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Across from Orphir, southwest beyond the watery sound of Bring Deeps, Hoy Island's far side reveals a natural landmark whose perimeter has weathered away for centuries, leaving a cliff 450 feet atop a red stem of rock layers. This tallest seastack in all Britain, the Old Man of Hoy, is inhabited by colonies of a bird species called "tammie norrie" by Orcadians, but more widely known as the puffin. Ptarmigans, constituting another type of sea birds, also reside nearby. Stromness developed as a market town on the main island's southwest coast in the parish of Stenness during the mid-1600's and was originally named Hamnavoe, the Old Norse word for "haven bay," and later called Kerston. Toward the northeast from Stromness and Orphir, thrives the island's principal city, Kirkwall, whose Old Norse name meant "church bay." From the seaport village of Stromness and its familiar uig (sheltered bay), eastward beyond the county seat of Kirkwall, and all the way over to Deerness, the youthful JOHN TAYLOR became acquainted with 19th century farmers, fishermen, seafarers, merchants, and craftsmen claiming Viking ancestry. To the shores of Orkney came wildfowl, walruses, grey seals, and sharks. Island dogs occasionally spun themselves in tight little circles, chasing their own tails, and dawdling toads slowly hopped along dusty Orkney roads. But not a fox nor a frog was to be observed anywhere, and snakes were also absent in the Isles. Islanders raised horses, beef and dairy cattle, oxen, hogs, sheep, and poultry. They grew hay, oats, bere, kale, potatoes, turnips, and radishes. They caught whales, trout, herring, lobsters, clams, crabs, and oysters; and they hunted otters, rabbits, grouse, and various other species of wild game. They gathered eggs, peat, and kelp. Orcadians were convinced that blades became sharper at the time of inbound tides. They discovered ancient underground dwellings and Viking treasure buried under the shifting sands of their beaches. They believed selkies could secretly masquerade as people after swimming ashore and shedding their sealskins, with the mysteriously transformed sea creatures sometimes producing offspring in marriage with unsuspecting humans. Orcadians imagined mystical people commanding unusual abilities who survived in a fairyland beneath the sea. In Orkney of the 1800's, perhaps everyone except townspeople and merchants lived in elongated stone houses under very similar circumstances. Scarcity of wood precluded extended roof beams, and the limitation dictated a narrow construction for their dwellings. After building a house, Orcadians designated a room for milk cows next to their own family quarters, and kept nests of geese in their kitchen walls. They fashioned writing quills from goose feathers, and they manufactured cheese from cows' milk. Wool from sheep was converted into sweaters, and chairs were customized from local straw and imported oak. The citizenry of Orkney included traders. Ships and boats plowed through the turbulence of the raging sea to dock safely at the piers in the Bay of Kirkwall or to shelter in the placid harbor at Stromness. Sailing vessels and steamers of Scottish, Norwegian, French, Dutch, Irish, and English nationality brought goods from other European ports, then took Orcadian produce with them when they departed. Down by the seaside in early evening, anxious spouses of fishermen might cluster at the surging shoreline to scan a watery horizon, anticipating the end-of-day reappearance of their returning husbands. Fishermen, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and sailors walked upon streets of the two major ports, inhaling the saltiness of strong ocean winds. A century and a half ago, several mixed-blood Orcadians, descendants of all those Picts, Celts, Scots, and Norsemen who had come to Orkney in earlier days, still communicated in the archaic Old Norn tongue, a vestige language of olden times. These inheritors of the gusty and rainy islands lived around towns carrying old Viking names, and the locals were known by nicknames attached to their respective parishes. With an adequate diet of grain, milk, fish, poultry, eggs, mutton, beef, and brew, they were healthy, good looking, and tall in stature for their times. Their dominion was a locale tinged with a widespread legacy of enchanting legends about sea monsters, mermaids, trolls, ghosts, witches, fairies, and brownies. The island brethren gathered when any of their own number was hatched, matched, or dispatched. These good folks were the Baikies, Ballentynes, BICHENS, Brasses, Browns, Budges, CURSETTERS, Fletts, GARRIOCKS, GROUNDWATERS, Halkros, HAYS, Irvings, LAUGHTONS, Leasks, Linklaters, Louttits, Muirs, Norns, Rendalls, Robertsons, Rosses, SINCLAIRS, SCLATERS, Taits, TAYLORS, Towries, Twatts, WHYTQUOYS, WILSONS, WISHARTS, and other families. Generations of their forefathers had been the movers and shakers of old Orkney through the preceding centuries. |
| Copyright © 2000 Dick Taylor All Rights Reserved |