i'm back
I'm back. I said I would be. Yes, I started writing this a day after the annual commemoration of the death of Magnus Erlandsen, St Magnus. No, I didn't miss it, nor did I forget to raise a dram distilled from Orcadian barley. What I did miss, do miss, is the magnificence of Orkney. I have my reasons for the distraction. Realistically they are other peoples' reasons because they were not my choice!
This bump in the landscape, Maeshowe, wasn't approached on my terms either. This chambered cairn, looking not dissimilar externally to Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey, is a remarkably different thing inside. You'll have to trust me. From some foible of exhuberant curation: photography forbidden!
The name is curious. Styled as M'eshoo in the 1850s the spelling has been standardised as Maeshowe with, presumably, an accompanying shift in pronunciation. Just what it was called in antiquity is a mystery. In all likelihood the etymology is from the Old Norse mað — meadow — compounded with haugr — a multipurpose word for some lump in the landscape. Vikings, it seems, got the naming rights and that places the name as quite modern given the probability that the original construction was about 5 millennia ago.
Despite the misty, mizzling blur I quite like this approach to an ancient structure through a cow paddock. It reminds me in many important ways of the archaeologist's instruction to turn left at the sheep's water trough below Stonehenge. Here on Orkney I'm approaching a raised platform of earth — bearing the mound — surrounded by a whopping ditch and with evidence of standing stones within and without that mound. There's a reminder here that all of these things are alike and the British Isles prototypes were up here in the north, not on Salisbury Plain.
Walking up this path is more satisfying than the minibus ride here from the Visitors Centre to the carpark at Tormiston Mill. Now, I'm all for inclusion so please don't misunderstand me. Tormiston Mill is on the wrong side of a busy road to the start of the path to Maeshowe. To safely guide the visitors across this road the Visitor Centre provides a monitor. The wisdom of selecting someone so profoundly deaf as to need a cochlear implant and then have them stand perpendicular to the road, and thus unable to detect traffic coming from one direction, is as enigmatic as Maeshowe itself.
i'm back
I'm back. I said I would be. Yes, I started writing this a day after the annual commemoration of the death of Magnus Erlandsen, St Magnus. No, I didn't miss it, nor did I forget to raise a dram distilled from Orcadian barley. What I did miss, do miss, is the magnificence of Orkney. I have my reasons for the distraction. Realistically they are other peoples' reasons because they were not my choice!
This bump in the landscape, Maeshowe, wasn't approached on my terms either. This chambered cairn, looking not dissimilar externally to Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey, is a remarkably different thing inside. You'll have to trust me. From some foible of exhuberant curation: photography forbidden!
The name is curious. Styled as M'eshoo in the 1850s the spelling has been standardised as Maeshowe with, presumably, an accompanying shift in pronunciation. Just what it was called in antiquity is a mystery. In all likelihood the etymology is from the Old Norse mað — meadow — compounded with haugr — a multipurpose word for some lump in the landscape. Vikings, it seems, got the naming rights and that places the name as quite modern given the probability that the original construction was about 5 millennia ago.
Despite the misty, mizzling blur I quite like this approach to an ancient structure through a cow paddock. It reminds me in many important ways of the archaeologist's instruction to turn left at the sheep's water trough below Stonehenge. Here on Orkney I'm approaching a raised platform of earth — bearing the mound — surrounded by a whopping ditch and with evidence of standing stones within and without that mound. There's a reminder here that all of these things are alike and the British Isles prototypes were up here in the north, not on Salisbury Plain.
Walking up this path is more satisfying than the minibus ride here from the Visitors Centre to the carpark at Tormiston Mill. Now, I'm all for inclusion so please don't misunderstand me. Tormiston Mill is on the wrong side of a busy road to the start of the path to Maeshowe. To safely guide the visitors across this road the Visitor Centre provides a monitor. The wisdom of selecting someone so profoundly deaf as to need a cochlear implant and then have them stand perpendicular to the road, and thus unable to detect traffic coming from one direction, is as enigmatic as Maeshowe itself.