The Dwarfie Stane

Gosh, I'd better write a post before midnight, or June will slip by without a single addition to my blog! 

I plead a busy social life since returning from my long holiday on 5th June - plus the slog of catching up on the arrears of photo-processing.  

In the end, I'd taken 2,153 pictures on my Scottish holiday with LXV, my Leica X Vario, before its apparently terminal malaise. My phone Olivia, a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, then took over and augmented the tally with a further 4,343 shots. So 6,496 altogether. That's a lot for five and a half weeks, and of course I couldn't keep up with the processing on the laptop. Despite all the late nights I spent doing so, I was still sixteen days behind by the end of the holiday. I have since then made herculean efforts to clear the backlog. (And no shortcuts! No slip in standards, no captions skimped) It's all done now. The Photo Archive has swollen by some 5,000 shots, the ones I kept. 

I should also perhaps mention that once home again I continued shooting with my little Leica D-Lux 4, and have somehow found time to process the 1,873 shots taken with that camera since 5th June. I imagine that any reader who only takes a dozen pictures each year, if that, must be mystified as to what my subjects can possibly be. But then I see pictures everywhere, and I'm never slow to use whatever camera I have with me. 

I delight in recording unique visits to places not easy to get to. One such was The Dwarfie Stane. This is a hollowed-out rock in the northern part of the island of Hoy, which is the second-largest of the Orkney archipelago: the mountainous one. Most Orkney islands have a high hill or cliff, but Hoy is altogether higher. Here's a location map (click on it to enlarge it; the same for the pictures to come):

There are few roads on the island. The main one goes from Longhope in the south to Moaness in the north, keeping to the east coast. None cross over to the west except the Rackwick road. This passes near The Dwarfie Stane. It isn't hard to find. There's a road sign, an obvious car park, and an information board or two. The blue one tells of a visit by Sir Walter Scott, no less, in 1814. He considered Hoy most romantic.

I say 'passes near' but you still have to follow a rough path for half a mile or so to get to the Stane. You can see it across the valley, but it takes a little effort (and properly stout shoes) to actually stand before it.

That looks like a good, dry, easy path - but it soon gets very stony, and in one place rather boggy.

Yes, some bits have been improved with wooden boarding; but only a few stretches. 

Now it's getting pretty rock-strewn, and to avoid turned ankles care is needed! Geologists will see the signs of a U-shaped valley scoured by a glacier in the last Ice Age, and many erratics (rocks from elsewhere that were once picked up by the ice, carried some distance, and left stranded when the glacier retreated). The Stane is in fact one of the larger erratics that litter the valley. 

In the next shot, I was looking back towards the car park, and had spied two humanoids following me. It spurred me on, as I wanted some time alone at the Stane.

Ah, finally getting closer. And some boarding to enable a final sprint!

Click on the above shot to read the text and see the pictures more clearly. It's a Neolithic tomb, with two small chambers hollowed out inside it, and the entrance plugged by the large stone that now sits outside. This must have been pulled clear at some time in the past. The 'roof' of the hollowed-out part was damaged long ago - presumably by folk seeking the pot of gold they thought must lie within. 

No dwarf greeted me. Tsk. Rather disappointing. 

The Neolithic locals who made this large rock into a tomb must have laboured long and drearily to create the chambers. But of course, if driven by beliefs, people will do extraordinary things. 

Considering its position and appearance, the Stane was bound to become a focus for legend and superstition.  It would seem perfectly natural, if you believed in trolls and other such things - remember that Orkney was long a Norwegian possession, with Old Norse thinking predominant - to assume that a dwarf with semi-magical powers lived here (hence 'Dwarfie Stane'). The small chambers inside would seem ample accommodation for somebody of very short stature. I rather fancied (though this personal belief is probably quite wrong) that in historic times a hermit lived here for a while. The Stane definitely had the right appeal for a holy man intent on finding spiritual purity through privation. It was essentially a remote, draughty, hard-floored cave, doubtless plagued in the summer by midges, all wanting some carnal refreshment. Mind you, from the entrance to his tiny cell he'd enjoy a wonderful view across and along the valley. But I hope there was a system for bringing him food and water, or he would have perished. Well, he obviously did. Not only was there no dwarf, there was no crazed mystic in residence, covered in midge-bites. I had the place entirely to myself, at least for the moment.

I took in the view.

Those humanoids were out of sight, in a dip, but must be getting closer. About time I had a look inside! The entrance really was very low. 

I didn't crawl inside on hands and knees. I sat down on the threshold, facing the view, and then shuffled backwards on my bottom, leaning backwards because I couldn't sit upright inside. There just wasn't the headroom. So I studied the interior lying down. It was at least dry. To my right (left, if looking in from outside), a smoothly-carved chamber about the size of a very small tent for one, lined with straw. If there really had been a hermit, he could certainly have curled up to sleep here - provided he was short. A tall hermit wouldn't have fitted.

To my left (right, if looking in from outside) a separate space behind a lip, like a large cupboard. It had a shelf. In the context of a latter-day hermit, it might have been a shrine for his devotions; but originally it would have been an inner burial chamber for the Neolithic VIP for whom this tomb was made.

Easing myself up onto one elbow, and stretching out a leg thoughtfully, I considered what kind of hideaway the Dwarfie Stane made, hermit or no hermit.

Hmm. No doubt about it. The Stane was quite impractical as a home, unless one stayed outside most of the time and merely slept in it at night. All the same, a great place for deep and peaceful close-to-nature contemplation - if you were the sort to whom discomfort meant nothing. (Not me!)

It was a cheerless place really, but I was glad I'd made the effort to trek here. I kicked the air in delight. It was a definite achievement.

Getting upright again wasn't so easy, with my dodgy knees, but I managed it. The humanoids were approaching. They turned out to be an Australian couple from Adelaide, the second pair of Australians I'd met that day. (And there was me, thinking that it was remarkable, my coming here all the way from Sussex) I hoped they wouldn't both try to get inside the Stane at the same time. There was hardly the room for one, and they were not dwarves. (Or is it dwarfs?)

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