Song of the Selkies

by Cathie Dunsford

  When they have completed the circle, a vibrating cry issues from a nearby burial mound, followed by a soul-piercing karanga, calling in the ancestors to the ring and welcoming the manuhiri. It sends a shuddering excitement up the spine of the women. Cowrie emerges from the other side of the mound and walks toward the women, placing her hei matau on the sacred ground as a welcome. Sasha recognises this is a greeting and bends to pick it up, accept the challenge, and Cowrie then places the bone fish-hook carving around her neck. Uretsete burns some sweetgrass she has brought with her and Sasha fingers her flute and is answered by a lone pied oystercatcher perched atop one of the stones.

  The sun reflects a silver band across the loch and the stone shapes vibrate with energy. Each one has its own sense of presence, its own particular shape and moss designs and runic inscriptions from the rain and wind. Cowrie notes this, adding, ‘… but together, all together, they are the instruments of change,’ quoting her favourite book, and thinking about the vast worldy changes witnessed by the silent vigil of the Ring and the Standing Stones of Stenness nearby.

  ‘Awesome. There really is a sacredness here missing from the touristicised Stonehenge and many other sites. Maybe it’s the perfect circle of the ring, or the awe of standing under stones nearly triple your height, or maybe it’s being on a thin strip of land between two lochs and knowing you can face the sunrise or the sunset over water, but this place surely is holy,’ utters Uretsete, clearly moved by being here. Even Camilla is touched, and the group has not seen her like this before. Cowrie notices a softness and vulnerability in her eyes which she normally keeps well guarded.

  ‘How and why did they build such vast monuments?’ asks DK.

  ‘If we could answer that, DK, we’d be in great demand by now. I’ve read archeological reports and listened to local theories since arriving here, and all offer a wide range of ideas. One of the most interesting is a mathematician, Alexander Thom, who reckoned that these stone circles were based on extremely complex geometry. If he’s correct, then these neolithic Stone-age people understood the triangle about 2500 years before its theory was devised by Pythagoras.’

  ‘How ridiculous,’ asserts Camilla. ‘As if that is possible.’

  ‘Why not?’ answers Uretsete. ‘My ancestors practised sustainable existence, living in tune with nature, long before modern ecologists reinvented the idea and claimed it for themselves. Why do we always have to assume the modern outclasses the ancient?’

  Cowrie supports her. ‘It’s true, Camilla. You can’t argue with that. Most indigenous tribes lived a far more balanced ecology working with the sea and land rather than farming it to extinction, and only now are we seeing the wisdom of those ways again.’

  ‘That’s too simplistic. It could be that these stones were simply ceremonial sites or for some kind of decoration, like we build statues to celebrate this or that king, queen or explorer.’

  ‘Now who’s being simplistic,’ answers Sasha. ‘Look at these stones and the deep ditch around them. They would have taken years to construct even with a large workforce. Imagine the skill in digging the stones from the ditches and then moving them on pulleys or similar and raising them in a perfect circle. Stones that are three times our heights. They must have cut holes at the base and rammed rocks in to hold them up. I can’t imagine that they would have invested so much human energy just for decoration.’

  ‘There’s evidence from pottery and bones found in excavations at the nearby Stones of Stenness, see, just down there, that both they and the Ring were places of important ceremonial occasions, so maybe you are both right,’ suggests Cowrie, wanting to avoid a confrontation at this sacred site. ‘Radio carbon analysis of bones and charcoal from the site shows they were constructed about 3000 BCE and that the charcoal in the centre of the stones meant fires were held there. Pottery they call Grooved Ware links the site to similar shards found at Skara Brae and Barnhouse, showing that people must have come from all over Orkney to celebrate here.’

  Camilla nods her head. ‘That’s true. Morrigan told me that human burials and animal sacrifice, feasting, dedication ceremonies and spiritual practices can all be deducted from the archeological finds.’

  ‘And I believe Alexander Thom showed the various stones connected to lunar alignments and he stated the observatory was used to track the movements of the moon several thousand years B.C. I like that idea’. Cowrie looks up to the sky and imagines being here at midnight, tracking the moon just as her ancestors navigated by stars to find their way across the Pacific to Aotearoa in canoes.

