Keeping It All Together Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

Lying off the northern coast of Scotland, a group of small islands

cluster together where the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea

meet in a maelstrom of turbulent currents and wild water.

Each of the 70 islands

has a special identity of its own

but collectively they are known as The Orkneys

and they share a history and heritage that make them feel

quite different from the mainland or the islands of the west coast.

In this series, I'm on a Grand Tour of the Scottish Islands,

visiting the Orkneys in the north,

and travelling as far as the island of Gigha in the southwest.

Generations of travellers have set out to explore

the magic of the Scottish Islands.

I'm following in their footsteps, exploring remote

and fascinating places scattered around our coastline,

and meeting the people who call these islands home.

-She's a lovely boat to sail?

-Oh, fantastic.

I would say like an E-type Jag or something like that!

For this grand tour, I'm sailing

to the outer islands of the Orkney archipelago

to discover what holds them all together.

My route takes me from North Ronaldsay

and then island hops south to tiny Stroma

in the tumultuous waters of the Pentland Firth,

a long channel of the sea that separates Orkney

from mainland Scotland.

North Ronaldsay is the most northerly of the Orkney islands

and you'd therefore think it would be the most remote and isolated.

But that's without reckoning on the impact of air travel.

The air link is provided by Logan Air.

Founded in 1962, it's the UK's oldest operating airline.

Piloting my flight is Colin McAllister.

And I'm lucky enough to sit up front with him

in this small plane appropriately called an Islander.

How many islands do you fly to?

We fly to six islands. North Ronaldsay being one of them,

the others, Westray and Papa Westray, Stronsay, Sanday and Eday.

So without this vital air link,

a lot of people would really perhaps have moved on from these islands.

Certainly from the likes of North Ronaldsay. They're a bit further out.

More on the edge.

I think that's probably true that folk would've left the islands.

North Ronaldsay in the winter gets two ferries a week

-and in the summer it's just one ferry a week.

-Really? Is that all?

-Yeah.

-So they are totally dependent on this air link, really.

I think without a doubt.

Ever since civil flying began,

the people of Orkney have shown themselves quicker to take up

the new means of travel than the people of any other part

of the United Kingdom.

Many of the children have travelled by plane

long before they've even seen a railway train.

The potential of air travel in Orkney was first

recognised as long ago as 1934, when pioneering aviator

Captain Ted Fresson began flying people to the islands.

80 years on, Fresson's legacy is an air service that enables

people to live on North Ronaldsay and to commute to work in Kirkwall.

I mean, we're better connected here than

if you lived, say, up on the west coast of Scotland.

You certainly are.

As long as you've got the means to fly off, you can be in

London, say, in four hours.

-So that's good.

-From Kirkwall?

-From Kirkwall, yeah.

North Ronaldsay is a small island, about three miles long

and a mile wide and is home to just over 70 people.

To find out what life is like on North Ronaldsay,

I'm making my way to the lighthouse, where I've arranged to meet someone

who has lived here man and boy.

-Hi, Billy.

-Hi.

-Pleased to meet you.

-Pleased to meet you.

Billy Muir is the former lighthouse keeper

and has agreed to take me all the way to the top.

And for my sins, I find myself on a kind of stairway to heaven.

-How many steps are there, Billy?

-176.

-176?

The lighthouse was designed by the religiously minded

Alan Stevenson, and the number of steps corresponds to the

number of verses in the longest of all the psalms.

It's good for the soul, apparently.

And the rewards are not just in heaven.

You can see the whole of North Ronaldsay from here.

I was born at the house over at the other side of the bay over there.

And I moved one house down when I got married

and I've lived there ever since.

-So you have spent all your life here.

-All my life here, yes.

Tell me a wee bit about the social mix here.

Are there many young people on the island now,

or is it an ageing population?

It's an ageing population, one has to say, yes.

We have two new families that moved in in recent years and that's helped

keep the school numbers up.

Without that, there would be no children in the school,

I have to say.

And what about the mix of local folk like yourself and incomers?

What's the percentage of incomers?

-We call them new islanders.

-Right.

It's about 50-50, probably.

Without the new islanders, the island wouldn't exist today

and we need more to keep the school going and all the services going.

We're about as low a population that we would want to be.

Billy's comments prompt me

to reflect on island life as I wander the shore line,

where North Ronaldsay's famous seaweed eating sheep

are happily grazing.

Billy is optimistic about attracting the new islanders

North Ronaldsay needs, because with its air link,

the island is still well connected.

But my next destination is home to a community where isolation

is a cherished ideal.

Lying south of North Ronaldsay is the even smaller island

of Papa Stronsay, where the ferry link is operated

by an unconventional group of new islanders.

To get there involves crossing in a boat that seems to be kept afloat

by little more than the power of prayer.

