The Shorkneys: Delicious, Delicious Shorkneys

(Note: "Shorkney" is not a real word. We're just using it to write about our recent trip to Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland.)

The Orkney and Shetland Islands, I recall reading in the museums, cannot sustain themselves food-wise. Food has to be brought in on the same ferries that we took. While there, we went out of our way to try to get things that were local - not just for the hippy-dippy green food-mile value, but also for the fact that fresh things taste better, and also, heck, we went all the way to Orkney and Shetland. Let's not mess around eating French cheese.

Fortunately for your sake, we didn't photograph everything (between me and Justin, food often doesn't survive long enough to be photographed). But here are some culinary highlights.

First breakfast in Orkney: hotel B&B. I had amazing smoked salmon scrambled eggs (yes, the salmon was mixed into the eggs) and Justin had haddock covered in cheese and a poached egg:


Verdict. WHOA NELLY GOOD.

Due to its location on the North Sea and its jagged coastline, Scotland is prime fishing territory. Fish isn't, however, widely eaten here in Edinburgh. I've heard various reasons for it, the most common being that fish has traditionally been so lucrative to tin and sell south that the Scots never kept much back for themselves, but this might not be correct. For whatever reason, despite its prime location, Edinburgh is not a fishy part of Scotland. The Shorkneys, however, are. And God bless 'em for it.

Shetland is even more fish-eating than Orkney because of its lower percentage of arable land. Our Orkney guide articulated the difference as "Orcadians are farmers with fishing boats. Shetlanders are fishermen with farms."

Later in Kirkwall, Orkney: Helgi's

You will notice that Justin couldn't get me to stop eating long enough to take the shot.

Helgi's is delicious and reasonably priced, which our guide (who recommended it) said made it a welcome addition to Kirkwall's waterfront. If you go to the islands, I hear sometimes it can be hard to find a place to eat if you don't make a reservation ("booking" in UK-speak). So you may want to either call or drop into the restaurant earlier in the day or the day before to make sure you get seated.

We were kind of hankering for something green, so on the left, you have a salad with Orkney cheese and candied pear. Top is smoked haddock with beets and horseradish, and lower right is frighteningly delicious mackerel pate. We ordered all of these off the appetizer menu to allow us to try more stuff.

When we weren't quite full, we went for dessert:


Rhubarb and cream. Rhubarb is a hardy little plant that grows extremely well in Orkney, and cream is another famous Orcadian product (if it comes from a cow, Orkney's famous for it). I found the rhubarb completely delicious but thought the ratio was off - the cream got a bit rich because there wasn't enough rhubarb to balance it. On the whole, I would have liked this better on a pie crust so it would have a little more substance.

We had had some rhubarb and ginger jam at lunch earlier that day, which was delicious when spread on Orkney oatcakes (quite possibly my mother-in-law's favorite food in the world). I don't have any pictures; I'm just doing this as an excuse to say "rhubarb" some more. Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb.

On to Shetland! (Rhubarb).

My friend Sarah, from Lerwick, suggested we get what she considers the world's best fish and chips at the Fort Cafe. Far be it from us to pass up what turned out to be the world's most fried dinner:

Fried haddock, french fries, and onion rings. Fresh vegetables are a bit slim in Shetland. If we lived in Shetland, I'm guessing we'd be the opposite of slim.

We had a fabulous dinner at our hotel but it was kind of a nice place so we didn't want to whip out the camera. We ordered from the appetizer menu again to get more variety. I think it ultimately included a bowl of smoked haddock/paprika chowder, pan fried scallops, and smoked salmon, with a cheese plate for dessert. The cheese was fabulous. The grapes looked a bit limp, but who can blame them? That's certainly how I felt after the ferry ride, and I only came from Kirkwall. Heaven knows where the grapes started out.

We timed our visit to Shetland to coincide with the Flavour of Shetland festival on the Lerwick Waterfront. This gave us the chance to try some local delicacies at the various booths. Here, Justin is eating a seafood gumbo:

Really good. This was actually the first time I'd seen scallops with the bright orange part attached (see here for example). I assumed it was a foot, but I just looked it up for this blog post and discovered that it's actually roe, or eggs. It was lovely. Not quite as rich or as textured as lobster roe - it actually tasted a bit like the small sweet part of a crab claw. Highly recommended!

