Scotiana

It’s been eight years since I last wrote a post about Orkney. It was entitled The Best of Scotland: Orkney but such is the magic of Orkney that it makes you dream again and again…

We discovered Orkney in 2003 and we immediately fell under the spell of the place, a place quite different from the rest of Scotland and even from the other Scottish Islands. Indeed, each island is different from the others. We returned there in 2012, this time with Janice, and we’re already planning a 3rd trip to Orkney, happy to know there’s so much more to discover…

We didn’t stay long during our two first trips there, but one doesn’t need to stay long to feel the magic of these islands.

Orkney Hoy from Warbeth beach © 2012 Scotiana

In addition to the lively, picturesque streets and bustling ports of Kirkwall and Stromness, to the  lovely landscapes bathed in soft, ever-changing light, the green meadows grazed by sheep and the famous local black cows, we’ve already visited in Orkney many very ancient sites and some of them sacred : the mythical Ring of Brodgar, Maeshowe with its enigmatic runes, the neolithic village of Skara Brae, the gloomy Tomb of the Eagles, the Bishop’s and Earl’s Palaces, St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall and Stromness Museums, the Italian Chapel…

Orkney the road to Warebeth cemetery MA 2003 1390

But, right from the start, it was a pilgrimage that took us there, a literary kind of pilgrimage for we had decided, in our quest of Orkney, to follow in the footsteps of  George Mackay Brown, one of the greatest Scottish poets and storytellers aka “The Bard of Orkney”.

We took the above picture from the road leading to Warbeth Cemetery which can be seen in the distance. GMB lies in this beautiful cemetery which overlooks the ocean and the island of Hoy looming in the distance, a beloved place of GMB recurrently mentioned in his pages together with the bay and town of Rackwick!

Before leaving, we laid a pebble and flowers in front of GMB’s grave.

This breathtaking landscape, typical of Orkney, is an invitation to meditation and silence…

Christmas Stories George Mackay Brown Galileo Publishers 2020

I had discovered GMB in ‘The Last Island Boy’, a beautiful and moving short story first published in the Scotsman, on 24 December 1985, and republished in 2020 in Christmas Stories.

The story takes place on a small and solitary island of Orkney where a man has settled with his wife and son, hoping to find a better life. He used to be a clerk in town and now the survival of the family depends on fishing and thus on the harsh and changing weather conditions. The man quickly discovers how life can be hard on the island and wonders if he has made the right choice for the three of them. Unlike his son and wife, the father finds no magic either on the island or in Christmas.

‘Christmas!’ said the man. ‘What do we want with Christmas? What’s Christmas to us? All I know is, it’s winter. The worst storms are still to come. Will we last through the winter? That’s what I’d like to know.’

The main character of the story is the little boy who spends the day before Christmas walking up and down the island, visiting the ruins of the deserted houses scattered around the isle, trying to imagine what kind of life people might have led there… we can feel the magic of the place through the child’s eyes though we also feel the young boy’s anxiety for his father who has gone to sea.

The  mother’s role is central too: she is a reassuring presence in the face of the father’s anxiety and continues to prepare the Christmas meal. Finally, all is well that ends well, as is often the case with GMB, and the family will be soon reunited to celebrate  Christmas ;-).

Ah, there was the lamp in the window!

The boy ran up the last slope to the door.

A rich, spicy smell met him at the threshold. The woman – his mother – had baked a large cake.

There it stood on the table, cooling on a wire tray.

The man – his father – was not long in from the sea. A basket of haddocks stood at the door. The fisherman was testing the edge of a knife on his thumb.

‘I’m glad you’re home,’ said the woman. ‘There’s going to be another storm.’

The wind was beginning to make songs in the chimney.

The boy could hear, through the open door, the noise of the breakers against the stones.

The cow lowed from the byre.

This short-story is prose poetry, simple, crystal-clear writing like in a poem!

