The Earl’s Palace in Kirkwall was built by Patrick Stewart at a time when deep currents were coming to the surface across Europe, in politics and in ideas. A chain of events was unfolding, that would lead to thirty years of war...
Frontiers 2022
OISF
Sea and Land
Newton’s colours
An extract from Rebecca Stott’s novel Ghostwalk , which goes deep into the life of Sir Isaac...
Painting Nordic musical landscapes
The concert Sagas and Seascapes by the group Nordic Viola featured a rich mix of images to...
The wonder that is Slime Mould
We watched a television programme about Slime Mould titled The Blob: A Genius...
A lesson from the dandelions
Nature could well be our anchor over the next few months. Such a special time of year… it...
The darkness of the winter solstice
Winter stayed well into April, and as I dug holes for apple trees T. S. Eliot swirled in my head:...
Haar
Low cloud is quite frequent in Orkney, especially in the winter. Coming from the West, it rolls in...
Deploy the drones
We are now all familiar with how the ROV, the remotely operated vehicle as it is called, is...
The Ram on the Rock
Like a Nordic port of old, the Faroese capital of Torshavn smells evocatively of salt and tar. As...
Riches from the sea
A mile or so up the coast from the farm, a whale corpse is decomposing in a ‘geo’ (the Orcadian...
Der Mond
I’ve been getting text messages from the moon. A note pops up on my phone asking if the moon can...
Green Flash
In the light of evening the low sun began to illuminate the wall of the croft with a soft amber...
Following the Festival
Last of the Summer Snow
In December 2015, at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the measured concentration of atmospheric...
Facing up to climate change
Climate change – with its causes and consequences, and particularly how to tackle it – was one of...
Take out the carbon
There is both urgency and resignation in the voice of world-renowned oceanographer, polar ice...
Oh, starboard your helm!
This time it could be the big one. Fire on the Amazon, fire in Siberia, a dome of heat above the...
The Heart of the Land
2020 Orkney International Science Festival went online. Like many events this year, technology came...
The robots and the planets
What is the next step in exploring the solar system? Could robots go where we cannot? Could we and...