Also from the Flavours of Shetland pier: bannocks!

(That's the buttery bread things served here with stew which, if I remember correctly, was mutton and potato).

Bannocks are a type of biscuit - "biscuit" in the American sense, not the British sense of "cookie." They are quite delicious, having a doughy, baking soda flavor. You can find some recipes here on the Shetlopedia (of COURSE Shetland has its own pedia.) I think the best are beremeal. No, I don't know what beremeal is. I just know it comes out more brown, and richer and sweeter. Here I am watching the Shetland Cooking demonstration lady make bannocks:

The butter, from a local Shetland dairy, was incredibly sweet, creamy, and smooth. And guess what kind of jam is in that bowl! Yes, RHUBARB. RHUBARB RHUBARB RHUBARB.

Last but not least, our lunch on our final day in Shetland: lamb burgers (lamburgers?). Shetland and Orkney are both known for their lamb, as sheep do well on the windy hills. A fine end to our culinary tourism!

The Shorkneys: Singing to Seals in Orkney and Shetland

(Note: "Shorkney" is not a real word. We're just using it to write about our recent trip to Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland.)

We're going a bit nuts over here at the Educated Burgher, what with all the dissertating and moving to Japan (so soon!). . . which is a bad thing, when you're as nuts as the two of us are to begin with.

Case in point:

Nothing like putting your toes in the North Sea, folks!

But that's not all--we spent a shamefully large portion of our trip singing to seals.

You see, Orkney and Shetland have a ton of the critters, and they're super curious little guys. Any time you're walking along the water (which is pretty much all the time in Orkney and Shetland), you're likely to see at least one of their little heads popping up, watching the strange world of the shore pass them by. They seem especially curious about dogs, probably because they look so much like dogs themselves.

(In fact, the German word for seal is "seehund," or "sea dog." You can tell why from this Wikipedia photo of a harbor seal, one of two species found in the Shorkneys.)

Anyway, the seals are apparently attracted to human voices, and especially human singing. So, naturally, when confronted with a lone seal in the Kirkwall harbor late at night (yes, late at night), Nana's first instinct was to belt out an a capella rendition of "Kiss From a Rose." (The seal is the little black dot in the background.)

Unfortunately, the seal promptly swam away, and our impromptu cover of "Hey Seal" (to the tune of "Hey Jude") met with similar scorn.

We had some more luck in Shetland, where a little family of seals was hanging out in a broad bay we were walking by just south of Lerwick. I assume they were there to watch the dogs passing on the trail. (Again, seals = black dots.)

Then again, it could just mean that seals like Aretha Franklin ("Chain of Seals") more than Seal or the Beatles. But given the very unscientific nature of our study, I would hesitate to draw any firm conclusions.

Bonus: What's the difference between a seal and a sea lion? Basically, true seals spend more time in the water, have no external ears, and short flippers which make them pretty much useless on land.

In contrast, sea lions (and the closely related, but misleadingly named fur seals) have small ear flaps and longer flippers. Sea lions can actually move pretty well on land, with a posture similar to that of a very large and very clumsy dachshund. This combination of cuteness and dexterity probably explains why sea lions the ones you find doing shows at Sea World.

Seals, on the other hand, are pretty much limited to flopping around on their fat stomachs. Hilarious, but not not much acting range. Kind of like Jack Black.

The Shorkneys: Neolithic Orkney, Part Two

(Note: "Shorkney" is not a real word. We're just using it to write about our recent trip to Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland.)

In our last post, we looked at the three great monuments of Neolithic Orkney: Maeshowe, the Standing Stones of Stenness, and the Ring of Brodgar. In this post, we'll look at Skara Brae, the fourth part of Orkney's UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before we get into the (pre)history, though, we need a bit of backstory. You see, Skara Brae has been something of an obsession for Nana's family ever since her mother got her hands on a children's book about the site. (Yes, they're the kind of family that reads children's books about Neolithic villages.)

Nana's mom hates flying, but she always said if she were going to fly anywhere, it would be to Skara Brae. That right there is half the reason we went to the Shorkneys--the other half being the fact that a friend of ours here in Edinburgh hails from Shetland.

