to the Orkneys and take a look at Skara Brae.

Skara Brae is the best-preserved Neolithic settlement in Western Europe. This site dates back 5000 years to a time long before Stonehenge or even the Egyptian pyramids were built.
It was once a thriving village and then was lost to history, buried under the sand until a freak storm in 1850 revealed an extraordinary site.

A windy day in Skara Brae

Discovery at Skara Brae
In the winter of 1850, a great storm battered Orkney. The islands are exposed to the fury of the Atlantic on one side and the North Sea on the other. Even in August (when I visited) winds can be high. You can see that is was very wet and windy when we visited this site.
On the occasion of the 1850 storm, the combination of wind and extremely high tides stripped the grass from a large mound to reveal the outline of a number of stone buildings.
The local laird, William Watt, of Skaill, embarked on an excavation of the site in 1868 when the remains of four ancient houses were unearthed. After this, work was abandoned for a generation. Then between 1928 and 1933 more work was done – eventually revealing an entire village.

Map of the site.

Dating the Site
In the 1920’s the village was thought to be an Iron Age settlement, dating from around 500BC.
It was radiocarbon dating conducted in the early 70’s that confirmed that the settlement dated from the late Neolithic. It was believed to have been inhabited for around 600 years, between 3100BC and 2500BC.

Chambers and Passages
Skara Brae was fortunate in that due to the protection offered by the sand that covered it for forty centuries, the buildings, and their contents, are incredibly well-preserved.
The site has eight dwellings, linked together by a series of low, covered passages. Many of the walls of the structures and even the roofs were intact.
Each of the eight houses are built to the same basic design. There is a large square room, a central fireplace and beds raised on stone shelves on either side. There is even a stone dresser and food storage pits.

Abandonment
The site was lived in for six centuries. The inhabitants piled up rubbish and refuge in the passage ways and rooms until Skara Brae became embedded in its own garbage. It is also believe that the sand dunes encroached on the site so that around 2500 BC the village was finally abandoned.

Modern Reconstruction
The visitor centre has a nice museum about the site complete with movie, finds and a small reconstruction of part of passageway and one of the houses.

There is even a fridge.

Hope you enjoyed the trip.

Richard

I was lucky enough to spend some of the summer of 2016 in the Highlands of Scotland and in the Orkney Islands. This was my first visit to the islands.

The Orkneys was home to the Royal Navy which , operating out of its wartime base of Scapa Flow emerged to fight the Battle of Jutland in WW1 and hunt down the Bismarck in WW2 and many other battles. The place is littered with memories of those days: echoes of the days when the British fleet ruled the waves.

But long before the British fleet came to the islands the Orkneys were already ancient with some of the earliest prehistoric sites predating the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Later the Picts bulk their Brochs here and later still the Vikings sailed forth from is harbours.

This is a land and waterways with a deep history and many mysteries. Hope you enjoy the posts I write you about this islands.

The Tomb of The Eagles

At the far south tip of South Ronaldsay is a windswept coastline of cliffs and grasslands dotted with farms. One one of this in 1958, farmer Ronald Simison was digging flagstones and came across the barrow – half buried under the grass. He initially conducted his own excavations but later the archaeologist John Hedges mounted a full study and named the place the tomb of the Eagles.

The tomb was dated to 3000BC. 16,000 human bones were found but also hundreds from the white-tailed sea eagle – hence the name. The eagles died c. 2450–2050 BC, up to 1,000 years after the building of the tomb.

The opening to the tomb is a low tunnel. To gain entry you must lie down on a skateboard like device and haul yourself in.

Once inside the roof is quite high so you can stand up.

There is one main chamber and a number of side chambers.

In one side chamber are skulls – but there are not original inhabitants. They have been placed to give an ideas of what the place looked like, full of bones. Maybe the bodies were left out to decay or for the eagles to feast off and then the bare bones taken into the tomb.

Hope you enjoyed that. More sites to come soon.