Orkney – Stuff on Celts, Druids, Standing Stones and suchlike.

Maeshowe is an exquisite feat achieved by a group of builders who lived and worked some 5,000 years ago on Orkney. The mound is 35 meters in diameter, 7 metres high inside, and despite the passage of five millennia, warm and dry within. Running off the main chamber are three cells that it appears can be sealed with stone slabs which now lie on the floor. There is also a blocking stone at the entry to the entry passage which seems to be designed so that it can only be closed from the inside. And at each Winter solstice, the rising sun shines directly into the tomb, rising in the fold of the hills of the island of Hoy opposite, and shining directly over the Barnhouse standing stone located several hundred meters away.

But is it a tomb? Variously described as a Chamber Cairn and a passage grave, the fact is that when it was excavated 1861 there was only one skull to be found inside, although it was also clear that it had also been used by the Vikings to shelter from inclement weather, and as a result, has the largest single collection of Runes in the world. But that is another story.

It seems unlikely to have been a tomb only, or at all perhaps, but for what other purpose would the people of the Orkneys put up to 100,000 man hours of work and transported stones weighing up to 30 tons? We shall never know, we can only speculate.

The site www.maeshowe.co.uk shows photographs of past winter solstices shot from inside the tomb as well as some spectacular shots taken of the interior.

sauna — A “Burnt Mound” near to the Tomb of the Eagles in Orkney.

I had never seen one before, or even read about them. Yet when I did some research on the web, I discovered that over 300 had been discovered around and in Birmingham alone. Apparently they are quite common place.

What are they? They are called “Burnt Mounds” and they consist broadly of a mound of shattered stones with a nearby trough. The latter is always water-tight, and the one in the photograph can be clearly seen. They date back thousands of years, to the Neolithic and perhaps beyond, and there is even evidence that they were used as late as the 14th century AD.

But for what purpose? Some theories suggest cooking. The stones would have been heated up in fires, and then dropped into the water to heat it for cooking meat. The flaw in this argument is that no evidence for cooking has ever been found in the many locations where they have been used. No bones, no remains from the preparation of meat.

A better explanation that seems to fit the facts is that they were saunas. It is easy to picture a group of hunter-gatherers warming up the water with the heated rocks, and after a hard days food gathering, relaxing, for a moment out of the wind, the rain and the elements. Apparently in some locations signs of post-holes have been found, so perhaps some of these “Burnt Mounds” were covered to keep the heat and the steam inside. A Neolithic sweat lodge maybe?

I rather like to think so.

Category: Orkney

Maeshowe tomb – with a door that can only be sealed from inside it?

A Neolithic sauna – or a sweat lodge?