Children are omnipresent in GMB’s stories, as are fishermen, farmers and gypsies. The animals also play a key-role: cows, horses, dogs and cats, hawks…

As in many of GMB’s stories, we find here reminiscences of his past, of a poor but happy childhood, with a touch of nostalgia and a never-failing attachment to his native island…

I was immediately taken by the wonderful quality of GMB’s writing. His stories and his description of Orkney made us want to visit the poet’s place.  We were not disappointed when we first went to Orkney and we’re looking forward to going back there… well decided, of course, to follow the George Mackay Brown Trail… and put some flowers on the poet’s grave…

George Mackay Brown smoking his pipe

 “Bright is the ring of words when the right man rings them.”

(Robert Louis Stevenson – From Songs of Travel)

George Mackay Brown, the “Bard of Orkney”…

Who better than GMB could have described the magic of the place! He almost never left his island except for a few years spent studying at Newbattle Abbey College and Edinburgh University. Orkney has always been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him, the beginning and end of a lifetime’s work, a poet’s work.

It’s quite revealing to read on GMB’s grave this moving epitaph:  “Carve the runes and then be content with silence”…

These lines are the last two verses of his  poem ‘A Work for Poets’!

GMB’s grave Warbeth Cemetery © 2003 Scotiana

A Work for Poets

To have carved on the days of our vanity
A sun
A ship
A star
A cornstalk

Also a few marks
From an ancient forgotten time
A child may read

That not far from the stone
A well
Might open for wayfarers

Here is a work for poets—
Carve the runes
Then be content with silence.

GMB’s grave Warbeth Cemetery Orkney symbols© 2003 Scotiana

A sun
A ship
A star
A cornstalk

“Before his life changed for the worse, his adolescent self used to mooch around the tombstones of Warbeth cemetery on the edge of Stromness, reading the inscriptions. He wishes he were free to do that now. Warbeth is one of his favourite haunts…

Down near the sea, with its clashing tides and the cliffs of Hoy as dramatic backdrop, it has an elemental feel. He runs yet again in his mind the tape loop of his now- dead father saying to him: ‘There are more folk lying dead in this kirkyard than there are living nowadays in the whole of Orkney’. He pictures his father. He misses him…

(George Mackay Brown – The Wound and the Gift– Ron Ferguson 2011)

For most visitors, Orkney has the charm of remote, somewhat inaccessible islands, lost in the northern mists, a kind of Ultima Thule, which is even truer of Shetland, lying off about 50 miles further north in the ocean, although the two archipelagos appear to be quite different.

We haven’t yet visited Shetland, so dear to Iain and Margaret 😉

Orkney seascapes photos Scotiana montage© Scotiana 2016

But there’s much more to the charm of Orkney than its remoteness and ruggedness. First there is the sea, one can feel its vivifying presence everywhere: sea spray, fresh, iodine-scented air. It also has a few spectacular cliffs:  St John’s Head, on the island of Hoy, is made up of cliffs that reach 350 meters and are among the highest in the UK. The famous “Old Man of Hoy” is a 137-metre-high stack on the west coast. The Stromness-Thurso ferry passes in front this impressive rock spur.

Inland, the green patchwork of Orkney is particularly attractive with its gentle hills, its grassy meadows bordered by dry-stone walls sheltering grazing cows and sheep, its villages and  farms made of local stone (no much wood there).

Wildlife is  rich and well-preserved there.

But most of all, the exceptional  and ever-changing quality of light (though rare in winter) constantly transforms the green, bucolic landscapes into theatrical scenes where history can be read as in an open illustrated book. Orkney unfolds its rich cultural heritage everywhere: megalithic sites, neolithic vestiges and, scattered throughout the islands, the ruins of very ancient monuments opening doors to mysterious, sacred, invisible worlds…

Orkney Ring of Brodgar light Orkney Maes Howe chambered cairn © Scotiana 2003

But nothing would be the same in Orkney without the talent of a great magician capable of sublimating its beauty. GMB was born in 1921, a born story-teller and poet, “The Bard of Orkney” and he was to become this great magician. Many talented writers and poets had paved the way before and inspired him: John Muir, Robert Rendall, Eric Linklater…

So, if you want to feel the magic Orkney forget the common tourist guides, stay off the beaten track and listen to the poet who managed to reach the essence of Orkney.

