Episodes
Wednesday Mar 13, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 12 Back at Skara Brae
Wednesday Mar 13, 2024
Wednesday Mar 13, 2024
You get mixed up in stories and legends and soon you can’t distinguish them from facts anymore, because history and legend are uninterrupted threads twining through the fabric of time, and the events’ meanings connect across centuries, as if they are all a part of a greater whole we could see if we lived long enough. How long is long enough, Fiona? Although I shouldn’t ask you, should I?
In all the times I dreamt of you, I’ve never seen you old, my princess. I can’t see past that fateful day whose menace prompted you to pack all your power and will inside a gull and set it free. You looked so young it broke my heart, but I don’t think you died that day. In fact, I think you never died at all.
Hodr of the mail coat lets the halter of the arm hang on my hawk-trodden hawk-gallows;
I know how to make the pin-string of the shield-tormentor ride the gallows of the spear-storm.
The feeder of the battle-hawk enjoys the greater praise.
The florid poetry of your ancestors reverberates in the halls of the Gods, making you smile across centuries, fair child of Norway. What are you smiling about? What is it you’re not telling me?
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 11 - East Over Water I Fared
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
I stopped by the church yesterday and the mystery of the black tombstones was explained: the graveyard experienced a massive fire, yet the church was unharmed, not even a speck of smoke or soot.
I bet you’d be asking yourself right now, Fiona, how does one set stone on fire, and you’d be right. The priest couldn’t explain it either, hence the miracle designation of the phenomenon. It happened so long ago no written records of it remained, and oral history can be very imaginative in these parts. It’s hard to separate truth from fantasy after all these centuries.
I’ll make a record of my notes and organize them later, I don't want to forget the stories I heard, which, although they may be unbelievable to most, are still too fascinating to ignore.
Legend has it a beautiful young maiden, which strangely matches your description, used to sneak out at night and come to the cemetery to meet her beloved. The affair went on for years, and the maiden’s parents started to worry when she turned away every suitor that knocked on their door. Why, she was turning twenty and she was already an old maid, right, Fiona?
Wednesday Feb 28, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 10 - Saint Magnus’ Bones
Wednesday Feb 28, 2024
Wednesday Feb 28, 2024
It feels like everything in Orkney is made of stone, meant to last forever, and that includes the old stonework of Saint Magnus’ Cathedral.
The structure is Romanesque, and austere, with heavy, sturdy pillars built of red sandstone masonry, the kind it takes four people to surround, a strange stone forest again, built by the hands of men.
I returned to the cathedral because the heritage society documents suggested it housed more human remains than that of the saint, and when I saw you playing with the bones, Fiona, I thought this could lead to new revelations.
The most remarkable feats of humanity often come from its most wicked inclinations, and these triumphs start with bloodshed and sorrow, but life is brief, and so soon these tragedies are forgotten.
Betrayal, martyrdom, assassination, lust for power and wars, all the things that governed the lives of people in those older times, seem trite and insignificant when viewed through the lens of history, but the cathedral still stands, now aged nine hundred years.
And the Cairn of Maeshowe.
And the Ring of Brodgar.
And the happy underground homes of Skara Brae.
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 9 Entering the Earth
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
You sent me a dream when I was a child, Fiona, one of those weird dreams you don’t share, especially at that age, when nothing matters to you in the world, other than pleasing your parents.
I couldn’t forget it, though, like I can’t forget any of my other dreams about you. Those dreams, they feel so real! So real! Like a second life unfolding, independent of this one.
In the dream, I saw you standing in front of a green mound, smiling; it was summer, and you wore a white dress, held around your body with green ribbons. You had ribbons and flowers in your hair as well, and a torch, lit in the middle of the day, and I couldn’t help laugh at the absurdity of illuminating daylight, but you didn’t get upset, you smiled and signaled me with your other hand to follow.
You turned around, and I followed, and as I did, I saw you were dead, merely a skeleton wrapped in leathery skin, but somehow I felt loved more than I ever did in my life before and since, and realized I didn’t care, you didn’t scare me in that state, and strange as it may sound, you were still beautiful.
Friday Feb 16, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 8 - Souterrains
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Friday Feb 16, 2024
The four-day festival was approaching the end, and after my friend’s departure I figured I’d better head back to Kirkwall and see if I can find more puzzle pieces for my study, but I just couldn’t face the stones again. Not yet.
I headed north instead, not really sure about the destination, and followed the road until it reached the shore.
Living on an island offers one the unique experience of being bound by a circular water line: no matter what direction you travel in, you are soon stopped by the edge of the sea.
This makes some people feel closed in, in ways that start wearing on them as time passes, but for the true lovers of island living there is no greater comfort than the sight of the sea, and its effortless proximity always puts them at ease.
The sea gives life, and it takes it. Brings riches and bounty, reveals and conceals what it chooses and keeps jealous guard over her secrets.
