HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY TO ORKNEY LIBRARY & ARCHIVE!

Ron Butlin talks to P7 from Glaitness Primary

This week has seen the tenth anniversary of Orkney Library & Archive moving into the new purpose built library on Junction Road. Though the Laing Street premises were much loved by generations of Orcadians, the library and particularly the archive, had outgrown it.

So to celebrate, we've been having various events. 

James Oswald

On Monday we hosted an event with farmer-crime-writer James Oswald who told the fascinating story of his recent phenomenal publishing success. 

Two books out this summer, one coming out in February next year and a further three book deal with Penguin to take the Inspector McLean mysteries to six. 

James reckons he can turn out two a year. AND run his 350 acre farm in Fife. Good luck to him! We were lucky here in Orkney to see James for his first gig on his own as an author. He might be a bit harder to book in future. I imagine he will be reaping the whirlwind of his success along with his silage!

Evisceration, I said, your first book is full of it. Was this a working through of your guilt that you send some of your animals to slaughter?

Louise Graham and James Oswald

No, replied James Oswald, it arose from me and Stuart McBride trying to out-gross each other!

Ron Butlin and children from Glaitness Primary School

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh's Makar or Poet Laureate, worked with two groups of young folk - five from Wirdsmit Young Writers' Group on Tuesday and on Wednesday, 31 from P7, Glaitness Primary!

Ron was very impressed by both groups. The Wirdsmit youngsters wrote at an enviable rate and produced excellent work. And he kept the group of 31 enthralled as he told them to stop thinking and allow their imaginations full rein.

Q. What's read again and again but never bought? was the riddle one came up with.

Ron Butlin in conversation with David Lea

Ron did a reading from his work in the evening - poetry and short stories - to a good crowd of folk and generated lively interesting questions and discussion. 

Tim Morrison, Cary Welling, Ron Ferguson

When politicians and corporations fail us, all we have is our shared humanity. Poetry can put us in touch with that.

Karen Walker and Jim Bergen

Ron got a surprise when two old friends of his turned up unexpectedly for his reading. Novelists Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan were on holiday in Orkney and came along.

Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh and Louise Graham

Amber Connolly who runs Wirdsmit

David Drever and Liam Stewart

Answer to the riddle: A library book!

Ron Butlin's and James Oswald's books are available to borrow - again and again! - from Orkney Library & Archive.

THE STONE BLOGS #2: Eyin Helga, Eynhallow, Holy Isle, Hildaland

Last night I went to Eynhallow for the first time in my life. I used to look across at it from Evie where my fella stayed. Sometimes in the late evening sun the island stood out so clearly I felt as if I could step across the Burgar Roost and land dry-shod on its shores. Other times it disappeared entirely into the mist and left Rousay lowering darkly out of an otherwise seemingly empty sound. 

Maybe this is why it became associated with Hildaland, the island of the Finn Folk, mostly hidden from mortal eyes, but sometimes glimpsed by Orcadians travelling by. The guide last night told the assembled folk who had sailed out on the annual Orkney Heritage Society trip the story of how Hildaland was tricked away from the Finn Folk and claimed for mortal Orcadians.

There seemed to be plenty trickery afoot last night, enough to put folk off stepping onto the shore. When we disembarked, thousands of shrieking terns rose from the rocks like a storm of needles and made us humans feel very unwelcome indeed. We steered clear of them, though, and headed out sunwise round the island to see the archaeological remains; those who wanted to see the birdlife walked off widdershins. 

One of the main attractions on Eynhallow - named Eyin Helga, Holy Island, by the Vikings - is a chapel and monastery dating back to the 12th Century. It is a Romanesque structure with impressive arches and there are mysteries surrounding it. Check out the excellent Orkneyjar website for more information about Eynhallow, the facts and the fiction, the mysteries and the speculation. 

It struck me once again, that the building methods for dry-stane dykes - see previous blog - have remained the same for centuries.  Millennia even, as we shall see ... 

Here is what Jo Ben said about Eynhallow in 1529 in his Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum:

"ENHALLOW

Enhallow, as if it were, the Holy Island, and very small.

It is of old times related that here, if the standing corn be cut down, after the setting of the sun, unexpectedly there is a flowing of blood from the stalks of the grain; also it is said that if a horse is fastened, after sun-down it will easily get loose and wander anywhere during the night [without hindrance from any one, if indeed these be not hindrance from evil intent.

Here you may discern the futitious and fabulous traditions of these people."

(This information is quoted from Orkneyjar website, as above.)

Eynhallow, with its holy order of monks lost sight of down the centuries, had an important part to play in the imagination of George Mackay Brown.

In George Mackay Brown:The Wound and the Gift, Ron Ferguson's exploration of GMB's literary and spiritual journey, he quotes a conversation:

'Irene Dunsmuir told me that at one stage, George got work as a road man on the island of Rousay. “He had to take the work,” she told me, “or his benefit would have been stopped. He told me how he enjoyed the view, looking over to Eynhallow.”
           I love it! I treasure the image of the frail but thrawn poet, dressed in workman’s gear, leaning on his shovel and looking wistfully out to the holy island of Eynhallow, the place of the monks. George Brown’s career as a labourer was a short one.'

In his early poem, The Storm, which clearly shows the influence of Gerard Manley Hopkins, GMB imagines a fisherman wrecked on the shore of Eynhallow:

... Rousay before me, the stout mast

Snapped, billowing down helpless sail.

               What evil joy the storm

               Seized us! plunged and spun!

And flung us, skiff and man (wave-crossed, God-lost)

On a rasp of rock! ... The shore breakers,

               Stained chancel lights,

               Cluster of mellow bells,

Crossed hands, scent of holy water ...

The storm danced over all that night,

               Loud with demons, but I

               Safe in Brother Colm's cell.

Next morning in tranced sunshine

The corn lay squashed on every hill;

               Tang and tern were strewn

               Among the highest pastures.

I tell you this my son: after

That Godsent storm, I find peace here

               These many years with

               The Gray Monks of Eynhallow.

You can read this poem and all of his others in The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, edited by Archie Bevan and Brian Murray.

It was possible, last night, to imagine the Gray Monks of Eynhallow, setting candle stubs in narrow windows and looking out on the wild stretch of sea between them and the Evie coast.

After a difficult but fascinating tramp round the island, negotiating the storm of terns again, we made it back to the boat.

I'd love to go again sometime - and stay longer ...