Ancestor
From time to time on this, my first visit to Orkney, I am in touch with my Irish relatives, who are coming to Cambridge for my mother’s funeral. A funeral is like
Atlantic
Stromness or Hamnavoe
To the Vikings, the anchorage in front of the small Orkney port of Stromness was known as Hamnavoe, Old Norse for Haven Bay. By the sixteenth century, the settlement which grew up along
Stopping God
It is so beautiful up here: it is a stopping place.
Sylvia Plath, Berck-Plage
Many years ago when I was living in Rome—between jobs, between apartments, between relationships, already too old to
Skara Brae
That day of the scuttle centenary, while they laid their waterproof wreaths and rang their bell, I had been up at Skaill Bay on the west coast of Mainland, as they call the
