For all the churches closed on Friday, it was a strange contrast Saturday that all the Neolithic sites were open. I suppose not so many people enjoy crawling around in burial cairns, or perhaps, they are simply better cared for because so many people DO like crawling around in them!
We visited four Neolithic Stalled Cairns on Rousay, all of which were accessible. They are stunning examples of the ingenuity, creativity and drive alive in humans since the dawn of time. All the cairns were constructed 3,500 years ago and consisted of "stalls" where bodies were laid, ashes were placed and bones collected over the millennia, a testament to the honor and care of ancestors and deceased.
Some photos:
Beautiful resting place; the fog was low and the walks misty.
Most of the day was spent at Midhowe Chambered Cairn, Midhowe Broch, Midhowe Farm, St. Mary's Church, Viking farm ruins and an 18th century farm ruins.
Midhowe Cairn is known as The Great Ship of Death. Covered by a hangar, the site has catwalks so that tourists can view the chambers and experience the magnitude of the site.
The Broch constructed in about 1100 by the farmer who worked the fields here. Perhaps Sigurd from the Orkneyinga Sagas.
As the walls of the broch began to slide, heavy slabs were set against the slipping wall - on the left - as buttresses.
The entire seascape around the broch is this slabbed stone, clay laid down in the seabed of the great Orcadian Sea in the Devonian Period, similar to our own Lake Bonneville.
Midhowe Farm, perhaps farmed by Sigurd.
St. Mary's Church, desperately close to falling into the sea, the site of the lamb birthing.
Skaill Farm with an excavation of a possible Viking Long House in the front.
An example of a bere kiln, typical of all Orkney farms of the period. Bere is a form of multi-row barley which had to be dried in order to perserve it for porridge, bread and brewing.
We drove out to the Shop on Rousay for souvenirs; it is closed on Saturdays.
