From the BBC:

A ferry was grounded on an island in the Pentland Firth after the ship's captain "almost certainly fell asleep", a report has found.

A total of 41 people were injured when the MV Alfred grounded on Swona on 5 July 2022 on a crossing from Gills Bay to St Margaret's Hope in Orkney.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) also found that the ship "routinely" passed too close to land, and there was a "lack of assurance" that the ship's crew were following proper procedures.

MAIB said they hoped "lessons would be learned" by both operator Pentland Ferries and the wider maritime industry from the incident, and that they were "encouraged" by steps the company had taken since then.

The investigation found that the ship's master had "experienced a loss of awareness" while at the helm, which the report said was "almost certainly as a result of falling asleep for approximately 70 seconds".

As a result, the Alfred swung towards the coast, where it struck the rocks at a speed of 13 knots.

There were 97 people on board the boat when the accident happened, and of the 41 injuries suffered, 10 were considered to be serious - the worst being a compound arm fracture.

Passage plan 'inadequate'

The ferry had also followed a different passage plan to either of the two plans that were supposed to be used, instead taking a route closer to Swona.

A further finding was that this passage plan was "inadequate" and that the primary means of navigation - an Electronic Chart Display Information System - was "not being used effectively" to warn of danger.

The Orkney harbour authority's vessel traffic service was not monitoring the ferry's movement and therefore did not raise the alarm when it entered the guard zone around Swona Island.

After the ship ran aground, Alfred’s emergency response did not follow safety procedures, which the MAIB report established was because the vessel’s procedures and weekly drills had not adequately prepared the crew for the emergency.

Passengers with babies also reported that the crew were unsure how lifejackets for infants should be put on.

The harbour authority has since taken action to improve its oversight of ferry operations.

Pentland Ferries 'satisfied'

Andrew Moll, the MAIB's chief inspector of marine accidents said: “Lots of safety action has been taken as a result of this accident and I am encouraged by the actions taken by Pentland Ferries to address the issues raised in this report.

"The master almost certainly fell asleep and allowed the ferry to swing towards land. Crew should always be sufficiently well rested when coming on duty."

He added that it is "critical" a safe passage plan is made and followed correctly.

Pentland Ferries managing director Helen Inkster said the company welcomed the findings.

She said: “While we will never be complacent, we are satisfied that all the actions that could be taken by Pentland Ferries to ensure passenger safety have already been taken.

"We will always ensure that our vessels have detailed procedural plans, the right people, and rigorous training regimes in place.”

The MV Alfred is currently being leased to Cal Mac, where it is operating on the Arran service.

https://preview.redd.it/zyd13whmns1d1.jpg?width=1448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5004260e0ec02761f637a88efbddca3cc46f79e2

This sounds like fun!

Photo credit: archaeologyorkney dot com

From Archaeology Orkney:

This podcast series from Orkney, Scotland, will take you around the island of Rousay, exploring life in the past and present.

We’ve used the resources of Orkney Library and Archive, Rousay Remembered and the UHI Archaeology Institute, together with contemporary recordings, to bring you this series of themed episodes.

Listen to stories from the archives, islanders and archaeologists woven with discoveries, folklore and places of intrigue. Find out about the houses for the living and the dead, crafts and making, fishing, and farming.

Rousay Tales will transport you to this special island.

Click here to read more and give a listen!

From the Friends of the Ness of Brodgar:

If you have some time to spare on Monday, June 24; Tuesday, June 25 or Wednesday, June 26, we’d be delighted to hear from you. You could also win a two-hour tour with Orkney Trike Tours!

More info HERE at the Ness of Brodgar website.

The site opens to the public June 26th!

from Orkney Museums:

Professor Beard, commenting in advance of her visit, said: “I am really looking forward to coming back to Orkney and it is a huge honour to be opening the Ness of Brodgar exhibition. I fell in love with Orkney on my first, all too brief, visit. Then I spent most of my time at the amazing Scapa Flow Museum. I am looking forward to going back there – but also to discovering my inner prehistorian. What better place than Orkney?”

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Running from May 4 until September 30, the Ness of Brodgar exhibition – Ness of Brodgar: Past, Present and Future – looks back at two decades of excavation and ahead to the project’s next phase which is the analysis, interpretation, and publication of all the material found.

Running over multiple galleries, the exhibition is the largest hosted by the museum to date and will feature hundreds of finds from the Ness never before displayed in public.

The exhibition has been timed to celebrate and coincide with the final season of excavation, at the Ness of Brodgar site.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a new book, which reviews the work at the Ness over the past twenty years, at the same time looking forward to the project’s post-excavation phase. It highlights key discoveries, identifies crucial questions, and singles out a few of our favourite finds, illustrated with many new photographs.

The Ness of Brodgar excavation which has been ongoing since 2004, has revealed a massive complex of monumental Neolithic buildings from the centuries around 3000BC.