THE ORCADIAN LETTERS

I never tire of reading and rereading the Letters GMB wrote each week for The Orcadian. You can’t find a more vivid description of daily life in Orkney, at the time of GMB.

Look for no odysseys of the imagination in 400 weekly words of journalism. (Poetry with its rhythms, symbols, patterns, takes no harm from brevity). These “Letters from Hamnavoe” are walks out of doors in all weathers. You meet this neighbour, that friend, and linger and gossip a little about the weather and the old days; drop into a shop for tobacco, maybe; look over a garden wall at green things growing. The sound of the sea is everywhere. You notice a new structure that must have something to do with oil in Scapa Flow.

(Letters from Hamnavoe – Introduction)

The Orcadian articles 1971-1996 by George Mackay Brown

GMB began his writing career as a journalist, first working for The Orkney Herald under the name of “Island Man” (1944-1956) and later for The Orcadian (1971-1996).

In February 1971 George Mackay Brown wrote in The Orcadian:

 It is proposed each week to write a letter to some Stromness exile in Aukland or Vancouver or the Faulkland Islands (or anywhere else) letting him know some of the things they are saying along Victoria Street and Franklin Road.

“With those words, he started a weekly column that he would continue to write for over a quarter of a century, full of the clear-eyed observations, penetrating insights and vivid descriptions of Orkney life that have given pleasure to so many readers. Letters from Hamnavoe is a selection of his earlier articles, as fascinating as when they were originally written.”

“These short essays were written over a period of years for “The Orcadian” newspaper. They appeared every Thursday at the foot of Stromness news…light reading for quiet townsfolk on a Thursday afternoon…”

Readers will notice how vividly northerners are aware of the quartered year with its equinoxes and solstices. Immense tides of light and darkness are woven into our existence…

There is a great deal of reminiscence; not only shreds of nostalgia from my own childhood. “the vision splendid”, but for the simpler and more meaningul community that Orkney used to be…

Letters from Hamnavoe are walks out of doors in all weathers. You meet this neighbour, that friend, and linger and gossip a little about the weather and the old days; drop into a shop for tobacco, maybe; look over a garden wall at green things growing. The sound of the sea is everywhere.”

These little weekly essays are pure gems of writing, describing Orkney with all its magic, with little touches of humour, realism also and some notes of nostalgia for the good old days. They’re a vivid account of everyday life, with its small and big events, the ups and downs of relationships between the island’s people, their mutual help and compassion in times of hardship, the qualities and faults of his fellow islanders, the resistance of ancestral tradition versus the influence of religion and much more…

Under Brinkie’s Brae George Mackay Brown 1979

Reading over these Orcadian articles, the pleasant by-product of three years at the writing of verse and tales, I was disconcerted to see how often the words “enchanted”, “marvellous”, “magical”, appear. Words like those should exist only in the intensity of poetry; not in small scraps of journalism.

I might be content to call the best of these little essays “prose-poems”, and leave the matter there. The hybrid does not flourish in Englishn by U gave a weakess for overlaying plain prose with a wash of lyricism.

Prose-poems lie bedded like ore in the work of another Orkney writer. Eric Linklater…

Perhaps in the cold gray air of the north the hybrid is most at home.

(Unver Brinkie’s Brae – Introduction)

Rockpools & Daffodils George Mackay Brown Gordon Wright Publishing 1992

I have long thought it a good thing to keep in touch with my fellow islanders by means of a small weekly essay in The Orcadian. Thre are treasures enough to rummage among, childhood memories and contemporary happenings and, as well, the turning wheel of the seasons and the astonishing weather in the north that can wear four different coats in a single day.

So, most Thursday mornings I write ‘Under Brinkie’s Brae’ on the kitchen table, after the tea cups and the marmalade pot have been cleared away. An every Thursday morning Orkney folk who are interested can read in The Orcadian the ‘Under Brinkie’s Brae’ that was written the Thursday before.

