After his great years in the Arctic with the Hudson’s Bay Company, Dr John Rae went through an unsettled period, when the weight of his problems mounted up, and the continuing failure of those in authority to believe his...
Frontiers 2026
Living with bananas
Orkney’s recent surprise banana glut has started Liz Ashworth thinking about the days when bananas...
Gaan Nort
Not so long ago a summer trip day might bring North Isles voices to the streets of Kirkwall. This...
Encountering ball lightning
The subject of ball lightning is a strange one. There is so far no agreed scientific explanation...
Barques, Sparks and Sharks
The winds are mad, they know not whence they come, nor whither they would go,” wrote the 17th...
The eye of the guest is sharper
Things have really changed in the last ten years,” said Dorthea Joensen from the...
The Making of the Pentland Firth
The Science Festival’s geology and landscape films are continuing to spread, with the new one from...
Land as a Verb
I tried to begin with a theory. But when I look at the land — when I am with it — theory falls away...
The houses, the history, and the good black soil
Ed Bollom is a man who knows a thing or two about gardening and horticulture. Having worked in many...
Stories from the Islands
Days at sea
A toast to Dr Garvie
Roads and shores of the West
The poet’s song and the fish in the sea
With camera, pen and guide
Piper’s calling
Going to Graemsay
Orkney seabirds and SPAs
Islands in the ocean
The Orkney Yole
Orkney trees – a labour of love
Pilgrims on the Brough of Deerness
Along the tide-mark
Marwick memories
Orkney Otters
Earth Science
As old as the hills
We trace our families back in time, and go further back when we visit sites from the past - brochs...
Earth Science
The Making of the Pentland Firth
The Science Festival’s geology and landscape films are continuing to spread, with the new one from...
In the garden
Flowers for the Tiger
On a sunny day in late autumn I saw in a Glasgow second-hand shop window a book with an interesting cover, an image of a mammoth in an icy landscape. It was Dance of the Tiger by Björn Kurtén. The story is set in Ice Age Europe...
Orkney dance collectors’ footsteps
Stones across the sea
The Ness of Brodgar: As it Stands
The Earl, the Bishop, and the springtime of science
An epic of steam and steel
A city layered in time
Oh, starboard your helm!
When I first encountered the Kogi
Take out the carbon
The era when the cold came back
People and Ideas
Science?
The Orkney International Science Festival is always varied in its content and far-reaching in its...
People Past and Present
A toast to Provost James Flett
Provost James Flett of Kirkwall (1881-1960) had a deep love of Orkney’s history and particularly...
Painting the Shackleton story
2022 is the 100th anniversary of the death of the polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose...
Painting Nordic musical landscapes
The concert Sagas and Seascapes by the group Nordic Viola featured a rich mix of images to...