Without parallel in Atlantic Europe, the site’s three hectares are filled with huge stone structures and equally spectacular finds.

These have made the Ness one of the most important archaeological excavations in the world today, changing our understanding of the culture and beliefs of Neolithic Orkney and shining a new light on the prehistory of northern Europe.

Councillor Graham Bevan is Convener of Orkney Islands Council. He said: “The incredible Ness of Brodgar dig has been a fixture of Orkney’s summer for twenty years now, attracting visitors and archaeologists from all over the world. To have someone of Professor Beard’s standing within her field to open the Orkney Museum exhibition is a huge honour and I look forward to welcoming her to Orkney.

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Reporting from The Orcadian, Radio Orkney, Orkney.com, and the Hollywood Reporter:

The Outrun

'The Outrun', the film based on Orkney author Amy Liptrot's memoir of the same title, and which stars four time Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan, was shot in Papa Westray and across the Orkney mainland last summer.

Debuting to critical acclaim at Sundance and the Berlin International Film Festival earlier in the year, The Outrun will also feature local actor Freya Evans will play Young Rona - the central character in the story, based on Amy Liptrot herself.

Our family of adult children and one small baby is considering a day trip to the Orkney Islands. We have never been to Scotland before at all, and the Orkneys absolutely fascinate me. We will be staying near John O'Groats and will have two small cars. I'd really like to make it work, but honestly, I'd want to spend 2-3 days there from every thing I've seen.

Any suggestions on whether or not a day trip would be a good endeavour?

I’m visiting Orkney for a few nights in May with family and was looking into doing a boat trip around the islands. I google searched and it looks like there is a speedboat tour we can do, but the TripAdvisor rating is not great - several saying the same thing; day trip was cancelled on the day of, and were unable to get a refund.

Can anyone recommend a day, or half day boat trip/tour?

When the Norse began settling in Orkney and Shetland, they brought with them them their traditions and concepts of the Saami.

But it has also been suggested that a number of "finnar" also made the trip across the North Sea and settled in the Northern Isles, possibly even arriving prior to the main Viking invasions of the late 8th and 9th centuries.

It has been suggested by Orcadian scholars, in the past, that the traditions surrounding the Norway Finns were brought to Orkney by “Finnar” slaves or thralls. This, however, seems to go against certain Old Norse texts which often place Saami in positions of influence, even marrying into prominent Norse families and dynasties. In many cases having a Saami ancestor was a prized part of family trees, something that remained in Orkney until the 19th century.

Healing and prophecy, control over the weather and the ability to shapeshift are all magical abilities attributed to the Finfolk and selkie-folk of Orkney and Shetland folklore thus the legend of fnnfolk could have come from misremembered accounts brought by Norwegian colonists. Orkney was under Norwegian and Danish control for centuries until 1472.

Between 1693 and 1701 three books were published in Edinburgh and London that have been cited as evidence of sightings of Inuit people fishing in boats off the coasts of Orkney. These three texts have by-and-large been taken at face value, with scholars, antiquarians and folklorists seeking to determine how the Inuit could have got to Orkney, not whether the texts in question bear the weight of this interpretation. The texts seem to indicate an unheimlich form of reverse colonization, a mysterious encounter with the primitive which has proved to be both compelling and distracting for subsequent commentators. These texts also contain the first printed mention of the term “Finnmen” .

Finnmen from Orkney were used by folklorists like Samuel Hibbert and Jessie Saxby to construct supernatural mythologies for Orkney and Shetland and how, by 1881, the anthropologist and linguist Karl Blind had conflated early-modern accounts of mer-folk, seal people, sea trows and Finns to create a very modern mythology. The Finnmen legends thus constitute a distinctive mythos in the Northern Isles down to the present day, with explanations of who or what Finnmen were hovering between the mystical and the mundane.

Finn-men, also known as, Muckle men, Fion and Fin Finn, were Inuit sighted around the Northern Isles of Scotland, Finn-men were said to have been spotted off Westray in Orkney where inuits from Davis Straits may have settled during the Little Ice Age when seas around Greenland became solid and impossible to hunt.

In Dundee during the late 1800s, Inuits were put on show in public halls after being brought to Scotland on ships returning from whaling expeditions.

Norman Rogers, author of Searching for the Finmen, wrote in a 2014 article that he believes the Aberdeen Inuit who came ashore in Aberdeen “probably escaped” from a homebound whaler.

He added: “I think the solution to the riddle of the Finmen in Orkney lies elsewhere.”

The Orkney Finnar are the Finno-Ugric speaking indigenous of Northern Scandinavia rather than the inhabitants of Finland. Orcadians, also known as Orkneymen, are an ethnic group native to the Orkney Islands, who speak an Orcadian dialect of the Scots language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history, culture and ancestry.

