Uncanny in Orkney: Atmospheres (iii)

Midhowe Cairn, Rousay, Orkney Isles, Scotland, July 19th 1998

As I write this, I am reminded of a similar experience we had in a setting which could scarcely be more different from the heat and dust of Italy.

We were visiting the Orkney Isles, a scattering of more than seventy wonderfully green, windswept islands located between the far North of Scotland and the Shetland Isles. We were regular visitors there. An elderly local amateur historian, full of vigour, enthusiasm and detailed local knowledge had once memorably observed to me  “Scratch Orkney, and it bleeds archaeology!”

How right he was. Ian and I had taken a ferry over for the afternoon to the
island of Rousay, one of the twenty inhabited islands, where along the shoreline runs what is known as the ‘archaeological mile’: more historical sites to visit in a mile than anywhere else in Scotland. We had a particular location in mind; an ancient burial chamber in a remarkable state of preservation, right by the seashore. It is thought to date from around 3500 BC and is the largest known of its kind.

As we drew near, we saw what can best be described as a large modern shed, with clear corrugated plastic in the roof to let in the light. This protective structure had been built over the tomb, which was massive – twenty three metres long, about ten metres wide, divided by upright flagstones into a series of twelve stalls, each containing a stone bench on which bodies had been laid.

Inside, the structure – known atmospherically as ‘the ship of death’ – was so large that you could walk along narrow passageways with burial areas on either side. Following the beginning of its excavation in 1932, twenty five sets of human remains were found, as well as those of cattle, sheep, deer antlers, fishbones and limpet shells.

Midhowe Cairn Rousay Orkney

These days, visitors can also look down into the chamber’s interior using wooden raised walkways built into the modern protective shell. With much smaller tombs, to gain access you have to crawl along narrow passages evocative of the birth canal, usually in the dark. Claustrophobic, to say the least!

On the day we visited, perhaps because the weather in Orkney is frequently wet and cold, even in summer, there was no-one there but ourselves.

The atmosphere of this ancient place was silent and distinctly oppressive.

I became very uncomfortably aware, almost as though someone was reminding me, that the dead would have been laid to rest here with great ceremony, power and funereal dignity. They were meant to rest in peace and silence for eternity. This was sacred space, sacred time. We were barbarians, wreckers, invaders. We were not welcome. We did not stay long….

Comparing notes outside, we discovered we had both had a similar impression of the ‘spirit’ of the place telling us clearly that we were secular trespassers in a sacred place, and that we should get out. Ian’s diary for the visit records it as “still, watchful and ancient”. In essence, our experience there was remarkably like what had happened in the early mediaeval Italian crypt over a decade earlier.

Ancient Witnesses

TO BE CONTINUED……next chapter is Part Two : DREAMS

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500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

A very creepy crypt: Atmospheres (ii)

Apulia Region, Italy, 5th-19th September 1986

We had never been to Italy. Ian spent weeks before we set off reading phrases and words in Italian to me last thing at night. Having been an actor in a former career, he was determined to perfect his accent and some vocabulary before we left.
“Oh well” I remarked philosophically to myself, trying not to drift off to sleep as I listened. “It was worse when he was going through his Rev. Ian Paisley phase.”

His efforts paid off. Standing outside our tour bus one day, various tourists offered Ian their tickets to check, thinking he was an Italian tour guide….

We had resorted to bus tours as a consequence of having arrived at our seaside holiday resort at Torrecane (recommended to Ian by a wealthy, elderly Italian client of his) to discover that the hotel dining room had less atmosphere than your average bus station, and the nearby beach was full of Italian tourists nonchalantly spreading their towels over not only the sand, but also the rubbish strewn across the entire beach!

Determined not to be too phased by this, we took off inland to see whatever sights we could find. We were to discover that we had found a corner of Italy which was full of atmosphere, some of it quite uncanny. We had two experiences in the same week which were quite out of the ordinary.

(The first – “Lecce, the Florence of the South” follows in Part Ten : Reincarnation)

Four days later, on 17th September, we boarded our bus, heading off for yet another ecclesiastical destination on what felt like a whirlwind tour. Our female Italian guide seemed determined to give us value for money in words, as well as sights to see. However, when showing us round the Castel del Monte, a wonderfully well preserved octagonal castle built by Emperor Frederick the Second in the twelfth century, she avoided answering our questions about the most striking room in the place.

