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. I wandered through a supermarket, looking for something to take with me on the coming day’s journey to the Isle of Rousay. The produce section was tiny, and mostly filled with turnips and potatoes. There were some sad-looking heads of lettuce that looked like they had been used for ballast in a Liberian freighter, and some cabbages. Like the Canadian Arctic, the Orkneys seems to be a realm of carnivores.
But, passing a bakery, I spotted what I knew from literary sources was the signature link between the land of my birth and this legendary archipelago: bannock. It’s a sweet quick-bread that can be oven-baked, or made in a pan. Bannock was, for centuries, a staple food in Canada, especially in the Arctic, the Subarctic, and the West. It is still the traditional Métis and Native Canadian treat. Among the Plains Cree and Plains Ojibway, it is still a near-obligatory formula of politeness for a guest to ask a host “did your grandmother make this bannock?” There must be a thousand recipes for it, and in Canada, all sorts of things are thrown into it: blueberries, saskatoonberries, cranberries, even tree moss. The Innuit fry it up greasily. The Métis call it “galette,” the Swampy Cree call it “alakonahow,” and everyone calls it delicious. In the bush, I’ve seen it cooked coiled on a stick. The campfire version is traditionally made by propping a skillet vertically close to the flames, so that it is “baked” by radiant and reflected heat. And there, in a Kirkness bakery window, was a pile of it, freshly made. I zipped in and bought some to try right away, and more to feed me on my journey.
The Orkney bannock was absolutely identical to the most traditional kind I’ve tasted in the Arctic, at Pow-Wows, and most recently in a Dream Tipi. I disapprove of the modern trend of substituting “all-purpose” wheat flour for the traditional tangy barley flour. It was utterly scrumptious. I brought nothing else for the day except a dried sausage, so that my adventure on Rousay would be provendered much like a voyageur’s canoe trip was fueled by bannock and pemmican.
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