Diary of a Shopkeeper, 6th August
Sigurd eyes up building standards at the Ness.
I always enjoy reading ‘Tune o’ the Toon’ by my fellow Orcadian columnist Hazel Wrigley. Hazel and her sister Jennifer have scaled musical heights, whereas I am a wanderer in the foothills. Still, I recognise the world she is writing about and can attest to the acuity of her observations. Never more so than last week, when she lauded the hidden heroes of the musical world: the stage managers, techies, drivers, and heavy-lifters collectively known as roadies. Big acts these days require dozens to construct their elaborate stage sets and make sure the stars’ performance has maximum impact. ‘From morning to midnight,’ wrote Hazel, ‘in the dark pouring rain and howling wind, they move everything from backstage toilets to big jigsaw puzzle video screens. Single stages that might only be used for three hours are raised, and then within ten minutes of the show finishing, completely taken down again.’
I read Hazel’s column on Thursday, just before I went on a guided tour of the Ness of Brodgar. I’ve visited every summer since that amazing site was first excavated, and am always keen to hear about the latest discoveries. This time, it wasn’t so much the newly exposed stonework that was a revelation, but our guide Sigurd Towrie’s description of it. As he showed us around, deftly conveying huge amounts of historical knowledge with a joke and a punchy analysis, Sigurd returned frequently to one theme: how badly built the structures of the complex were.
At first this puzzled me. I’d always heard that the buildings were large, intricately decorated, and built to impress. Now Sigurd was describing them as shockingly-badly-constructed. They kept falling down, you see. The structures were built on top of older ones – often several layers of them. There were no proper foundations. When one building collapsed they would push most of the rubble aside, fill in the gaps with midden, then start again. To cap it all, heavy flag-roofs were erected. They must have looked amazing, like great stone scales on the back of giant Brodgar fish. But their weight doomed the buildings they sat on to speedy collapse.
The Ness builders weren’t incompetent. They could put up long-lasting buildings when they wanted. Structure 27, in the trench on the south side of Lochview, is proof of that, with its foundations, drains and painstaking construction. It seems, Sigurd said, that most of the other buildings that fill the Ness were built to impress, but not to last. Hazel’s words that I’d read an hour before echoed in my mind: ‘Single stages that might only be used for three hours are raised, and then within ten minutes of the show finishing, completely taken down again.’
It was then that Sigurd directed our attention to what we’ve learned to call the Great Wall of Brodgar. One of the earliest discoveries here, 18 years ago, it played a major part in attracting the world’s attention to the Ness. Four metres wide, broadening to six around its entrance, the wall was truly massive. Can something six metres wide even be classed as a wall? Would ‘platform’ not be more accurate? Or ‘stage’?
The two sets of massive steps leading up the sides show that people needed to get on top frequently and easily. What did they do once they were up there? We’ll never know. But still I kept thinking of Hazel’s praise of the roadies: ‘They literally build pyramids, then dismantle them.’ And I had a vision of some Neolithic Taylor Swift ascending the steps to the top of the Great Stage of Brodgar and strutting her Stone Age Stuff. Before her: crowds of fans or worshippers.
Lurking in the shadows outside the firelight, a line of hairy, tattooed, hulking figures. They’d put up this year’s flashy buildings, they’d cleared the pathways and repaired the roofs. They’d even brought a herd of giant long-horned cattle for the after-show catering. All hail the Brodgar roadies!
There are only a few days left at the dig this year, and only one more year before the dig is mothballed for the foreseeable future. Visit while you can! Or check out their excellent website, with its dozens of interesting articles and blogs - many of them written by our guide, Sigurd Towrie - here: http://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 9th August 2023. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.