Later – through a strange coincidence – a woman, Isla, wrote a letter to the Liberty Street Costies’. She found us. We found out we were Orcadian, more Scottish than Irish. Orcadians are Orcadian first and then might consider themselves Scottish if at all.

Ancestrally, Orcadians have lived on Orkney since the Mesozoic era. They are Picts with a Brythonic* language. They have a pre-Norse existence but, soon after Norse occupation, developed a new language called Norn. With later Scottish occupation the language became an Insular Scots** (Orkney and Shetlands share this). A very thick, sing-song language with plenty of Norse words thrown in.

I am drawn to this and to the pre-Pict, to the Neolithic and to the Mesozoic Doggerland.

It is assumed the Orcadians arrived in the Isles by boat and surely many did. But, at one time, the Isles were a part of a larger continent joined to Scandinavia and Britain. Water levels were very low. Continental Europe in 16,000 BC extended further then the Shetlands (NG Dec 2012***). Water receded and islands developed, stranding some people, killing others and preserving artifacts.

Around 3,200 BC a Neolithic community was going strong. They created huge monolithic stone rings, burial mounds and religious centres. Studies have shown that all these monuments are inextricably linked in some grand theme we can only guess at. Distinctive coloured pottery shards found at Ness and elsewhere, for example, suggest that the trademark style of grooved pottery that became almost universal throughout Neolithic Britain had its origin in Orkney. It may well be that rich and sophisticated Orcadians were setting the fashion agendas of the day… This is totally at odds with the old received wisdom that anything cultural must have come from the genteel south to improve the barbarian north. It seems to have been just the reverse.

Traders and pilgrims also returned home with recollections of the magnificent temple complex they had seen and notions about celebrating special places in the landscape the way the Orcadians did – ideas which, centuries later, would find their ultimate expression at Stonehenge.” (NG Aug 2014).

Everything was built of stone and that is why much of it remains. My great-great grandfather was from Orkney and a stone mason. He probably built many of the slate roofs in our city.

I have been to Orkney mainland, Rousay and Westray. I have seen the Stones of Stenness (5,000 yrs old) a ring of stones 1,000 years older than Stonehenge; Skara Brae (3100 BC) a complete Neolithic village; Maes Howe tomb (4,500 years ++), 20 feet tall and 100 feet in diameter; Mid Howe tomb (3,500 BC); and the Ring of Brodgar. The archeologists were working on Ness of Brodgar and was not approachable. Ness of Brodgar has the richest collection of Neolithic art found to date.

This is what I am.

*The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael.

**Insular Scots comprises varieties of Lowland Scots generally subdivided into:

Shetlandic
Orcadian
Both dialects share much Norn vocabulary, Shetlandic more so, than does any other Scots dialect, perhaps because they both were under strong Scandinavian influence in their recent past.

In ancient times, Pictish was spoken in the islands. Then the Vikings invaded and settled, establishing the Norn language there. Although the islands thereafter owed allegiance to Norway, they became involved politically with Scotland. Scotland annexed the islands in 1472; by then, Scots was spoken.

***NG – National Geographic.

Orkney

costay

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