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“Beyond Britannia, where the endless ocean opens, lies Orkney.” (Orosius, 5th Century A.D.) <br />
The Orkney & Shetland Islands: Land of the Tammie Nories
Angelica2006-04-05 12:34:26
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“Beyond Britannia, where the endless ocean opens, lies Orkney.” (Orosius, 5th Century A.D.)
Like random pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the Orkney and Shetland Islands lie adrift from the northeastern tip of Scotland’s mainland and a day’s sail from Bergen in Norway.
To explore these fascinating archipelagos, we took a three-day mini-cruise aboard the P&O Ferry, the St. Sunniva. Leaving just after midday on a Saturday, the 260 km journey from Aberdeen to Stromness in the Orkneys took us across the unusually calm Pentland Firth which links the Atlantic Ocean with the North Sea.
Just as we were polishing off the last spoonful of our tasty bread-and-butter pudding in the dining room, our ship slipped into Stromness Harbour. It was a perfect evening for a midsummer stroll in what is referred to as the “Simmer Dim” - the long evening twilight. Having donned sweaters, it was pleasant to explore this Norwegian-style harbor town with its meandering streets and gabled houses huddled together, each vying for jetty access to the waterfront. If stones could speak, these dwellings could have told us tales of smugglers and of agents recruiting Orcadians for the Hudson’s Bay Company. In the late 18thC, Orcadians comprised three-quarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s workforce. Many of them with names such as Inkster, Isbister, Moar, Mowatt, Sabiston and Sinclair eventually settled in Manitoba and other Canadian provinces. It was in Stromness that skippers picked up provisions and fresh water from Login’s Well for long, arduous transatlantic voyages - an era when merchant ships preferred to sail around Britain rather than face attack in the English Channel. Stromness was also an important stop for British whaling fleets before they moved on to the icy seas of Labrador and Greenland.
The next day after a sound sleep in our comfortable bunks,
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United Kingdom Gallery