(From the introduction of Rockpools & Daffodils – George Mackay Brown Stromness 1992)

Spike’s drawing of GMB and his wondrous scarf

GMB’S BOOKS ABOUT ORKNEY

Over the years, GMB has become a popular journalist and the local publishers recurrently asked him to write a book about Orkney for the tourists who were beginning to flock in the summer months. GMB’s wasn’t at all enthusiastic about the idea of writing a “tourist guide” but, as he had to earn his life, he finally accepted the task. It was a difficult task for him but no need to say that the guides he finally wrote were not of a common genre 😉

I learned in Rowena & Brian Murray’s book Interrogation of Silence that despite his reluctance to write guide books, GMB finally wrote several “travel guides”.

Let’s see the Orkney Islands – George Mackay Brown – William S. Thomson 1948

• Let’s See the Orkney Islands (1948)
• Stromness, The Orkney Islands: the Official Guide (1955)
• Stromness, In the Orkney Islands: Official Guide (1963)
• An Orkney Tapestry (1969)
• Portrait of Orkney (1981)

Stromness Official Guide

This is not one of these “guide books” that introduced us to the magic of Orkney’s most fascinating places, but a book of poetry written by GMB and called Pictures & Poems.  But I’ll come back to this book later in my post.

‘AN ORKNEY TAPESTRY’ (1969) : A KEY BOOK…

When An Orkney Tapestry was published in 1969 by Gollancz,  more than 20 years after Let’s see the Orkney Islands (1948), GMB was aged 49 and he was a well-known poet and journalist. He had already published  three books of poetry and A Calendar of Love  (1967) his first collection of short stories.

As underlined in the Introduction,  An Orkney Tapestry “was, for George Mackay Brown, an imaginary and creative, rather than physical, journey for “as Fergusson rightly comments, his initial hope to see parts of the islands he had not already visited remained unfulfilled.”

An Orkney Tapestry GMB London Victor Gollancz Ltd 1969

‘…the most wonderfully poetic evocation of a place I’d ever come across’

(Peter Maxwell Davies)

The work was a veritable tapestry of ideas,
themes and preaoccupations which became the central drivers for much of Brown’screative work
in the decades after the book  first appeared.

(From Linden Bicket & Kirsteen McCue‘s Introduction to An Orkney Tapestry – Polygon edition 2021)

& & &

“To write a new book on Orkney is no easy matter. Nearly every facet of life in the islands has been described and discussed and catalogued over and over again: the towns and villages, the churches, the fields and waters and skies, the animals, the birds, the shells, the rocks, the weather, the old stones, the language and the place- names, big islands and small holms– above all the people, ‘their gear and tackle and trim’.”

(An Orkney Tapestry– From GMB’s Foreword )

An Orkney Tapestry George Mackay Brown Quartet Books 1973

The very evocative word “tapestry” is a key word in GMB’s work and it appears recurrently in his works: ” vivid patterns”, “looms”, “coloured wools” …

“The book tries to recount some of the events imaginings that have made the Orkney people what they are, in a sequence of vivid patterns: as women with looms and coloured wools sat in the earl’s hall and wove the events surrounding Hastings…”‘

“An Orkney Tapestry” is  a particularly appropriate title when applied to Orkney.

An Orkney Tapestry George Mackay Brown Birlinn 2021

“This text captures, at an early stage in GMB’s career, a number of the key thems of Brown’s later work”…

(Linden Bicket & Kirsteen McCue‘s Introduction to An Orkney Tapestry – Polygon edition 2021)

 I must have all the paper editions of An Orkney Tapestry in my library but I didn’t regret to have downloaded on my kindle the last edition of  An Orkney Tapestry published by Birlinn in 2021. I’ve found there many clickable links leading to a few interesting articles about GMB and Orkney.

Sylvia Wishart at work in her Rackwick studio

In the Introduction we learn how the book’s cover was designed and discover GMB’s great friend and talented Orkney painter Sylvia Wishart

” Several of Brown’s letters to the Seniors also mention his friend Syvia Wishart (1936-2008) and her escapades to visit Rackwick with Brown (and on her own) to paint during the winter of 1968. This was an intense period of Brown’s friendship with Wishart and he recommended her work warmly to Giles Gordon , resulting in the inclusion of twelve new drawings to accompany Brown’s text.