Now, I have to admit, I wasn't really sure Skara Brae would live up to that billing, and I was even less sure after we left Stenness. The Neolithic monuments of Orkney really got to me. It was just so amazing to think of people clinging to life in this far-flung corner of the world, unspeakable ages ago, devoting the work of several generations to these structures, which were science and religion and art, curiosity and hope and ambition, everything that makes us human really, all poured into these stones. I mean, how could Skara Brae compete with that?

But as it turned out, Skara Brae had its own kind of magic. Around the world, the vast majority of the structures that survive from that time (around 3000 B.C., just like the other Neolithic sites on Orkney) are ceremonial or monumental, and over time they've kind of become part of the landscape. But Skara Brae isn't: it's just a village, and a remarkably well-preserved one at that, which makes it so much easier to envision as a living place than a lot of other Neolithic sites.

Anyway--to the site!

Skara Brae is made up of ten houses clustered together at the edge of Skaill Bay, which opens onto the North Atlantic. The village may have been larger at one point: at the time it was inhabited, sea levels were lower, so the bay was a freshwater lake and the shoreline was farther away.

Today, as you can see from the photo below, the water comes almost right up to the ruins, making it quite a chore to preserve the site.

Sometime after it was abandoned (in about 2500 B.C., for unknown reasons), Skara Brae was covered over with a huge sand dune. The village lay hidden until 1850, when the proprietor of nearby Skaill House was walking his grounds the day after a huge storm and found this place basically in his back yard.

(It's a very big back yard.)

Each of the houses was a built of stone with earth spread on top. The earth was both for insulation and to hold the walls and ceilings together, kind of the same way the weight on the keystone of an arch keeps it from collapsing. Some of the oldest houses were dug down into the ground; others were built up above ground level or dug into man-made middens (ie, trash heaps).

The passages between and among the houses were also covered over, so the whole settlement was kind of like a system of man-made caves. It's not clear why they did this--possibly for more insulation.

(The path you see there would have been more like a tunnel.)

The houses themselves are very well preserved, and include some of the earliest examples of furniture ever found. Archeologists refer to the big shelves as "dressers" and the large compartments on the floor as "beds."

The smaller compartments may have been primitive coolers, or they may have been used to boil or steam food by filling them with water, dropping in a hot coal, and covering them up.

To give visitors a better idea of how the houses might have looked when they were in use, there's a walk-in model at the entrance to the site.

Beyond the houses themselves, Skara Brae has also been a treasure trove for other artifacts. Some of these artifacts also feature what looks like primitive writing--though this would be really strange, and such claims are very controversial.

In addition, a low road connects Skara Brae to the Ring of Brodgar, and there is also some evidence linking Skara Brae to certain Neolithic sites in Ireland.

In fact, cultural links between the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the northern parts of Ireland have recurred throughout recorded history and on into the modern day, largely because for much of history it was so much easier to get around the British Isles by sea than by land. We'll see this again in a future post on how Orkney (and, to a lesser degree, Shetland) sat at the center of a medieval Norse empire that stretched from Scandinavia to Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and even North America.

The Shorkneys Food Update: Bannock Badges???

Thanks to my mom for this amazing heads up: apparently the Canadian Brownies used to offer a Girl Scout (Girl Guides, in Canada) badge in Bannock Making! Further evidence of the strong historical Canadian-Scottish connection?

Check out the badge! (Note: not my image, stolen from the web site cited below)

It is a cryptic image of a pan over a fire. This explains my mom's story, in which she could never get anybody to tell her what a bannock was (in those pre-internet times!), making it basically impossible to figure out how to earn the badge. Which is a shame, because according to this website, the badge stopped being offered 1995, which means I totally could have earned it. Now I know, but alas, too late!

Side note: Just visited the Girl Guides of Canada web site for my first stop to look for the badge. When did Brownie badges get so freaking hideous? Give me the classic gold-on-brown over those Nickelodeon nightmares any day!

The Shorkneys: Getting to Orkney, Shetland, and Back

(Note: "Shorkney" is not a real word. We're just using it to write about our recent trip to Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland.)


Last week, Nana and I made the long trek from Edinburgh to Orkney, Shetland, and back.

