Orkneys - Day 2
We leave the main island and take a ferry to the island of Roussay. Near the ferry terminal is a small house converted into a free library, Betty's Reading Room. Apparently, Betty loved to read and left her house and library as a free library where you are encouraged to take and leave a book.
When the ferry got to Roussay, the bus was too long for the steeply ramped terminal, so blocks had to be placed under the wheels so the rear end of the bus would clear and not rip off the bumper.
Our first stop is the small Taversoe Tuick chambered tomb, which is unique because it is actually two tombs, one above the other. Both are fairly small and were not connected, although they certainly knew they were above one another,
The mist above the water was beautiful.
The Knowe of Swandro was our next stop; an ongoing excavation of an Iron Age roundhouse (Quite different from the railroad roundhouses I was familiar with.)
Since it was an active site, the director of the dig gave us the tour. Its located right on the beach and used the flat stone exposed on the beach in construction.
It appears to be more of a workshop than a residence. There are hearths for forging and smelting iron, an area for working antler and wood to make handles for iron implements.
The layout is even harder to understand in the photos than in person, so here is a slightly easier aerial photo.
We headed on down the beach toward the Midhowe Chambered Tomb. But along the way, we passed the ruined of an old church.
And saw the slabs of stone that make up the beach.
Midhowe is considerably different than the other chambered tombs. This one is long and has a corridor down the center with cells on either side. It's the only one like this.
By the time modern people discovered it, it had long been disturbed, and no burials were left. Once again, we know little about the people who built it. Their level of technology was Neolithic, which means that they had pottery but no metals. It also appears to have been built about 3,200 B.C. but that's it.
Our last stop was at a Broch. This is much younger, Pictish, after the Iron Age. Brochs are large, round, tall towers. They are usually found along the coast and clearly seem defensive to me. It's a massive amount of work to build one unless you need to. The fact that they were built all around the Scottish islands tells me that there was some sea-born threat, but we don't know.
This broch is in pretty poor shape. Large parts have tumbled down, the upper levels are missing, and the interior has been remodeled at least once. It could have been 15 meters tall originally.
The walls were double layered with chambers in the walls on the lower levels. There were multiple levels inside the broch. The illustration makes this more understandable.
There were also stairs inside the walls. These were much more complicated than the Neolithic buildings, but in some ways much the same overall plan. Since Brochs date to around 200 B.C., over 3,000 years since the previous buildings, the lack of progress is really remarkable. While Neolithic Orkney was very advanced, Iron Age and Pictish Orkney has fallen far behind other parts of Europe.