In 1992, in preparation for a major exhibition of Wishart’s work at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Brown recalled that Wishart had actually been born in ‘The very next house to the one I was born in’, The two ‘got to know each other well’ when they were both in Edinburgh.  When they first visited Rackwick together Wishart fell instantly in love with the North House, which she rented and where she produced many of her best works.”

PORTRAIT OF ORKNEY: 1981

Portrait of Orkney GMB John Murray 1981

Portrait of Orkney is a personal account – the work of a writer deeply rooted in the place – of a people,
their history and their way of life, and of a landscape that has shaped them and been shaped by them.

It is the result of a collaboration between GMB, photographer Gunnie Moberg and illustrator Erlend Brown, GMB’s nephew.

Gunnie Moberg was born on 8 May 1941 in Gothenburg, Sweden.Her father Åke Moberg was an accountant, and her mother Margot Lundblad was an amateur painter. Gunnie left school at the age of 16 in order to pursue artistic photography.

She began by working at a photographer’s studio in Gothenburg but moved to Edinburgh, Scotland a year later. In Edinburgh she worked as an au pair and studied pottery at the Edinburgh College of Art, where she met Californian artist Tam MacPhail. They married in January 1961 and had four sons. They initially settled in Argyll, but later moved to Orkney in 1976, after Gunnie Moberg’s visit in 1975.

Pamela-Beasant-on-Stromness-Books-Prints-Slightly-Foxed-76-Iain-Ashman-1000×771

Gunnie’s husband ran a bookshop in Stromness called ‘Stromness Books & Prints’, which published her first photography book in 1979. Between 1977 and 1979, the St Magnus Festival and the Pier Arts Centre were established. The St Magnus Festival appointed her photographer in residence; a role that she held for nearly thirty years.

Her popularity as a photographer grew over time, but in later years she turned to painting. She died at the age of 66 in Stromness.

erlend-brown-storm-print

“A special limited edition print of the cover of George Mackay Brown’s The Storm and Other Poems has been launched. Artist Erlend Brown (GMB’s nephew) started making the print edition in 2021, to mark the centenary of the writer’s birth. He gifted the set of 100 prints to the George Mackay Brown Fellowship shortly before his own sad and unexpected death earlier this year.”

Erlend Brown

Erlend Brown grew up in the small seaport of Stromness in Orkney, where the Brown family had lived for many generations. His playground was the winding street and closes, and the harbour where flatties and dinghies were ready to row and splash around the piers, or go fishing for cuithes and mackerel.

Stromness was immortalised by Erlend’s celebrated uncle, George Mackay Brown: ‘There was a harmony in the web of creation … Stromness (Hamnavoe) came last into the pattern, with piers, fishing boats, ships, and the lovely scrawl of stone houses under Brinkie’s Brae.’

Erlend shared George’s skills as a footballer, but while George then chose literature, a strong aptitude in the visual arts led Erlend to graduate in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. A travelling scholarship then enabled him to study Art in Italy. He returned to Orkney and spent eight years teaching, finally as Head of Art at Stromness Academy. (..)

ORKNEY PICTURES & POEMS:1996

Here’s a sublime book of poetry published shortly after Brown’s death in 1996.

This is one of my favourite books of poetry by GMB, a large-format volume that I always leave open on my desk, it has been so beautifully illustrated by Gunnie Moberg: each poem is illustrated with a photo, full page.

In this book, the wonders of Orkney unfold, brought to life by the poet’s pen and the photographer’s camera…

My list of places to visit in Orkney has grown longer and longer, more vivid and appealing as the pages went by and,  as I read this or that poem, I remember the unforgettable sites we’ve already visited… souvenirs de voyage…

Orkney Pictures & Poems Gunnie Moberg and George Mackay Brown 1996

The eye of the camera seeks patterns
On shore, on hill, in fields and lochs,
       And at all seasons. (..)