  ‘Then maybe the Ring is a huge sacred communal place, like an ampitheatre or arena, where some stargazed and others laughed and sang and played music and told stories around the fire,’ suggests Uretsete, getting excited about the possibilities of this.

  ‘Could be. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could get permission to hold a workshop performance out here? Maybe using the Ring as a backdrop rather than performing in it, since the heather ring within the circle should not be destroyed.’ DK’s eyes light up at the suggestion. ‘Let’s check it out.’ The others agree it would be fantastic.

  ‘So, if the pottery found here is the same as at Skara Brae, then it is likely that the same people who lived in Skara Brae constructed and then visited this site, right?’ asks Monique.

  ‘Sounds like it. So?’

  ‘When I went to Skara Brae to take photographs, the guide told us that many people believed, from the evidence of domestic life there and the lack of anything showing a male presence, that it could have been a community of women living together. Furthermore, archeological evidence shows it was an egalitarian society without rigid hierarchies. So, if the women built and lived in Skara Brae, then maybe they designed or built the Ring of Brodgar too?’

  ‘I’d go for that. It has an amazingly female energy compared to a place like Stonehenge,’ adds Uretsete.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ interjects Camilla. ‘As if women would be strong enough to construct and raise huge stones like these.’ She scoffs at the idea that this could be even suggested.

  ‘Not so fast, Camilla. Have you seen the artist’s sketches of the Skara Brae women’s community in Legendary Britain based on the archeological evidence? It shows Inuit women, large and strong, with painted bodies and bearing hand-made tools, one carrying a huge sack of Orkney oysters home. It depicted them being totally self-sufficient hunter-gatherers, long before the blokes imported farming and taming of the land rituals. They had teepee-like structures above the land as well as the domestic houses beneath the land. It blew my mind to see this painting.’

  ‘But surely an artist’s impression is simply that — an impression?’ argues Camilla.

  ‘Yes, but based on archeological data. That’s all we can do to reconstruct accurately what may have been. I’m not saying it had to be this way, but it is interesting to keep an open mind and consider all the possibilities. Like with our storytelling. Our talkstory reflects other ways of interpreting existence and is handed down and added to as society grows and progresses.’ Cowrie sees the hurt look in Camilla’s eyes. ‘Hey, it’s just a suggestion Camilla. It’s not a matter of who is right or wrong but expanding our perceptions to include all possibilities.’

  ‘I must admit, I like the idea of a women’s community here and at Skara Brae,’ admits Camilla, ‘as unlikely as I think it is.’

  ‘One archeologist, Dr Anna Ritchie, who excavated neolithic sites and wrote extensively about Orkney, did a close study of the development of the pottery from Unstan Ware to Grooved Ware and concluded that it could have marked the changes from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal one, from the evidence gathered.’ Cowrie is keen to encourage Camilla’s attempt to remain open.

  Quark! Quark! The oystercatcher deems the women have by now moved too close to her nest, hidden in rocks near the perimeter ditch, and she swoops down in front of them, issuing sharp cries of protest.

  ‘Time we moved away and left her in peace, I reckon,�
� suggests Sasha, noting her plea.

  They sit in silence on the mound facing the ring, meditating the ideas for some time as the sun edges slowly around the stones. They record their impressions in sketches, notes, photographs and music, with Sasha composing a new flute melody where the leitmotif returns again and again, circling the song, just like the stones.

  After some time, they have a picnic brunch they have brought, enjoying the thought of ancient women feasting around this site just as they do now, and lay out oatcakes and cheese, tomatoes and rocket, melon and mangoes. Cowrie offers a karakia to bless the food and they savour the tastes, and wash it down with Orcadian mineral water which Morrigan collects from a site once used by all but later boarded up by companies fearing competition. She believes it is from the land and should be shared with everyone. It is a fitting wine for the occasion.

  After a luscious feast, many more stories and some bone flute music on Cowrie’s koauau, weaving melodies with Sasha’s wooden flute, they head off into the hills on the return journey to the Bay of Skaill. The sun shines directly down on the stones, dwarfing their shadows and indicating it is as near noon today as it may have been near noon at this site five thousand years ago. Sasha’s flute warns the sheep, horses and birds as they draw near and allows them a peaceful walk home. The curlews in the fields call in answer with their haunting cries, echoing her song.