It's not easy getting all the way up to 60° N, but that's part of the charm. There are regularly scheduled flights from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Kirkwall in Orkney and Lerwick in Shetland, but they cost a lot and tend to fill up fast in the summer. The more popular route involves a train or a drive and some combination of ferries, mostly operated by Northlink.

The shortest ferries run between Caithness (the northern tip of the Scottish mainland) and Orkney, crossing the very unpleasant Pentland Firth, where the North Sea and the North Atlantic meet, creating some pretty violent currents. A longer route runs overnight between Aberdeen and Shetland, stopping off in Orkney on the way.

We took the latter option, both because we were told to expect calmer seas and because Aberdeen is easier to get to than Caithness.

The ship itself (the "Hjaltland," using the Old Norse for "Shetland") was surprisingly nice. You never know what you're going to get when you hear the word "ferry," but the Hjaltland was less like a boat than it was like a small floating hotel.

When you board the Hjaltland, you enter a small lobby area, complete with an abstract sculpture of a Viking.

(With horns! Tut, tut: Vikings didn't wear horns!)

In addition to an array of cabins, the ship also had a cafeteria, a fancy sit-down restaurant, a gift shop, a "cinema" (chairs arranged around a large flat-screen), and two bars. The ship also had a misleadingly-named "sun deck," which was nevertheless a great spot for watching our departure from Aberdeen.

Our first leg of the trip took us from Aberdeen to Kirkwall in Orkney. It was an evening run, from 5pm to 11pm, so we didn't book any assigned space--we just camped out in the bar and watched the World Cup. There was a little difficulty getting from the ferry terminal to our guest house, as both Google and Lonely Planet seem to think that the Northlink ferries arrive at the small pier in the middle of town, not the larger pier on the outskirts. But Nana saved the day by hailing a bus!

Our second leg, from Kirkwall to Lerwick in Shetland, was a short overnight run. The cabins were all full by the time we booked, so we had to settle for sleeper seats in the recliner lounge.

The chairs were pretty comfy (Nana adds: So was the floor!), and certainly a whole lot better than you would get in coach on an overnight flight. But an airplane has at least one advantage over a ferry: the noise. On a plane, the jet engines drown out all the disgusting sounds people make when they sleep. On a ferry, you get to hear the symphony of farts, belches, and snores in their full glory.

The last and longest leg of our trip, from Lerwick back to Aberdeen, was also the comfiest. We were lucky to book a small twin cabin with a little window out onto the sea.

The cabin also came with a bathroom, complete with the world's smallest shower!

Bonus Fact: Did you know that you get less motion-sick if you're lying down?

Bonus Bonus Fact: After you spend a night on a ferry and then three hours on a train, you feel like the earth is shifting under your feet the following day! Whee!

The Shorkneys: Ancient Orkney (and Shetland)

(Note: "Shorkney" is not a real word. We're just using it to write about our recent trip to Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland.)

Orkney and Shetland entered the historical record much later than most of the rest of Europe, including the rest of the British Isles. The Romans wrote about Orkney as early as the first century AD. They probably also knew about Shetland, as the Orcadians of that time would have been in regular contact with Shetland--in clear weather, you can actually sail from Orkney to the Fair Isle and on to Shetland without ever losing sight of land.

But after the end of the Roman presence in Scotland in the third century AD, Orkney and Shetland fell out of history again. During this time, Orkney was part of the Pictish kingdom, a confederation of Celtic tribes that later merged with the better-known Gaels in the tenth century AD.

The Picts remain a mysterious people. They had no writing, at least that we can decipher--though some have argued that their carvings could have been a kind of primitive pictographic language. In Orkney and Shetland, they're known mostly for their brochs and the settlements that grew up around them.

A broch is a round drystone tower, usually built on the coastline as a lookout tower and fortification, or possibly as a stately home for local leaders. You can think of a broch as a kind of simple castle.

They're all over Scotland, but pretty much nowhere else--possibly because in other areas, such things were built of wood, but up until modern times wood had been scarce in Scotland for thousands of years. For the same reason, they're especially common in Orkney and Shetland. There's even a ruined broch next to a small loch by the Tesco in Lerwick, Shetland.

After our excursion to Skara Brae, we visited one of Orkney's most famous brochs, the Broch of Gurness.