We may note, page by page, the new
And the old works of time; how all
         Fall into ruins, or go dancing
         Towards green April harps.
         Forever, somewhere, are joy and dancing.

(From Introductory Poem)

Read the evocative titles of the poems… et c’est déjà le début du voyage ;-)…

One

Churchill Barriers
Martello Tower
Rusk Holm
The Old Lighthouse
North Ronaldsay Sheep
Knap of Howar: Papay
Cubbie Roo’s Castle, Wyre
Horse Mill
Dwarfie Stane
Maeshowe
Eynhallow: the Monastery
Magnus Kirk, Egilsay
Saint Tredwell, Papay
Skara Brae

Two

Swans in Stenness
Flowers on Ice
Pebbles in Ice
Swans
Storm in Hoy Sound: Kirkyard
Hoy Sound: the Warbeth Shore
Thistles
Bluebells at Woodwick
Marigolds
Swimmers
Selkie
Eider Duck
Shags: Mother and Chick
Two cows
Conversation of Cows
Stook: The Corn Battle
Holm of Aikerness: Seaweed Gatherer
Waterfront, Hamnavoe
Hoy Cliffs
Tide
Flotta Flare
‘New Fires, Old Fires…’
Hoy Sound: Storm
Swans at Brodgar

Three

Blockship (Parliament of Scarfies)
Fishing Boats
Fishermen
Hamnavoe
A Hamnavoe Close
Italian Chapel
Rain
The Horses

COLLECTED POEMS 2005

The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown ed. Archie Bevan & Brian Murray 2005

‘George Mackay Brown has added uniquely and steadfastly to the riches of poetry in English: his sense of the world and his way with words are powerfully at one with each other’ (Seamus Heaney)

‘George Mackay Brown really does possess the magician’s touch’ (Observer)

“A brilliant writer… He combines great imagination, which takes him into the realms of the mystical, with a firm rooting in reality and a deep understanding of humanity’ (Spectator)

There can be few poets anywhere in the Western world writing as pure and unadulterated a poetry as that of George Mackay Brown’ (Times Literary Supplement)

“The four volumes of Selected Poems issued in Brown’s lifetime (1971, 1977, 1991 and 1996) were an inadequate representation of his work’s quantity, range and quality. This book offers all the collections he published in book form, together with selections from the posthumously printed For the Islands I Sing, Stained Glass Windows and Northern Lights and the whole of Travellers. . . .”

The Collected Poems George Mackay Brown contents

About The Storm:

“One of the revelations of this little book is the extent to which the poet has aready mapped out his territory.

His principal subject matter is of course the place and the people of Orkney, with their long and frequently turbulent history reaching back beyond the Viking era to the Stone Age, and their great treasure house of lore and legend. Here too is the celebration of farmer and fisherman, tinker and saint.”

(From the introduction of The Collected Poems)

NORTHERN LIGHTS 2020

Northern Lights George Mackay Brown 2025

“Many of the places, people, legends and seasons that formed Brown’s vision and work are presented here, with poems appearing among the prose. Included are memoirs of his parents, friends and passing strangers with legends and stories of the places.”

FURTHER READING

For GMB fans and those who dream of a trip to the fabulous Orkney Islands, here are some of my favourite books and  Roy Ferguson’s choice.

“Some of the things I wanted to know are found in four indispensable books– Maggie Fergusson’s beautifully understated biography, George Mackay Brown: The Life; Rowena Murray and Brian Murray’s superb introduction to GMB’s work, Interrogation of Silence; a collection called George Mackay Brown: Northern Lights, a poet’s sources, edited by Archie Bevan and Brian Murray; and, of course, GMB’s autobiography, For the Islands I Sing.”

(Roy Ferguson)

George Mackay Brown For the Islands I Sing An Autobiography John Murray 1997

This book is particularly dear to me, not only because it’s the story of GMB’s life told by himself, but also because it is the link that led us to Iain & Margaret, our dear Scottish friends… you believe in coincidences, I don’t.

