Orkney’s Day 2: Casks, Castles, Cliffs, Clemency, Crap, Critters, and finally Calm

I think my mother and I agreed that the Orkney’s was our favorite stop almost from the moment we set foot on the mainland.

The navigator has planned a rather ambitious morning for us and we headed out to meet it promptly after breakfast. Our first stop was a place called the Brough of Birsay. Birsay is quite a neat place. Birsay is an island, but only at high tide. The visitor’s center on Birsay has variable hours, and is possibly the only visitor’s center in the world in which working hours are determined by the tide.

As the tide lowers from high to low, the water recedes to reveal a narrow path connecting Birsay to the mainland. This alone might have been cool enough to make me want to see it, but it just so happened that on the top of this hilly island remained the ruins of an ancient village.

Actually, to call this place an ancient village is an oversimplification of the truth. It is actually three ancient villages overlaying one another. Originally it had been built by the Picts. The Vikings came and either killed or drove off the Picts, and then turned it into their settlement, installing a convenient drainage system. Eventually the Christians came and killed or drove off the Vikings. They then destroyed most of the Viking Village, and made their own settlement. Then they left. Or died. Or something.

The ruins were fascinating to see, but not much to describe. The remaining runes, mostly from the Christians (although there were ruins of the Vikings too, because they built slighly more uphill than the Christians seemed to care for) were pretty sparse. The Viking drainage system was still pretty well intact, simply consisting of a downhill dugout covered by slate for protection. There were a few leftover runes of a church, but really, today I can’t even be sure it was a church.