Today, the island is home to an international community of monks

led by Father Michael Mary.

So, Father Michael Mary, it's a rather rough day, isn't it,

to be making this crossing?

It's a bit rough. We can go a bit rougher

but the boat's not in such good condition

but we can go rougher than this.

-Yeah?

-Yeah, we can.

-But not much rougher, I would think.

No, it depends who's driving. Brother Malcolm's good though.

Under the watchful gaze of several saints

and the good lord himself, I'm thankful to set foot on this

tiny holy island where the monks dedicate themselves to the sacred

cause of keeping the Latin language at the heart of their devotions.

Father Michael Mary,

how long has this island been associated with monks?

Monks go back here to the time of St Columba in fact.

So for 1,400 years at least, this little island's been

associated with monks and saying mass and holy scripture.

Exactly.

The original monastery was abandoned in the 16th century

and the island given over to farming.

When the monks bought it 1999, they converted the barns

and outbuildings into a refectory and chapel

and so religious life returned.

There's something special about the monastic vocation and the solitudes.

We need them in a wider cycle to escape from the noise of the world

just to a time of prayer and silence.

It's an important part of the rhythm of life

and when people don't have it, I think they miss something.

Holidays are kind of a secular type of doing the same thing, aren't they?

You can do it a wee bit better even than that.

Rather than Las Vegas, you can come to Papa Stronsay.

The monks have to be as self sufficient as possible,

keeping cows and growing their own produce

in a hangar-sized green house.

-Is that a fig?

-That's a fig tree.

-Or a fig plant.

-A fig plant, yeah.

-That's fantastic.

-Isn't it, really?

They must be the most northerly figs grown in Britain

I would have thought.

I would say I could give a fig about that.

Who would've thought it?

A tropical paradise.

A garden of Eden.

Stepping outside into the chilly embrace of an Orcadian Spring,

Father Michael Mary is keen to show me evidence

of the island's sacred lineage.

Along the coast are the ruins

of the original 6th century Celtic monastery.

So this building is just about as old as it's possible to

get for a religious building in this part of Britain.

Yes, it is. It's very old and it was called the most northerly

-early Christian monastery that's been found.

-Really?

-Yes.

And the monks are still here.

We're here. We're back again.

How does that make you feel?

Great, because there's monks now through three millennium.

Before the year 1000, after the year 1000,

and now we came in 1999 and into the year 2000 so that's three millennia.

Just as the monks feel a connection with Papa Stronsay

through the history of the island,

so Orkney as a whole was once brought

closer together by a figure from the past.

To tell this story, I'm heading to Egilsay,

an island with a population of 24, or thereabouts.

Despite the tiny size of Egilsay, it's played a key role in

forging the identity of the diverse islands that make up the Orkneys.

800 years ago, Egilsay was the stage for a series of dramatic events

described by the Viking Orkneyinga Saga, one of the most celebrated

pieces of medieval Scandinavian literature ever written.

The ruined church ahead of me dates from the 12th century

and according to the Orkneyinga Saga, it was on this site

that the Earl Magnus met a brutal martyr's death.

Orkney was then ruled by two cousins.

The Earl Haakon and the Earl Magnus.

Haakon was ruthless and warlike, Magnus pious and meek.

At first, the earls ruled well together, but evil men stirred up

trouble between them and war threatened to engulf the islands.

In order to avoid bloodshed,

a peace conference was called for Easter Day.

It was to be held here at the church on Egilsay.

Earl Magnus was the first to arrive

and being a saintly soul, he immediately began to pray.

But when his cousin Haakon turned up

with a small fleet and 100 heavily armed men,

Magnus's goose was well and truly cooked.

Poor Magnus got the chop, but it wasn't long before

all kinds of miracles began to be associated with his name.

Within a generation, Earl Magnus had become Saint Magnus.

Orcadians came to regard Magnus as a martyr.

While he lived, the islands were divided.

His sacrifice held the islands together for the good of all.

This is Kirkwall. The bay of the kirk.

The capital of Orkney and the centre of the archipelago.

The cathedral is dedicated to St Magnus,

whose bones were laid to rest beneath of its ancient pillars.

St Magnus is Britain's only Viking saint.

In life, Earl Magnus belonged to the Viking world

of violent power politics, where might was right.

Vikings from western Norway settled here in Orkney in the 8th century,

and for over 600 years, these islands,

ruled by the Viking earls of Orkney,

were part of the Scandinavian world.

Evidence of Viking influence on Orkney is everywhere,

especially in the boats that were once so common here.

These vital little craft once helped

to keep the islands and their people connected.

Willie Tulloch takes the helm of this traditional yole,

as many Orcadians have done before him.

They're fantastic little boats.

Very good sea boat. Very kindly to sail.

This was really the taxi of the sea.