A big THANK YOU George 😉

George Mackay Brown The Wound and the Gift Ron Ferguson Saint Andrew Press 2011

“This book is a new Orkney Tapestry. The life and work of GMB are stitched intricately into the islands with deftness and delicacy. It is also crafted with great humility. Despite the personal approach, Ron Ferguson never gets in the way of the telling but lets the tale and the tellers (especially the main teller) have their say. A line came into my mind, from RLS. Bright is the ring of words when the right man rings them. I often thought this applied to George more than any other Scottish writer. But it also applies to the author of this revealing and riveting biography. Quite simply, I come out of this book more human than when I went in, more spiritual (dare I say it) and somehow happier!”

Christopher Rush, poet and novelist

“An Orkney Tapestry first attracted me to these islands nearly a quarter of a century ago. George Mackay Brown’s distinctive guide to Orkney is, literally, a fabulous book. It has history, of sorts, but also stories and poems and dramas. The back cover says that the author ‘explores the dark mysterious corners, as well as the quiet beautiful fertile places, in his search for the still point of Orkney’s history, the true face of the Orkney Fable’.”

(Ron Ferguson)

George Mackay Brown The Life Maggie Fergusson John Murray 2006

A very fine biography of an enigmatic poet and writer

“A remarkable biography of a remarkable writer. George Mackay Brown is somewhat an enigmatic figure due to his avoidance of publicity and his life that was lived almost exclusively in the remote Orkney islands off the northeast coast of Scotland. Biographer Maggie Fergusson has done a sterling job collecting anecdotes and insights into Mackay Brown’s life through his work, the people he knew and the letters he wrote and received from friends and colleagues.
Using short passages from Mackay Brown’s own writings, his prose and his poetry, Fergusson illuminates his life – and it is a life that meanders through episodes of joy, tragedy, and love, and above all celebrates the work of a writer who treasures his surroundings, the islands of his birth, and through them creates some of the most outstanding literature of the 20th century.
I would say this is “the best biography of a poet I have ever read”, but that commendation has already been given by A.N.Wilson and appears on the cover of the paperback edition. Suffice to say I completely concur with the sentiment and, having read Fergusson’s well-researched and masterfully constructed biography, wish I might have met the great George Mackay Brown myself.
A book to be enjoyed and savoured.”

(Comment from an American reader on Amazon :-))

YES ! wish I might have met the great George Mackay Brown myself! 😉

Orkney A Historical Guide Caroline Wickham-Jones

Orkney A Historical Guide by Caroline Wickham-Jones

“Orkney lies only 20 miles north of mainland Scotland, yet for many centuries its culture was more Scandanavian than Scottish. Strong westerly winds account for the scarcity of trees on Orkney and also for the tradition of well-constructed stone structures.

As a result, the islands boast a large number of exceptionally well-preserved remains, which help us to form a detailed picture of Orcadian life through the ages. Sites and remains to be explored include settlements from the Stone Age, stone circles and burials from the Bronze Age, Iron Age brochs, Viking castles, the magnificent cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall, Renaissance palaces, a Martello tower from the Napoleonic Wars and numerous remains from the Second World War.

In this updated edition of her best-selling book, Caroline Wickham-Jones, who has worked extensively on Orcadian sites for many years, introduces the history of the islands and provides a detailed survey of the principal places and sites of historic interest.”

Maeshowe and the Heart of Neolithic Orkney Historic Scotland

“The chambered tomb of Maeshowe sits in one of the richest and best preserved Neolithic landscapes in Europe. This was a place of stone circles, villages and burial monuments; a place where people lived, worshipped and honoured their dead. The surviving evidence tells us that about 5,000 years ago, Orkney was a thriving focus whose influence was felt many miles away.

Aside from Maeshowe, visitors can discover Neolithic houses at Skara Brae and Barnhouse, dramatic stone-circled henges such as the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, and the astonishing ceremonial centre at Ness of Brodgar, still being uncovered by archaeologists.

The importance of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney was marked in 1999 when some of its key monuments were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This book will help you to explore and understand the site, and discover other related monuments in the area.”

Orkney Hector McDonnell Wooden Books 2020 front cover

Were the Stones of Stenness the world’s first henge and stone circle?

