Hopkinsaga

We first visited Orkney as students in 1969. The English Department at York University, (it was theoretically a vital part of the Germanic Literature course), organised an archaeological dig with the British Museum, at Newark Bay in Deerness where skeletons were falling out of the eroding soft cliff face. There was a sixteenth century manor house - the Newark - on top of, and incorporating an early Christian chapel. This in turn was on top of some kind of souterrain cut into the rock itself. And then there were the skeletons and they were the primary interest for the "bone man" in charge of the dig, Dr Don Brothwell of the Natural History Museum, now Professor of Archaeology at York. Some were obviously Christian by their orientation. Quite a lot certainly weren't. Grave goods weren't in abundance, but limpet shells had been arranged around several of the burials. We found some Viking coins (suitably from York!) and a rather nice bone comb, which like a lot of the archaeological finds from the islands made its way to the Museum in Edinburgh.

We returned to the islands in 1970 and 1971, to continue digging. I should say that the first year of the dig had been 1968, when the weather was apparently incredibly warm, still and sunny, so we were totally unprepared for the normal Orkney summer of 1969. We soon learned and raided the Kirkwall shops for blankets and warm woollies!

1971 was also the year of the population survey. As it was the year we graduated, and feeling no great desire to join the world of work while we could enjoy the islands we stayed on to help the researchers and their medics collect data on the people of Sanday. Operating from a cottage called Thorness we visited every home on the island, even the "happies" to make sure they were incomers, and summoned all those willing to come to the school to be fingerprinted, blood grouped, have their body fat measured, be tested for colour blindness, have a taste test, check for hairs on back of fingers and various other genetic indicators to prove that Orcadians are unique. After all weren't the Vikings supposed to have been tall, blue-eyed and blond? The results of this research have been published in a book called "The people of Orkney", edited by R.J.Berry and H.N.Firth.

We didn't make it to the dig in 1972, though other members of the group did, and they missed our wedding in the process. We still have and use the seagrass tablemats they bought us as a present. We visited again in 1973 and 1974. While students we had lived a very spartan existence (virtual camping) in the old school in Deerness; Don Brothwell had meanwhile bought and renovated Mossquoy on the Halley Road in Deerness. In 1974 feeling affluent for about the first and only time we rented Stoorhoose at Halley. By now the dig was virtually exhausted and most of the main trenches had been filled. We moved along the coast a bit, still on Delday land to investigate a mound that Don had spotted, and which our excavations proved to be a broch, as yet unrecorded.

In 1976 we risked camping, which was a good year for weather. We were wise to the islands by now and knew if it was damp and misty in the East Mainland with the wind in the South east it was probably beautiful on the beach at Skara Brae in the west...

We didn't return again until 1984, and this time it was with three children in tow, and we rented a house in Deerness, and enjoyed the sand at Newark. In 1988 we went to Shetland, now with four children, and returned to Orkney in 1990, 1991, 1994, and 1996. On two occasions we stayed at Herston, South Ronaldsay, in a house called Banks, right on the sea front but not really with a beach. The nearest sands are the Sands O'Wright where the annual Boys Ploughing Match takes place.

More recently we have stayed at the renovated and rechristened Stoorhoose, now Shorehouse, (I preferred the honesty of the old herring store-cum-workshop and somewhere I have a photo of my six foot tall significant other squashed into a five foot long box bed, ripped out in the renovation of course), at Halley, at the Diving Centre by Barrier 4 on South Ronaldsay, and in one of the Lightkeeper's cottagers at Cantick Head lighthouse on Hoy.