Happy Birthday!

We can hardly believe it, but it has been 10 years this week since our friends in Kirkwall moved into their lovely new Library and Archive building. This year also sees 50 years of the mobile library service in Orkney so of course we had to have a celebration. As well as a wonderful exhibition charting the history of the mobile service there are a series of events and promotions running all week. 

As we are all in such a good mood, and full of birthday cake, we have declared an amnesty for all overdue books so that even if you have been invoiced you can return the books this week and we will waive the usual admin fee. You can also enjoy free CD and DVD loans all week and there are complimentary chocolates on the issue desk - if you hurry there may even be some left. *sound of sweetie wrappers hastily being hidden under the desk*

Advent - 19th December

There may not be monstrous Yule Cats on the prowl in Orkney but  Yule preparations in the islands were also concerned with warding off the unwelcome attention of malevolent spirits - in this case the trows. You can read more about the traditions surrounding Yule in the Northern Isles on the excellent Orkneyjar website.

Ernest Marwick tells of a specifically Stromness Yule custom in The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland: 

A Yearly tug-of-war, with the ultimate possession of a Yule tree as its object, took place in Stromness each Christmas Eve until 1936. A tree of some kind - for trees are scarce in the islands - was taken from a garden without the owner's knowledge and carried to the middle of the town. Chains or ropes were attached to it and a trial of strength began... there was a point of delimitation between Northenders and Southenders, and their ancient rivalry found expression in an attempt to drag the tree to a traditional goal well within the territory of the faction which proved most powerful. The contest was a robust, often turbulent one. As the route was skirted by the sea, the tree invariably ended its journey in the water, followed now and then by an over-zealous player.

You can read more about the Stromness Yule Tree on the Scapa Flow Landscape Partnership's website.

We would love to hear from anyone who may remember this custom, or  has heard stories about it - please share them in the comments below.

In the meantime we're going to stick to a chocolate Yule Log - though there may still be fighting over that!

Recipe for Yule log at http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3049/yule-chocolate-log

Advent - 1st December

We thought we'd try something new this year and try to mark advent with a post a day during December. We can't promise you chocolate but we will try to bring you a seasonal reflection, in word, or images , with a suitably local flavour. 

Today we woke up to see the first white flakes of winter at the window and so we thought we'd share the following extract from George Mackay Brown's poem "House of Winter", from his Christmas Poems collection:

                             At last, the house of winter. Find

                             On the sill

                             Intricate ice jewellery, a snowflake.

 

 

 

Easter in Stromness

The library will be closed on Monday (9th April) for the Easter Monday public holiday - so pop along today for your holiday-weekend reading.

With a glut of chocolate eggs filling the shops straight after the New Year, and hot-cross buns seemingly available all year round, it seems traditional festive celebrations around Easter have become just another opportunity for consumption rather than a focus for communal  participation.

Looking for evidence of local Easter traditions we turn to George Mackay Brown, who writes in Letters from Hamnavoe of the practice of his childhood, when on 'the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday' the children of Stromness 'with baskets and tin cans, used to range about the countryside after "pace eggs"'. GMB tells us:

        'It was impossible to cover the whole parish of Stromness - Innertoon, Ootertoon, Quholm, Cairston, Kirbister, the Loons. You had to keep to one district; and then only visit farms where there were knidly women and tame dogs. You might come home with anything from six to a dozen eggs in your an, and all unbroken, if there was no fighting or bullying or horseplay on the road'

The children took their treasures home where 'the eggs were boiled, and coloured in various hues; and on the Saturday or Sunday there was a feast of "pace eggs" and spicy hot cross buns'.

GMB goes on to highlight the symbolism of the Easter 'pace eggs' as part of:

' a very ancient ceremony of gifts, with traditions going back further that Christianity, and seemingly universal in the ancient world. The egg is never so plentiful as at this time of year; and to the first tribes of the world it symbolised the life of springtime when the apparently inert egg brike open to reveal a new bird.'

This symbolism is for GMB alive and well in the traditions of his Stromness childhood where the universal becomes local and personal:

' So when the peedie boys and lasses of Stromness ranged through the parish for "pace eggs", what the kindly farm wives gave them was an Easter gift; a pledge that winter was at last over, and that soon the earth would be full of the plentitude of summer - young beasts, and birds, and growing oats - and the tide of ripeness would not stop till harvest. And after that there would be food enough in barn and cupboard to last through the darkness of another winter. Life was an endless celebration of death-and-renewal, darkness-and-light, barrenness-and-fruition...'

We wish you all a weekend of celebration, whether your eggs are hard boiled and decorated or made of yummy chocolate, may you enjoy their symbolic promise of new life and renewal.