Why has Orkney preserved so many Neolithic farmhouses and villages?

What was the purpose of the huge buildings on the Ness of Brodgar?

In this small book, painter Hector McDonnell introduces the history and the mystery of Orkney. Could the practice of making astronomical stone circles really have started on a small island off the north coast of Scotland, and then been exported to the mainland?

Read on!

Orkney Hector McDonnell Wooden Books 2020 back cover

Wooden Books… Look! There is a book dedicated to Callanish !

The Scottish Islands Hamish Haswell-Smith Canongate 2004

“An Orcadian is a farmer with a boat while a Shetlander is a fisherman with a croft”

This book by Hamish Haswell-Smith  is a true bible for lovers and sailors of the Scottish islands. It’s one of my favourite travel books about Scotland. Don’t count on taking it with you in your travel bag, as it’s a big, heavy volume. It’s beautifully illustrated with detailed maps and the author’s own hand drawings. I always use it to prepare our trips, because every time we go to Scotland we never fail to visit some of the islands: Arran, Islay & Jura,Mull, Iona, Staffa, Handa, the Hebrides and of course Skye, which can hardly be called an island today since a bridge was built in 1995.

Here is Hamish Haswell-Smith’s introduction to the chapter devoted to Orkney :

“The islands to the north of Scotland are not easily confused with those of the west. Not only is the geology very different from that of, say, the Hebrides, but the entire social structure and language is distinctive. Both areas came under Norse influence in the first millenium but whereas within a few centuries Celtic civilisation had gained control in the west, the north remainded a Norse dominion until comparatively recent times. Gaelic has never been a natural language in the north. When Norn (partly Old Norse, partly Icelandic) died out it was replaced by English or Lowland Scots.

Apart from a very few outliers, the islands in this region form two archipelagoes and just as the northern isles as a group are very different from the western isles so too does each archipelago have its own distinctive characteristics. The Orkney archipelago is agriculturally rich thanks to its base of Old Red Sandstone, while the Shetland archipelago, 50 miles further north, has poorer soil and ist economy therefore depends on the wealth of the sea.”

orkney-ferry-map

In 2003 we took the ferry from John O’ Groats to St Margaret’s Hope (40 mn) and in 2012 a return crossing from Stromness to Thurso. This route, though much longer (90 mn) is our favourite one, as it takes us past the Isle of Hoy and its famous rock known as the “Old Man of Hoy”.

Orkney map islands and points of interest

“Between Duncansby Head (beside John O’Groats) on the Scottish mainland and Brough Ness at the southern tip of South Ronaldsay is only a matter of six miles, or a mere ten kilometres. But this narrow strip of water contains the treacherous Pentland Firth in parts of which the spring tides run faster than almost anywhere else in coastal Britain. The western end of the Firth has a notorious tidal race called the Merry Men of Mey which forms on the ebb and which is so turbulent that a small vessel can be put in severe danger.”

(The Scottish Islands – Hamish Haswell-Smith – 2nd editon 2004)

There are ferry-crossings to Orkney every day, and several times a day.

Orkney Islands Visit Scotland brochure 2012

Now, what about a leisurely stroll among the ruins of thousand-year-old sanctuaries, along paths lined with wildflowers amid fields grazed by cows and sheep with the sea in the distance, a city break along picturesque lanes lined with old stone houses, a visit to an art gallery or a local craft shop…

Why not  stop for scones and bannock tea-time or enjoy a delicious Scottish soup for dinner while watching the boats come and go in the harbour …

I’m not dreaming, we’ve already done all that during our previous trips to Orkney… souvenirs de voyage…

Orkney arts & crafts shop Scotiana photos montage © 2016 Scotiana

A journey to Orkney is an enchantment… discovering GMB’s books, one after the other, page after page, line after line is like discovering a treasure  chest full of multi-faceted gems that reflect the infinitely changing light, landscape and people.  It’s a never-ending quest… you always find something new there.

There’s MAGIC there, in Orkney and in The Bard of Orkney !

Enjoy !

Á bientôt.

Mairiuna.