  [18]

  ‘Hamnavoe, the bay of Stromness, is a fine deep anchorage sheltered from everything but a south-easterly gale,’ DK reads from the Stromness Heritage Guide. They make their way along the main street, flanked on both sides by ancient stone dwellings packed together like sardines and sprouting up three stories in height. The narrow curving street, more a lane by modern standards, follows the shore line and every few feet you can glance down narrow alleys to see brightly coloured fishing boats bobbing up and down on the water. The waterfront, with its stone piers and slipways, is said to resemble a Norwegian fishing village.

  ‘So this is the town of George Mackay Brown’s poetry,’ hums Sasha. ‘It really lives up to the imagery and atmosphere.’ Most of the shops are at street level, housed in domestic buildings, keeping the feel of an old village rather than modern spaces designed purely for commerce. Buildings are sculpted from slate and sandstone from grey to ochre, and flagstones and cobblestones in various earthy colours form the street surface.

  ‘What road are we on?’ asks Uretsete, looking for a signpost.

  ‘We came in on John Street, but it looks from this map like the same main street follows the shoreline right through the town, changes about here into Victoria Street, with the post office and chippy and bakery, and further down into Graham Place, then Dundas and Alfred Streets.’

  ‘Isn’t Graham Place where they knocked down some old buildings to allow cars to fit through? I read it somewhere in a brochure on the ‘St Ola’,’ remarks Cowrie.

  ‘Yes,’ replies Uretsete. ‘A damned pity too,’ as she steps aside to let a yuppy Range-Rover edge past. ‘Should be for pedestrians only, not pollution pushers.’ They laugh at her terminology, but agree the town would be much more attractive without vehicles and especially since the central shopping area is easily walkable.

  ‘Forty-two Dundas Street,’ reads DK from the brochure, ‘was the home of Eliza Fraser whose shipwreck and experiences in Queensland, Australia, in 1835 are the subject of several books and a film.’

  ‘Now that’s your territory, Cowrie,’ smiles Sasha, ‘so spill the beans, old girl.’

  ‘Queensland sure ain’t my territory, gorgeous,’ she grins back. ‘Nor yours, coz it’s the home of racist politicians and policies. It’s right-wing redneck territory, but fortunately, that’s also what breeds pirates like Lizzie and cowgirls and dykes and all sorts of other exceptions to the mainstream.’

  ‘But isn’t there a local woman pirate from Stromness? She lived somewhere up from the Back Road, according to Morrigan, just under Brinkies Brae in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,’ comments Camilla. ‘Her real name was Bessie Millie but Sir Walter Scott called her Norny of the Fitful Head in his novel The Pirate. It’s said she sold fair winds to sailors.’

  ‘I read about that too. And for a fair price, enterprising soul that she was,’ adds Cowrie.

  They walk the length and breadth of the township, noting places of interest and learning about the colourful history of Stromness. Sasha is fascinated to discover that Rae’s Close is named after Dr John Rae, an Orcadian Arctic explorer for the Hudson’s Bay Company who completed the mapping of Northern Canada. She’d heard about him but had no idea he was Orcadian. She tells them about a group of Inuit school children who were being retaught the special Inuit ways of playing the fiddle, which had been taken to her land originally by Orcadians. That first interested her in visiting Orkney one day, along with the wild sea stories that were told about Orkney and the early whaling days.

  Following the harbour along the Ness Road, they see the former Sule Skerry Shore Station, built in 1892 to house the families of the lighthouse keepers living on Sule Skerry. They learn that the harbour side of Point Ness was let to herring curers, then walk on back to the fish shop to sample some of the delicious Stromness herring marinated in a range of sauces: with dill, sherry, juniper and even aged whisky.

  ‘When was Stromness first settled?’ Cowrie asks the old man leaning against the door of the Stromness Fish Shop as if he is a part of the stonework.

