Sea Change book revisits Iron Age conference
Story dated: August 14, 2003

A book of papers from the 2001 Iron Age conference held in Orkney has been launched in Kirkwall.

The Sea Change conference in September 2001 attracted about 200 delegates, some from as far afield as Australia and the USA, for an intensive four-day schedule of talks, demonstrations, field-trips and activities.

A selection of papers presented at the conference are reproduced in full and cover a variety of topics relating to the period, some concerned directly to the Northern Isles, others looking further afield.

The 25 papers are separated into four sections - Ritual and Burial, Settlement and Artefacts, Language and Society and Archaeology: The Minehowe Know How event - covering topics such as Pictish paganism, Minehowe and the recreation of the Orkney Hood.

Anna Ritchie begins by exploring Paganism among the Picts and their conversion to Christianity. She outlines the historical and archaeological evidence for Pictish paganism and of particular interest is her piece on Pictish shrines - perhaps explaining one of the strange features of Minehowe uncovered in 2000. This excavation is further detailed in a paper by Nick Card and Jane Downes.

Patrick Ashmore's "Orkney Burials in the first Millennium AD" summarises the changing trends in burial practice in Orkney, from the inhumations discovered at Howe in Stromness to early Viking Orkney and Sanday's Scar boat burial. This is followed by a comprehensive list of (discovered) Orkney burials over the period.

Moving into the book's second section "Settlements and Artefacts", after papers on settlement continuity in Northern Scotland and Steve Dockrill's "Broch, Wheelhouse, and cell: redefining the Iron Age in Shetland", the reader is returned to Birsay's Buckquoy excavations in a joint paper by Anne Brundle, Daphne Home Lorimer and Anna Ritchie.

Here, the evidence uncovered at Buckquoy in the early 1970s is reappraised in the light of subsequent discoveries. They conclude that despite the ongoing debate about their origin, the later houses at Buckquoy are still probably Norse - something the authors admit will allow the debate over the relationship between Orkney's Picts and the 'invading' Vikings to continue.

Further study of the artefacts found at Buckquoy, as well as the 'figure-of-eight' house itself, show clear connections with western Scotland and Ireland.

After dealing with the architecture and artefacts, Daphne Home Lorimer concludes the paper with a report on the human remains uncovered during the excavations. A fascinating review of a pivotal excavation - expecially in light of more recent discoveries and theories.

The agricultural "revolution" of Iron Age Orkney is the subject of Julie Bond's paper. Focusing on Pool in Sanday, she outlines the perceived changes in animal husbandry and cultivation over the lifetime of the settlement. Changes she describes as "innovations and intensification in the agricultural economy of Orkney before the arrival of the Vikings."

The apparent success of these Iron Age farming settlements may well be, she adds, the reason they may have been early targets for Scandinavian settlers.

Returning to the Picts, Graham Ritchie's paper "Pictish Art in Orkney" documents the examples of Pictish symbols found in the county over the centuries - from the fragment found at the Sands of Evie and then rediscovered in a Birsay byre, to the well known Brough of Birsay symbol stone, and its easily recognisable warrior procession. Again, a valuable compilation of information.

The first paper in the third section - Language and Society - is a look at the oft-debated subject of the pre-Norse language in Orkney. In it renowned placename scholar W.F.H. Nicolaisen tackles what has long been a thorny subject. Although Orkney has no shortage of archaeological evidence for pre-Norse Orkney, the linguistic and toponymic evidence of the pre-Norse Orcadians is practically non-existent (or at the very least very difficult to spot through the accretions of time).

Nicolaisen looks at a selection of the various theories put forward over the years. All of these have generally depended on the relationship between Picts and Viking - i.e. were the Picts obliterated, hence the lack of indigenous placenames, or did the Vikings simply ignore them.

Although not even attempting to answer this hotly-debated question, Nicolaisen repeats his theory that the Norse settlers did not necessarily start making up new names for the Orkney landscape around them. Instead, he asks, did they carry familiar names from their homelands which they transplanted onto suitable sites in Orkney and Shetland? As such, the Norse did not "reject" any indigenous names - they simply neglected them. An interesting idea and something, it could be argued, that continues today, as it has over the centuries since the first Norse name was applied in the islands.

So was the Viking invasion of Orkney a peaceful one? Not according to Shetland archivist Brian Smith, whose paper "Not Welcome at All: Vikings and the Native Population in Orkney and Shetland" is recommended reading for all - whether proponents of the "War" or "Peace" theories. Smith's opinions on the matter and firmly in the former camp - the Vikings, he says, treated Orkney and Shetland no differently to the other places they "visited". What they wanted, they took. In Smith's opinion there was no peaceful co-existence, no gradual integration. And his arguments, as usual, make lively and interesting reading.

The Iron Age saw a shift from monumental structures as a means of expressing status to individual artefacts - a topic dealt with by Niall Sharples in the closing paper of the third section of Sea Change to a close. The final section covers Minehowe Know How - an event that took place in May/June 2002 that involved practical workshops, recreations, demonstrations and the like.

The eight papers presented within the final section of the book cover a small part of the event and begins with Jacqui Wood's study and recreation of the Orkney Hood - a rare piece of Iron Age clothing unearthed in 1867. Along the same lines, the second chapter deals with the recreation of the Knowes of Trotty grave goods while Andrew Appleby considers the pottery styles found at Minehowe.

Sea Change: Orkney and Northern Europe in the later Iron Age is available now from bookshops. Click here to buy online.