Orkney

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But not too much. Yank them out again into the enchanted, out-of-this-world present, remind them that there is more to come.

Established by renowned British patron of art Margaret Emilia Gardiner OBE, the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness is home to a gorgeous collection of modernist art left by Gardiner in trust to Orkney. There are around 180 works in the gallery, including sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, a long-time friend of Gardiner, whose garden on Rousay, Orkney inspired many of Hepworth’s works. The following list of books are available at The Orcadian Bookshop, Stromness Books and Prints, on board some NorthLink vessels and other good bookshops. The Orkney Book of Birds– Tim Dean and Tracy Hall An English professor specialising in transformation myths marries one of his former students and they go on honeymoon to an island in the Orkney archipelago. The destination is her choice and she is fascinated by the sea. It is not a healthy fascination, she has nightmares about drowning and a tendency to put herself at risk. She often talks about her missing father, who may have drowned and may have come from the island.

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On Chesil Beach - both have bleak beach settings, and also the same lyrical tone of writing that I adore The Church in the Orkney Earldom’ by Gibbon, S. J. (2012), in H. Þorláksson and Þ. B. Sigurðardóttir (eds) From Nature to Script Reykholt, Environment, Centre, and Manuscript Making, Snorrastofa, Reykholt, pp.165-184. Modern and Wartime She, however, she seems to intrude on his solitude only rarely. Only once does she consent to stay inside in his window seat, looking at things through the distorting glass he has been watching her through, for a morning- only to humor him. This in contrast to the days on end he can spend looking at her without tiring. There’s a good range of options on Orkney, from quaint self-catering cottages to smart seafront hotels. Kirkwall is Orkney’s capital and largest town. It centres on the cathedral and pedestrianised Broad Street, which has plenty of independent shops and cafés. Most of the larger, traditional hotels overlook the harbour, a short walk away. For a more boutique feel, the Storehouse — slightly out of the centre, on a quiet street — offers eight rooms, styled by the local designer Judith Glue, and a well-regarded restaurant that spotlights local produce and seafood. And, as with any effective spell, keep your audience from realizing that you’re doing it right up until the very end, until they ask themselves what on earth they just read and why they kept reading.

Wildlife photographer and filmmaker Raymond Besant collects many of his beautiful photographs together in this book. There’s no better book to illustrate wild Orkney – covering birds, plants, mammals and marine life. Moments captured include a Red-throated Diver pestered by midges, and an inquisitive young seal nosing Besant’s underwater camera! Orkney Folk Tales by Tom Muir This book is a perfect example of what happens when you give more weight to prose than plot. I had high hopes, especially considering the numerous plaudits crammed in all over the covers, but ultimately it was a bit of a let down. This is how I learned how to dream. I dream, for better or for worse, in the fairy stories, fears, stereotypes, and clichés of the British Isles, mixed with the repressed passion of the Irish Catholicism I have never quite been able to deny, whatever my personal religious beliefs. Lyrical and compelling... entirely original... In Orkney myth slips free from the dust and politesse of the library, and assumes a vivid, dangerous and unparaphraseable existence... Readers will be gripped from start to finish... A beautiful and poignant novel

When I asked myself, all I could remember at first were words, the incantation itself, creating itself, the characters implicit in whispering it to themselves and the audience, illustrating themselves for us, illustrating how they wish to be for us, or how they cannot help being:

The sky periwinkle, with a sketching of graphite clouds, the barest pencil-trace; lilac where it meets the sea, deepening up to the apex, mussel-blue. That was hers. I am trying to her her voice say it. Prussian blue. Ink-washed. Indigo… Bedtime blue, Richard, she says. Bedtime blue." More so than the landscape, water and the sea permeate every aspect of this story. Oceanic imagery pervades his wife's dreams, as well as his own view of his wife - he recalls her drenched in water over and over. Storytelling is also woven into the fabric of the novel - their relationship is never as alive as when they tell each other tales, of sea nymphs and selkies and bewitchments (each containing a grain of truth for their own circumstances). The essential guidebook to one of Europe’s most important archaeological digs. As work has progressed on the Ness of Brodgar, it has revealed itself to be the very centre of the Neolithic world in Orkney. Find out more about the Ness, what has been excavated and it’s place in the landscape. Better yet, each sale of this book represents an important fund-raising donation to the dig itself. Naturally Orkney– Raymond Besant Burial mounds and cairns can be found right across Scotland, but Meashowe is probably the most fascinating – and not just because it was built to house the dead in 2500 BC.Combined with all the water metaphors—yes, we GET it, Orkney is an island, there’s lots of dark water, water everywhere—but this book will not stop shoving them at you. I felt like I was drowning it it’s pretentious waters.

As lovely as it is unsettling, a brooding, hypnotic novel that draws upon a panoply of folklore to tell a modern tale of love and obsession... Entrancing, intelligent, and as consuming as the obsessions it explores, [this] is a novel to dive into with a lungful of breath Yes, it is such a pleasure to dwell on the tale alone, while she is in her bath, and not here to interject with her nonsense about not wearing purple. Both the characters come across as equally lifeless ultimately. And the 'tragic' end made absolutely no impact on me. Telling the Sea - this is a children's book that has stayed in my mind for many many years, mostly for its compelling descriptions of an obsession with the sea, very similar to that of Richard's wife...They really meet when they tell each other stories at night. Some of the stories are, as they are with most lovers, stories of their own courtship. She remembers differently than he does, of course- which is often the case. He seems to constantly romanticize her and set her apart, make her different and special, something to justify his breathless obsession with her. It makes sense, of course. He is a sixty year old man in a power position who is, by any normal rational measure of human relationships, taking advantage of a young woman in the throes of a tentative infatuation that he could easily have quelled if he chose. He did not, for the first time in his career (so he tells us) choose- instead he possibly even more obsessed than she was. Orkney is pronounced ‘Orc-nee’ and the name is thought to come from the Norse name Orkneyjar –‘Seal Islands’ or from the Pictish name –‘Boar Island’. Orkney is also known as Arcaibh in Gaelic, but the Gaelic language is not traditionally spoken in Orkney – any sign of the Gaels in Orkney were most likely driven out by the Vikings. They also meet in the subconscious depths of the evening, where she dreams violent dreams of the sea. The dreams morph each evening into nightmares, all of them, not surprisingly, of the sea. Gnashing and bashing and tearing and sighing, calling and screaming and biting and scratching, gasping and grasping and falling- in and out of the sea and its creatures all night. The sexual side of their relationship is conducted before, during and after these sea voyages, drenched in ancient tales and female symbolism.