  ‘If yee go by The Orkneyinga Saga, written in the twelfth century, Earl Harald Maddadson fled from his cousin Erland and hid in the Castle of Cairston in September 1152,’ he relates, as if it were yesterday. ‘But the first recorded settlement was up there.’ He points to the east, ‘and they talk of a hoose at Garston on the Cairston Shore in 1492. But the date us fishermen like to remember is 1590 when the inn was built in Hamnavoe which took in sailors from visiting ships. Aye, thems were thee daiys.’ He takes a draft on his pipe, and looks down the main road nostalgically, as if he could summon up the sailors and tall ships and smell of the whisky before his eyes now, and he sighs.

  ‘So how did this port get the name Hamnavoe?’

  The old fisherman shifts from one yellow boot to the other and adjusts his stance against the wall, taking another big suck on his pipe. ‘From the invading Vikings, lass. They came here in their longboats and thar’s many an Orcadian descended from them Vikings. Aye, and many more who dinna ken admit it.’ He pulls the pipe from his mouth, pokes his finger into it, pressing down the remaining tobacco, and proceeds to refill it from a rusted tin with a picture of a lighthouse on the lid which he keeps in his trouser pocket.

  Cowrie reaches deep into her jacket and takes out a bone and paua fish-hook, fashioned after the early Maori ones, and shows it to him. ‘Ever seen a fish-hook like this?’ She places it in his hand. He strokes his yellowing grey beard and mumbles some words she cannot make out. Then he turns to her. ‘Aye, lassie. Somethin akin to this, at Skara Brae. Tools shaped from bone, arrowheads, fish hooks, but nothin quite like this.’ He turns it over to see how the paua shell has been attached with twine to the carved bone hook. ‘And this be abalone?’ he asks, polishing it with his finger then holding it up to the light. ‘All the colours of the rainbow. Must come from the promised land.’

  Cowrie grins. ‘Ae, paua from Aotearoa, land of the awakening dawn.’ She curves his fingers around the carved bone and tells him to keep it. His eyes light up and he presses her hand. ‘Thank yee, lassie. The rainbow shell will brighten me up on days when the sou-easters bluster into Hamnavoe and I leave me old haunts and skuttle into the Ferry Inn for a wee dram. Maybe I’ll see yer there some day?’

  ‘For sure.’ Cowrie smiles, then hurries to join the others, now half-way down an alley to the waterfront. There they lean over the rails watching the dories and old fishing vessels moving in and out the harbour and fishermen washing down the decks or carrying large sacks of fish up the wharf. Their bright yellow rubber boots distinguish the fish
ers and sailors from the wharf officials and ferryloopers piling off the ‘St Ola’.

  They take turns with the binoculars, noting with glee the names of boats: ‘Morning Dawn’, ‘Dyke’s End’, ‘Arctic Explorer’, ‘Vanishing Tides’, ‘Suzie Q’, ‘Quoyloo’, ‘Kelpie’, ‘Fulmar’, ‘Puffin’ and ‘No Puffin’, no doubt owned by non-smokers — a rare breed on the islands, ‘10345–Bay of Skaill’, ‘Selkie Too’, ‘Hoy Ho’. Cowrie asks Sasha for the binoculars. She turns back in the direction Sasha had been looking and, sure enough, there is Morrigan on the deck of the ‘Selkie Too’ bending over a large sack. Three men are looking down from the wharf. One by one they jump into the boat and help her lift the bundle, which looks like a drowned body, onto a flat trailer on the wharf. ‘Hey, Camilla. Did Morrigan come home from fishing last night?’ she asks.

  ‘Not before I left. She usually comes in early, has oatmeal porridge to warm up, then slumps into her bed. Why?’

  ‘Nothing, just wondered,’ returns Cowrie, zooming in on the bundle the men have lifted up from the boat. The body stirs slightly, or else has been bumped by their movement. She holds the binoculars steady and zooms in again. It is a seal. The creature lifts its head from the net a moment, opens its eyes wide, then lies down again, as if too exhausted to move. But not before Cowrie has seen the eyes close up. There’s something about them, something familiar. Somewhere she’s seen these eyes before.

  [19]

  Morrigan stays away the next three days and nights and when she returns is morose and withdrawn. She ignores them all, even Camilla. Camilla senses something very upsetting has happened but all her hints to share the pain reach deaf ears. Morrigan retreats into her book and eats little, coming into the kitchen to prepare food and taking it back to her room. Camilla visits the others in Cowrie and Sasha’s cottage and they work on refining a proposal for the storytelling workshops.