Orkney Islands Part 2- Historical Sites

 The Orkney Islands are 20 miles north of the coast of Scotland.

In the Orkneys, you will find many prehistorical remains, most of them very well preserved.

Maes Howe is a burial chamber, built around 2800 BC for an important family. The entrance is a long low corridor arriving to a burial chamber. The interesting fact is that the tomb is illuminated when the winter solstice sunset shines down through the passage once a year.

Let’s go now to the Ring of Brodgar, a circle of 60 stones of which 27 remain standing. It dates from around 3000 BC and was probably used for religious and social ceremonies. Nearby, in Stenness only 4 stones survived.

Skara Brae is the Northern Europe best preserved Neolithic village which has an interesting story.  In 1850 a wild storm stripped earth and grass from a dune by the sea and the ruins of an ancient village was discovered… dating from 5000 years ago… before the pyramids were built… The structure of the village survived because it became covered with earth and sand. The houses were private dwellings and the furniture, made of stone, survived. You can notice in the houses the central hearth as well as the remains of a dresser and beds along the walls.

The Broch of Gurness, open to the public, dates from 500 BC and 200 BC and was a settlement of the Iron-Age Orkney. A circular tower, called the Broch, was a massive round structure built in the center of the small village. It was probably used as a house for the most important family, as well as a defense building, and a place to keep food for the population. It might also be used as a gathering place for the village population, and it can be found in Orkneys and in Shetland.

Let us now fly over the centuries and land at the time of the conflict of WW2.

Scapa Flow is a body of water sheltered by 6 islands, which were used to keep ships since prehistory. It was a British naval base during WW1 and WW2. However, on October 14, 1939, a German U Boat found a small entrance and sank the battleship” HMS Royal Oak” with over 800 sailors who all perished.

To prevent another tragedy, the British Navy chose to lay massive barriers of stone and concrete on the seabed from island to island. A causeway was built on the top. They are called “The Churchill Barriers”. It took many men as well as a group of Italian prisoners of war to achieve this protection.

On their spare time, a group of Italian artists decided to build the Catholic Chapel they were missing in the camp. With ingenuity, they used scrap material like 2 standard Nissen huts, they joined together as a base, as well as obsolete military equipment to create the chapel. The corrugated iron was hidden by plaster. The interior was beautifully painted in striking “trompe l’oeil” style and the windows were decorated. It became a lovely work of art, visited now by tourists. A committee was formed later to preserve the beauty of the Chapel along the years.

Since 1974 Scapa Flow became a major base for the North Sea Oil Industry.

From the Prehistoric time till now, the people of the Orkneys show a pattern of hard work despite a hard climate and their northern position on the map.