They were used in the olden days as a car was used.

Before they had roads and anything that needed to be carried,

the yoles carried them.

-Livestock?

-I've heard of sheep being carried in yoles.

Well, it feels a very seaworthy boat, I have to say.

Very good indeed.

And from my Norwegian experience, it's not that dissimilar to

some of the boats that I'm familiar with off the Norwegian coast.

Do you think the boat building traditions of the Vikings

came with them?

Yes, I would say so.

The beauty is with this type of boat,

that it's been built over generations.

Each generation has tweaked a wee bit here and there.

So what we have now are absolutely fantastic boats.

The traditional craft of wooden boat building is

maintained in Orkney by Ian Richardson.

It's a traditional Orkney yole. A south isles yole.

18ft, seven foot six a beam approximately.

Copper fastened.

And very traditional to the area.

-And you built it?

-I built it, yes.

-How long did it take?

Four and a half to five months is what it should take.

-By yourself?

-By myself.

I get someone to steam bend timbers with me.

Your arms aren't long enough to go round the boat. That's the reason.

But, yeah, that's the only time someone gives me a hand.

And have you sailed this boat yourself?

I've sailed this one and I'm happy to say it's very competitive.

Ian's handiwork can be found all over Scotland,

from working fishing boats on the west coast,

to the many yoles around Orkney.

In fact, Ian built the boat that Willie is sailing,

using craft skills that once flourished here.

I learnt the trade here in Stromness.

In Stromness there were two boatyards.

-In the whole of Orkney there were five boatyards.

-Wow.

Are there many left?

There's just me.

-There's just you left.

-Yes.

Yeah.

The last of a long tradition of boat building in Orkney.

The last of, yeah.

-Indeed.

-How does that make you feel, to think you're the last?

Well, I think it's quite sad, really.

Because when I look at that boat, I'm thinking it's not just wood.

There's a whole lifetime of boat building experience

has gone into making it.

It's not something you pick up in just a year or so.

It is a lifetime's work, basically.

Although Ian is downbeat about the future of boat building

in Orkney, his legacy endures.

It's a privilege to sail in one of his boats.

-Which is a lovely boat to sail.

-Oh, fantastic.

I would say like an E-type Jag or something.

The large body of water we are sailing in today

is part of Scapa Flow.

During the two world wars of the 20th century,

this huge natural harbour, protected from the open sea

by the islands all around it, was home to the British Fleet.

In 1939, a German U-boat penetrated the defences and sank HMS Royal Oak

with the loss of over 800 lives.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill then issued an order

to seal the gaps between the islands,

first with sunken block ships

and then more permanently.

The Second World War gave Orkney the Churchill Barriers

which were built to protect the vital anchorage

of the British fleet.

But while naval strategy brought them into being

the roads they carry have proved to be a godsend to those

living on the islands thus linked together.

It takes this farmer only two minutes to make a crossing that once

took him two hours back-breaking manhandling in a yole boat.

Heading south over the causeway that connects the little islands

of Burray and Lamb Holm, I head to South Ronaldsay

and the picturesque village of St Margaret's Hope,

once a flourishing fishing and trading centre.

Islands today are often considered to be remote places

but historically, Orkney was held together by the sea,

not isolated by it.

People have flourished here since the very earliest times,

and the islands boast some of the most significant

archaeological sites in the whole of northern Europe.

Just a few miles outside of St Margaret's Hope at the south end

of South Ronaldsay is one of the most remarkable

and romantic-sounding archaeological sites in the whole of Scotland.

Kathleen and Freda Simison have lived and farmed here

all their lives.

They are also custodians of the remarkable Tomb of the Eagles,

which was first discovered by their father Ronnie Simison in 1958.

Dad had bought a new croft and he was going to fence it

so he was looking for stones to make corner posts.

There's a mound there

and the weather had washed the soil off the side of the mound

and he saw part of what turned out to be the outside wall,

that was horizontal stones that he thought might be useful

and he scraped away to see what was there.

What a wonderful structure.

Kathleen, what's the significance of this to Orkney archaeology?

Well, the Mesolithic people were here just after the end

of the ice age and then about 6,000 years ago they began farming here.

They started using the tomb here just after 5,000 years ago.

So if you think of it in terms of a timeline,

people were being buried here

when the great pyramid of Giza was being built.

-That's right.

-It's an amazing thought.

-It's older than the pyramids.

-That's fantastic.

Doing my best Indiana Jones impersonation,

I enter the inner sanctum of the burial chamber.

This is where Ronnie Simison discovered

the bones of the ancient people who were laid to rest here

and with them, a wealth of Stone Age artefacts.

It's called the Tomb of the Eagles. Why is that?

It's because of the eagle bones that were found.

Eagle bones and eagle talons were found in here.

Different groups would choose different animals

maybe as their namesake.

