In June this year were off up to Orkney again. We used the same ferry company, Pentland Ferries, but the boat was a newer one, the MV Alfred. (A couple of weeks after we got home the M S Alfred managed to ground itself on Swona island in the Firth. Lucky we missed that voyage.)

MV Alfred: Ferry from Gills Bay, Caithness, to St Margaret’s Hope in Orkney:-

Lighthouse on the island of Stroma in the Pentland Firth:-

Views at St Margaret’s Hope:-

Collins, 1968, 190 p. Illustrated by Brian Alleridge.

This is what may nowadays be called a YA novel. In a long-ago Caithness, still forested, Anlaf, the son of Thorstan the Red, himself son of Anlaf the White, longs to become an adult and go on raids with his father against the indigenous Scots. His future is unutterably altered when, perhaps due to information given to a Scot by one of his family’s thralls his father is killed on an expedition. Wise to the possibility of their new-forged vulnerability being exploited they build a boat and set sail for Iceland, the land the ravens found, where Anlaf’s grandmother, Aud, has kin.

Mitchison builds her story well, the obvious research required being well disguised. Reading this would be a relatively painless way for anyone to learn some history of the Dark Age period and the earliest settlement of Iceland. Particularly well-handled are the tensions between those adherents of the Old Faith and the New (Christianity,) the conventions of Viking society and the relative power women held, but the language is tailored to a young audience. Embedded within it is a prophecy that two of the characters are forebears of the first Europeans to have a child born in the Americas.

On the face of it this would seem to be Anlaf’s story but it is really more that of Aud, Cetil’s daughter. It is her family connections that bring the group to Iceland and her influence that pervades the book.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘Doesn’t he knew?’” (know,) prophecying (prophesying,) a missing full stop. In the Postscript; “There are any amount of stories” (There is any amount.)

On the way down from Orkney and Thurso we stopped at Dunbeath, Caithness. This was the birthplace of Scottish writer Neil M Gunn.

This stone was laid in his memory. “To commemorate Neil M Gunn, author of world renown, born into this community 8^th November 1891.”

This statue, erected 100 years after Gunn’s birth, is in honour of the character Kenn from his novel Highland River:-

This is the river running through the village, the Dunbeath Water, possibly that same Highland river:-

This information board was on a wall nearby. As well as mentioning Gunn it notes other local attractions:-

We made the crossing to Orkney from Gills Bay in Caithness via the Pentland Ferries’ catamaran the Pentalina. It skelped along at a fair pace:-

Landfall was at St Margaret’s Hope, South Ronaldsay, the third largest settlement in Orkney:

Closer view of the town:-

This is the Northlink Ferries’ ship Hamnavoe in Hoy Sound on its way from Stromness to Scrabster:-

This video (click on picture to get to my flickr to play it) shows the Hamnavoe steaming through Hoy sound with Hoy in background. Unfortunately I zoomed in and as a result the focus went awry:-