This broch is special for a number of reasons. First, the tower itself is very well-preserved, to the point that it's still fairly easy to make out some of the interior rooms.

Second, the Broch of Gurness is surrounded by a broch village. Such villages have only been found in Orkney, and suggest either that the broch-building culture was centered in Orkney (so that its largest and most permanent settlements were there) or that other brochs were used more like forts or outposts than castles.

(Those were houses.)

One of the remarkable things about this broch village is how similar much of the architecture is to that found at Skara Brae, which is several thousand years older.

(Look familiar?)

(Cooler/cooking pot, anyone?)

A hands-on display at the Broch of Gurness visitor's center shows how basic technologies, such as hand mills for grain, had changed little since Neolithic times--probably because Orkney and Shetland lacked the natural resources needed for large-scale metalworking.

Third, the Broch of Gurness is important because archaeological finds at the site seem to confirm a Roman report about the King of the Orkneys submitting to the Emperor Claudius in 43 A.D.
Finally, the Broch of Gurness is also important because it, like many other earlier sites in Orkney and Shetland, were taken over by later Norse invaders. But that's a topic for another post!

Bonus! Ever wonder what an iron-age toilet based on stone-age technology might look like?

Then stop giggling and imagine a kind of chamber pot stashed beneath there.

The Shorkneys: Orkney and Shetland in the Viking Age, and St. Magnus

(Note: "Shorkney" is not a real word. We're just using it to write about our recent trip to Aberdeen, Orkney, and Shetland.)

The Viking Age


After about 800 AD, the Vikings began to settle in Orkney and Shetland, though it's unclear whether they conquered the Picts who were already there or simply drove them back to the Scottish mainland.

Shetland and Orkney--but especially Orkney--were extremely important during the Viking Age. First, they lay at the geographical center of Viking maritime culture, situated at the crossroads of the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Second, Orkney included some of the most fertile land in the region, and so developed into one of the richest of the Norse provinces. In fact, as I mentioned in our post on Maes Howe, Orkney is home to the largest collection of Norse runes outside Scandinavia, and the Orkneyinga saga is one of the most important surviving pieces of Viking literature. The bits of these documents I've read are really quite funny: Maes Howe, for instance, is covered with silly boasts about the carvers being the best carvers of runes in the world, and at least one note that seems to compare another Viking's woman to a rabid dog.

Norse culture remains strong in Orkney and Shetland to this day. Though debt forced the king of Norway to give Orkney to the Scottish in 1468, and the Scottish came to dominate Shetland culturally and economically at about the same time, many people in the Northern Isles consider themselves to be about as much Scandinavian as Scottish. There is definitely something Scandinavian about the Shetland dialect, and the modern flags of Orkney (top) and Shetland (bottom) were specifically designed to reflect this Norse heritage.

Compare this to the Norwegian Flag, below, which features the same off-center cross and a similar color scheme.

St. Magnus Cathedral

St. Magnus Cathedral, in Kirkwall, Orkney, is the greatest surviving monument to the Viking Age in the Northern Isles.

The cathedral is dedicated to St. Magnus, a local Viking ruler who was martyred in the 12th century for refusing to participate in a bloody raid in Wales. The oldest parts of the cathedral were built shortly thereafter, in the Romanesque style. This style is characterized by round arches, like upside-down U's, and darker interiors than the later Gothic style (think York Minster or Notre Dame).

The Romanesque style is the same used in Durham Cathedral in England, as well as on Lindisfarne. 

You can see the round arches on either side of the photo below.

You'll notice that the window at the back, however, is a pointed or "vaulted" arch, in the later Gothic style. The ceiling is also vaulted, as are all the windows in the towers. This is because construction on the cathedral continued until the early 1900s. In fact, there's a sign on the building across the street with a diagram of the exterior of the cathedral showing when each section was built:

As it turns out, some of the most "Gothic" features are actually Victorian, part of the Gothic Revival at the end of the 19th century that gave us college campuses like Yale's.

St. Magnus also has some typically Norse features, such as a longboat on the altar . . .

. . . and interlocking arches, which some have argued are an intermediate stage between rounded arches and vaulted arches.

Bonus: There's a Norwegian consulate in Orkney! It must be one of the smallest towns in the world to host a foreign consulate.