For four thousand years the village of Skara Brae was just another green bluff battered by the whims of the sea, until 1850, when a deadly storm stripped the grass and the topsoil off the ruins of a stone settling, perfectly preserved by the sand for millennia, a time capsule of Neolithic living.
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 7 Charon’s Boat
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
”You shouldn’t leave Stromness before you visit Hoy,” the lady at the front desk suggested with a motherly demeanor which tried to restore my sunny outlook on life, now sunk by the sudden circumstance through which I found myself alone again.
She smiled encouragingly, and pointed towards the pier, to the approaching ferry.
“Hurry up, now. If you rush, you can get there before it leaves.”
She nodded approvingly in response to my befuddled expression, and I obeyed her suggestion without too much mental struggle.
There were only a few people on the ferry, braving a fog so thick the contours of Graemsay Island, which we almost brushed on our way to Hoy, were barely visible.
As I entered the mist, the world as I knew it stayed behind: its joys and its pains, the music and the laughter, the plans and dreams. A different place awaited at the end of the fog, and the other travelers, veiled in the mist, looked like shadows, sharing a ride with me in Charon’s boat to the island of the dead.
This realm beyond the mists you approach in silence.
Nobody talked.
We walked quietly, a distance from each other, to respect our solitary retreat, instinctively following in each other’s footsteps along the wooden path snaking through the eerie wilderness towards the giant monolith of Dwarfie Stane.
Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 6 - Talking to the Old
Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
Life looked a lot cruder in the harsh light of the morning, even though the festival performances continued through the day, and the city was bathed in the unmistakable humid scent of spring.
I met my new friend in the lobby and we walked through the narrow streets, sometimes so narrow a person could barely pass through, braving the rain and listening to the music in silence, like an understanding between us, and ended up huddled at the cafe on the pier, hungry and tired, looking forward to a toasty sandwich and a hot cup of coffee.
“So, you’re not going to ask?” she said, eventually.
“I wouldn’t know what,” I replied, still awkward about hijacking a perfect stranger’s time to satisfy my curiosity.
“What do you know about the stones?”
I started reciting the historical and anthropological data and the scientific opinions regarding the details of the sites, and she stopped me with a curt hand gesture.
“No. Not that. What did the stones tell you when you were there?”
I stopped, not knowing how to respond to that, hesitant to share my intimacy with the untold story of this place with someone I’d just met, but who, obviously, could read it on my face like in a book. I answered, eventually.
“How did you know?”
“It’s written all over you, girl. Do you speak to the Old?”
“The Old? What is that?”
Friday Jan 26, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 5 - A Stonehenge Story
Friday Jan 26, 2024
Friday Jan 26, 2024
The entire city was caught up in the preparations for the Folk Festival, so I had to postpone my visit to the heritage society, whose normal hours were restricted for the duration.
I gave myself the excuse there is nothing for me to do anyway, so I might as well drive back to Stromness and enjoy the performances.
I stopped at the Stones of Stenness this time, Fiona, trying to find a reference we share. They are 5000 years old, and they must have felt just as old in your day as they do in mine, timeless.
There was nobody else there, just the silence, swept by the wind, and I had this eerie feeling of stepping out of time altogether, into a “different” space I couldn’t understand.
Friday Jan 19, 2024
My Dear Fiona Chapter 4 - Old Dragons
Friday Jan 19, 2024
Friday Jan 19, 2024
I ended up back at Saint Magnus’ Cathedral, with my nose buried in the old records, strangely comforted by the smell of old ink. It is amazing, really, the church’s archives go back centuries! After a few hours of being fully immersed in the lives and the trades of the people of old, you forget what century you’re in; you lose track of time altogether.
Marriages, home deeds, conflict resolutions, old public announcements, the births of children.
This is what time really looks like, reading the birth announcements of people who passed out of existence centuries before you were born.
Seeing their aspirations, hopes and heartbreaks, the bitter and the sweet displayed together like in a painting, equalizes their significance and turns them all into the same substance when watched from a distance.
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
My Dear Fiona - Chapter 3 - The Broch of Birsay
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
The car trip to the Brough of Birsay led me through treeless landscapes, shy and soft in the sunshine, and filled with the bright smiles of wildflowers, a poem in white, rose, purple and green, laid down as scenery by a benevolent god.
I stood beside them, with the wind in my face, trying to remember an older time, as if I’d been there before. But maybe those were your memories, Fiona, not mine. Maybe that’s what the stones are for, repositories of memories, remembering the fingers of all who had touched them.
I was looking for an excuse to go to the other side of the island, and it was interesting to learn your family tree had spread some of its roots there.
The ancient burial customs of this place exercise a strange fascination on me, like a spell cast centuries before I was born.
There is nothing new under the sun but our perception of things. Technology advances, civilizations flourish and fall, but the human spirit never changes. We are born with all the storylines able to touch our soul. These basic tales bind us through time and cultural differences and allow us to relate to each other while we harbor completely different views of the world. The rest is just letting life flow quietly through you.