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5
Saturday

In the morning we catch a ferry to Hoy, “High Island”, the hilliest in Orkney. Our intent is to take a three-hour hike to view the Old Man of Hoy, a 450-foot pillar off the western cliffs. We have managed so far to shield ourselves from Orkney’s mutable and blustery weather, but on this day we will be exposed. An odd kind of luck is with us. We are subjected to a five-minute squall about every half-hour, as is typical here this time of year. But, instead of rain, we are pelted by a fine, light hail, which bounces harmlessly off us, leaving us comfortably dry. The Old Man is a fabulous sight, as are the cliffs.

On the drive back to the ferry, we have time to visit Hoy’s other two famous sites. The first is the bizarre Dwarfie Stane, a presumed chambered tomb cut into a single large boulder. We crawl through the opening and find two rectangular chambers, one to either side. We lie inside and proceed to test the echoic qualities of the stone’s interior. When Win softly hums the lowest note he can, it reverberates loudly through the chamber. We are simultaneously spooked and amused, and spend the next ten minutes humming and laughing.

Our laughter dies when we visit Orkney’s saddest spot, the grave of Betty Corrigal. In the 18th century, Betty was charmed by the false promises of a sailor, who subsequently flew the coop, leaving Betty pregnant and alone. Shamed, she committed suicide. Neither of Hoy’s parishes would give a Christian burial to a suicide, and so her lonely grave lies on a desolate moor, on the border between the two. Some years ago a Christian service was finally read over her.

Back on Mainland, we visit the remains of the Round Church at Orphir, which stand next to the ruins of a Viking drinking hall, the Earl’s Bu. The Viking-era church survived nearly intact until the mid-18th century, when much of its stone was pilfered for another church. Ironically, this replacement church no longer exists. The Bu was excavated by an archeologist who divined its location from clues in the Orkneyinga Saga. Adjacent is the small Orkneyinga Saga Museum, which gives a summary of that saga’s history of the Viking earls of Orkney. Along with Shetland to the north, the islands were a Norwegian possession until the mid-15th century, when they were used as collateral for the promised dowry of Princess Margaret when she married James III of Scotland. The dowry was never paid, and the two archipelagos were annexed to Scotland. There is a fringe group in Norway today that wants the country to pay the dowry and reclaim the two island chains.

Bistro 76 is surprisingly crowded this evening, and we share a long table with two women who studiously ignore us. When we mention this to Malcolm the next morning, he is puzzled, until we tell him that our tablemates were English. He laughs knowingly. Geordies are regarded as unsophisticated bumpkins by southerners—the next closest thing to Scots. Malcolm is anything but unsophisticated, but regional stereotypes and prejudices are as alive in the UK as they are in the US. To be fair, what seemed unfriendly to us was probably a matter of being polite to the reserved Londoners, similar to the way we would behave in a crowded elevator. Or maybe they just didn’t like our looks.

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Hoy


Hoy


Old Man Of Hoy


Hoy


Dwarfie Stane


Dwarfie Stane


Stromness


Stromness


Stromness

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