In Orkney, there's different tombs been excavated

and one's got deer antlers in it,

another's got dog skulls and it's eagle bones that they've found here.

So these people who lived here might have identified with eagles

and called themselves the eagle folk or something.

Yes, that's what's suggested.

The tomb and its bones demonstrate how prehistoric society developed

on the islands, which even then were connected by trade and culture.

But what happens when the sea, instead of uniting islands,

separates a community, leaving it isolated?

The answer lies across the wild waters of the Pentland Firth,

where schools of killer whales can sometimes be seen

hunting for seals in the tidal races and whirlpools.

I'm heading to the now deserted island of Stroma

which in the old language of the Vikings

means the island in the stream.

Joining me is John Manson, who was one of the last to leave.

Can you see your house from here, John?

-Yes, it's the... See the big clump of houses?

-Uh-huh.

Then there's two lying lower, ours is the furthest in one there.

And how old were you when you left?

-When we left? About 18 years old.

-You were about 18?

-18.

People lived on Stroma for thousands of years.

It was a way of life that depended on navigating these

dangerous waters, knowledge that became part of their folklore.

They were very knowledgeable of the waters.

They had to be, you know?

They couldn't live in this area without being very

knowledgeable of the tide races.

-The main one is at the north end at Swilkie Point.

-Swilkie Point?

-It's called the Swilkie.

-Is it a particularly vicious one?

Yes, it is. It's a vicious one.

We land at the harbour on Stroma, a place that John recalls

being as busy as a railway station when he was a boy.

Back then, 80 people lived here, but just over a century ago

there were 600 inhabitants.

Now, Stroma is an island of ghosts.

John's family was the last to leave.

We watched the run-down of the island.

It was like the whole island was dying as the people

went to the mainland.

It was sad to see them going but

there was happy days in your young days when you went to your school.

I remember about 12 or 14 people maybe in the school here.

So, I imagine that everyone on the island would've known

everyone else very well.

Yes, the younger people looked after the older ones too.

It was a nice community. They were very sociable people.

I was just thinking, these fields here on either side of us,

would they have been cultivated at one time?

Yes, they would be, they'd be all cultivated.

Good, arable ground on this side and the east side of the island.

You must've been almost self-sufficient.

Yes, they would be. Oh, yes.

They'd have hens for the eggs, they'd have a pig that they kept

and fattened and killed it off.

Every house would have a cow for milk.

They salted the fish that they ate through the winter months.

They were self-sufficient.

They hardly needed a shop at all, I think.

A couple of years before John and his family left the island in 1962,

they were photographed outside the family home.

Sad to look at it now.

Very dilapidated.

The birds have moved in when we vacated.

-They've moved in. Nature's taking over.

-Yes.

So this is the old living room then, is it?

Yes, it is.

Well, it's a bed sitting room

Who slept in there?

That's my mother and father's bedroom

and it was the family sitting room at the same time.

-So you'd gather in here of an evening, would you?

-Oh, yes.

We would eat in here and sit and yarn, listen to the radio.

Radio Luxemburg top 20 hits.

We were into all that sort of stuff.

Elvis Presley was on the go.

Cliff Richard.

Aye, they were just finding their feet in the hit parade

when we were living here.

Is that table your table?

Yes, it is.

Would you have sat around that table having your dinner?

We had a goat here, like a pet more than anything else.

My mother, she always made a high tea on a Sunday night. Pancakes, scones.

Everything on the table, gingerbread, everything.

And the dogs, we had two collie dogs,

they chased the goat in through the house and my mother had this

table all set, and the goat,

he tried to get out through that window at the back of the table.

And he put his two legs up on top of the table and cleaned it.

My mother was not happy about that.

We thought it was hilarious!

Hilarious bit of fun we were having.

My mother was not happy, no.

She wasn't happy at that.

-A lot of family memories then, in this room.

-Yes, there is, aye.

I've got five grandsons and a granddaughter.

All very interested in the island and the way of life that was here.

They're very interested in that and it keeps the stories going, you know?

It keeps the history rolling along.

I think it does anyway.

If you don't tell somebody about it, nobody's ever going to know about it.

It'll just fade out altogether.

Making my way past empty houses and crofts,

I come to a high point overlooking the Pentland Firth,

which is speckled white with its tidal rips and whirlpools.

Stroma might be deserted,

yet it has the potential to be repopulated.

Ironically, the swirling tidal streams that once cut people off

could attract them in the future.

The wild and turbulent waters around Stroma are amongst the most powerful

in the world, making this "island in the stream" a perfect location

for the generation of tidal power which, if it happens,

will plug this tiny little island into the 21st century in a big way.

My next Grand Tour of the Scottish Islands

takes me to the west coast and the Atlantic twins of Coll and Tiree.