While in Caith­ness and Orkney, I had some delight­ful con­ver­sa­tions. Many were with Orca­di­ans I met briefly, but did not exchange names with. An Orkney bus dri­ver, in par­tic­u­lar, gave me a fine word pic­ture of what it’s like to be a south­ern­er relo­cat­ed in Orkney. “My chil­dren are Orca­di­ans,” he said, after some reflec­tions on the ambiva­lent sta­tus of new­com­ers in a very tra­di­tion­al place. Like many new­com­ers, he had fled the fast pace and com­plex­i­ties of the south to find a safe and qui­et place to raise kids. Sev­er­al farm­ers answered my agri­cul­tur­al ques­tions terse­ly, but intel­li­gent­ly. Read more »

I snapped a pho­to of this curi­ous car, which I found parked on a street in Kirkwall.

To iden­ti­fy it, I con­tact­ed my friend Peter Svi­lans, an expert of auto­mo­tive his­to­ry. He replied:

“That is indeed an inter­est­ing car. It goes by the charm­ing name of ‘Figaro’, and was built by a spe­cial divi­sion of Nis­san in lim­it­ed num­bers in 1991. The delib­er­ate­ly retro-styled car was ini­tial­ly sold by means of a lot­tery in Japan only, but it proved quite pop­u­lar and addi­tion­al cars were built. Rare and col­lectible. An off the beat­en track car in an out of the way place.”

Images of Tingwall and Rousay:

Entrance to Mid­howe Broch

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So Mag­nus Erlend­son, when he came up from the shore that East­er Mon­day, towards noon, to the stone in the cen­tre of the island, saw against the sun eleven men and a boy and a man with an axe in his hand who was weep­ing. Read more »

Break­fast in Kirk­wall was deli­cious, but it was a veg­e­tar­i­an’s night­mare. Fried eggs, a huge beef sausage much meati­er than an Eng­lish banger, a slab of blood pud­ding, some fried toma­toes, and toast. Noth­ing even remote­ly green.  Read more »

I had been warned that the Orkney dialect was “dif­fi­cult,” but it is per­fect­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble to any Cana­di­an, and extreme­ly pleas­ing to the ear. The into­na­tion pat­tern, in par­tic­u­lar, reminds me of Cana­di­an speech in the Atlantic Provinces. Read more »

Upon my word, my jour­nal goes charm­ing­ly on at present.… How eas­i­ly and clev­er­ly do I write just now! I am real­ly pleased with myself; words come skip­ping to me like lambs upon Mof­fat Hill; and I turn my peri­ods smooth­ly and imper­cep­ti­bly like a skil­full wheel­wright turn­ing tops in a turn­ing-loom. There’s fan­cy! There’s sim­i­le! In short, I am at present a genius: in that does my opu­lence con­sist, and not in base metal.

― James Boswell, Boswell’s Lon­don Jour­nal, 1762–1763 Read more »

More images of West Main­land: Read more »