Today we took the Maxi Bus Tour of Orkney. A bus tour is not something we do often but this one turned out to be quite successful. Showing us a lot of things in a single day. As it turned out there was a lot to learn about Orkney.

The people of Orkney are not of Scots descent, they are more closely related to Norway. A few years ago Orkney adopted a new flag and it looks like a copy of the Norwegian flag (except they have a yellow border around the cross whereas the Norwegian flag has a white border). The islands of Orkney passed from Norway to Scotland in the 1500s as part of a marriage deal. The Norwegian king did not have the money for the required dowry and put up the Orkney Islands as surety for the money. The money was never paid so the islands remain in Scots hands.

In the middle of the island group there is a large expanse of protected water called Scapa Flow, this waterway was the home of the British Fleet during both world wars. This natural harbor orginally had a number of exit/entries from both the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. During WWI the entrances from the North Sea were blocked by sinking surplus ships (later called block ships - you can see the remains of some of these is the photos on this page) in the appropriate channels.

By the time of WWII those block ships had been moved around by tides and storms allowing a German UBoat (U47) to enter Scapa Flow and sink the British battleship HMS Royal Oak.

In response to this Churchill ordered causeways to be built across the North Sea entrances as permanent barriers. The work of building these barriers was undertaken by Italian prisoners of war. But, under the terms of the Geneva Convention POWs cannot be made to work on war facilities. To avoid this issue the British claimed that the causeways were being built to provide road connections between the islands of Orkney. Interestingly that is exactly what they are used for today.

There is a long history of people occupying Orkney. We visited a place called Skara Brae which is the ruin of a neolithic village and is dated at 2500BC. The village was unearthed by a storm in 1850. Archeologists have deduced that it was originally buried under sand by a storm 4500 years ago.

On a slightly less momentous front our guide corrected a piece of Australian history for us. He noted that we Aussie have it wrong when it comes to the naming of Fraser Island. The island is named after a young women (Eliza Fraser) who was shipwrecked off the east coast of Australia and rescued by Aboriginals. The guide pointed out that Eliza Fraser was not a young Scots women as recorded in Australian history books but was a young Orkadian women.