“I’m nothing more than someone who is trying to gain an understanding of my past history through learning the skills that have enabled us all to be here standing on this earth today.” These words come from 19-year-old Zeki Basan who on 5 September will be giving the opening presentation in this year’s Orkney International [...]
Unless you are a forager, you might not know that the early leaves of the rowan tree taste like marzipan, that shoots from the pine tree can make an awesome spice, that the saponins in birch leaves make a cleanising spring tea which is very good for the body, or that meadowsweet contains the same [...]
The great cartographer: Murdoch Mackenzie One of the great names in cartography is Murdoch Mackenzie, whose charts of Orkney waters in the 18th century were a breakthrough. His story was told in a talk to the Rotary Club of Orkney some years ago by a much-respected Orcadian of recent times, the late Bill Groundwater. Orkney, [...]
Dreaming of Mars It’s just on fifty years since the first footstep on the Moon. At the time it seemed that the Moon landing would be the first of many journeys that would take us across the Solar System. But there were just six more crewed landings on the Moon, the last of them in [...]
A late spring can bring feelings of malaise and tiredness. One of the tonics common to Orkney last century involved catching snails late at night, when they have a quiet feed, suspending them on a string in front of the fire, and catching the oil in a cup. Snails were used for other remedies. They [...]
What do swallows stuffed with eggs, arsenic and lemon have to do with herbal remedies and beauty products? Perhaps not a lot these days, but you might be surprised at the concoctions used and the reasons behind using them several hundred years ago. According to herbalist and ethnobotanical researcher Anna Canning, our knowledge of our [...]
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