Castel de Monte

This was a huge space with an impressive great circle built into the floor slabs in contrasting stone, with stone lines giving the impression that it might have been used as the basis for casting astrological charts. Ian’s diary for that day records it as ” a magic room with circles and lines”. We were philosophical about our guide’s uncharacteristic reticence, putting it down to there being no great sympathy – to put it mildly!– between the Catholic Church and the ancient practice of astrology….

Next stop, in the town of Trani, was a very old church, dating back once again to around the twelfth century. Unusually, the crypt seemed accessible and there were no signs to say that we couldn’t descend the worn, age stained steps which would take us to the tombs. It was Ian’s and my habit to do our best to walk off in the opposite direction from everyone else. In this way, we found ourselves alone for a short period of time.

After the bright afternoon heat, the dim coolness was at first welcome. But as we walked slowly round the circle of walled-up tombs, I became aware of a very distinctly unwelcoming atmosphere. Suddenly, I felt as though I was trespassing on hallowed ground. My pace quickened. I was very keen to get out. Glancing at Ian, our eyes meeting, I could tell that he was feeling  uncomfortable too. Neither of us spoke until we had returned to the bus, quite glad for once for the comforting presence of our tour group, and were on our way again.

“What did you make of that crypt, then?” I asked him. Ian isn’t easy to rattle, being even more inclined than I am to attempt to account for any out of the usual occurrence by seeking the simplest explanation first.

He spoke without hesitation. ” There was a malevolent presence in that place, which I experienced as a deep male voice in my head saying very forcefully ‘Get out of here. Get out of here! You are not wanted here.’ It quite frightened me with its resentment and hostility; I couldn’t wait to get out.”

Ian’s diary entry for that visit notes: “….both strongly affected by feelings in crypt – resentful, malevolent.”

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700 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

Coming up next:

Midhowe Cairn, Rousay, Orkney Isles,Scotland, July 19th 1998

The eerie Moor of Rannoch: Atmospheres (i)

“One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a man’s eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious of many things that we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.”

William Butler Yeats

Definition of atmospheres: “the pervading tone or mood of a place or situation, esp. with reference to the feelings or emotions evoked”

(p 85 The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1996)

The three incidents described in this section are typical of many people’s experiences in atmospheric places. They are probably the least unusual of the whole memoir –best to begin in the shallows, before moving into deeper waters….

Moor of Rannoch, Scotland, Summer 1987

Ian and I may hold the record for the slowest ever completion of the West Highland Way! This is one of Scotland’s most famous countryside Pathways, the first to be formally created, running from the outskirts of Glasgow in the West, via Loch Lomondside, all the way to Fort William in the Highlands. It is ninety five miles long, and scenically stunning.

Our busy careers, and Ian’s children living with us at the weekends, limited the time we had available for hillwalking. Having begun in the summer of 1985, walking in sections of a few miles at a time, we completed the last stretch from Kinlochleven to Fort William, a sweltering and exhausting sixteen mile slog, over two years later.

In the early summer of 1987 we were walking a distance of around twelve miles from Bridge of Orchy to Kings House, Glencoe – a route traversing the stark and lonely Rannoch Moor. A section of this road, its bleakest heart, runs behind the Glencoe range of hills, site of the infamous Massacre of Glencoe in the early spring of 1692.

Victorian Painting of Glencoe

This episode remains one of the most painful wounds in Scottish folk memory, violating as it did, with such brutality and treachery, the ancient Highland traditions of hospitality and shelter. Having lived for twelve days with members of the Macdonald clan, their hereditary enemies, who gave them food and shelter during a snowbound February, a group of visiting Campbells turned on their hosts.

On 13th February 1692 they slaughtered the clan chief and more than thirty men, women and children without mercy. The reason for this atrocity? The rebellious Macdonalds, having failed because of their chief’s delaying tactics compounded by bad weather to swear allegiance to the new King (William iii) by 1st January 1692, were technically guilty of treason.

It was a grey, overcast day. We were walking along in our usual style, Ian several yards ahead of me. Suddenly, out of nowhere, since I’d been walking along quite peacefully, I was overcome by the most awful feeling of grief. This was almost overwhelming, then died away quite quickly as I walked on. It didn’t feel as though it was anything to do with me, but left me feeling quite shaken.

Shortly after this, we stopped at a bridge for a drink and a bite, and I related my experience to Ian. He looked quite taken aback.

“ Along that stretch” he said, “I was suddenly aware of very powerful feelings of anger, which didn’t feel anything to do with me either.” We walked on in silence, both feeling quite awed by the experience.

600 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

Coming up next:

(ii)Apulia Region, Italy, 5th-19th September 1986

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