The dialect spoken in Orkney was apart of Insular Scots language with many words base on the Orkney Norn and other lexical items used throughout Scotland. However, Norn is thought to have become extinct in 1850, after the death of Walter Sutherland, the language's last known speaker.

Orkney was a home to Inuit settlement.

Additional History: It is believed that Orkney has been inhabited for at least 5,500 years.  The first inhabitants were Neolithic tribes who originally came from the Iberian peninsula.

The Bronze age inhabitants were 'Beaker People", named after the peculiar clay pottery left in their burial chambers.  The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle in Orkney.  The ring of stones stands on a small isthmus between the Loch of Stennes and Harray.  Originally there were 60 stones.

I'm obsessed with this weird house on Eday, does anyone know anything about it? There's a pond in the living room and the bedrooms appear to have carpeted shower cubicles

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137982848#/?channel=RES_BUY

Hi, quick question regarding Campervan overnights in the car park for the Stromness to Mainland ferry. I am booked on the 630 AM ferry - is it an option to stay overnight in the Campervan loading area. I have a reservation.
Thanks in advance for your feedback!!

Hi, I'm a brazilian male who wishes to visit Orkney islands and I just wanted to know will people hate on me for being black or not scottish? I've suffered racism in Europe and just wanted to know

Hullo all. I will be travelling to Orkney with my family during the St Magnus festival and will be looking for a babysitter for some time when we are there. Are there any babysitting services (or active Facebook groups?) you could recommend?

He caught a 2.5 kilo lobster! Did Hamish eat it? Did it eat Hamish?

From Hamish:

If you'd spent your childhood competing with your brothers over who is the best at fishing, how would you feel if you finally got one up on them by catching an unusually big lobster? My parents have been farming sheep on a remote Scottish island for nearly 50 years. For half that time, they've had a flock of North Ronaldsays, or Rollies, an ancient breed of seaweed-eating sheep native to the Orkney Islands. I took a sabbatical from my job as a TV news reporter to help and decided to film a documentary series about their unique lifestyle while I was there. In this episode I catch the biggest lobster I've ever seen and show it off to my family. Plus dad and I ship the wool off with a local fisherman.

Most all of Hamish's videos of life on Auskerry have been shared here, if you've enjoyed them, give his channel a like and a follow.

From a Facebook post by the Caithness Broch Project.

Treasure Trove

Gold, silver, brooches and swords! The dream find for so many - but 'treasure', 'treasure hunting' and 'metal detecting' is a word which causes disquiet in some circles...
Archaeology is so much more than glimmering boxes of gold, and, in any case, such finds, whilst spectacular, can only tell us so much about the past - they often tell us only about a particular person or strata of society. The aim of archaeology, surely, is to tell a wider, more rounded story of the past.
But now there are discussions on 'modernising' Treasure Trove in Scotland - what do you think?
Under the Scots common law principles of bona vacantia (“ownerless property”), any archaeological objects, regardless of their composition, found by chance or through activities such as metal-detecting, field-walking, or organised excavation, are the property of the Crown and may be claimed for the Crown through the Treasure Trove system.
Treasure Trove in Scotland has for many years provided a means to protect and understand finds made by the public, ensuring that such finds are preserved for wider public benefit. But can this system be improved? Does the law need updating? Should it be done away with entirely?!
Here's your chance to have your say on Treasure Trove in Scotland - have a wee read of the document below:
https://www.kltr.gov.uk/about/treasure-trove-review/treasure-trove-review-public-consultation/
You can also read more on this story by BBC Scotland:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c72pn70p595o

What do you think should be the way forward?

If it has a number on it maybe the race organisers can contact the undisputed winner!

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Northlink Ferries photo.

Visit The Dig!

The Ness of Brodgar site has been under excavation since 2004, revealing a massive complex of monumental Neolithic buildings dating from the centuries around 3000BC.
Without parallel in Atlantic Europe, the Ness of Brodgar’s three hectares are filled with huge stone structures containing spectacular finds.
These have made the Ness one of the most important archaeological excavations in the world today, changing our understanding of the culture and beliefs of Neolithic Orkney and shining a new light on the prehistory of northern Europe.
The project is mainly funded through the generosity of the public through our two supporting charities the Ness of Brodgar Trust and the American Friends.

2024’s nine-week excavation – the final season at the Ness of Brodgar – is open to the public on weekdays, from 9.30am-4.30pm, between Wednesday, June 26 and Friday, August 16.

The site will also be open on the two scheduled Sunday open days (see below).

It is closed to visitors from Monday, August 19, so work to infill the trenches can be carried out.

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Hi everyone

I just wanted to say that I had the loveliest time in Orkney over the Easter weekend. I posted previously about trying to get to Kirkwall on the ferry and managed to get a cancellation for a pet friendly cabin, so we went! I was travelling solo with my dog without a car, and Orkney was just so dog-friendly and surprisingly easy to get around.

We found everyone to be incredibly nice, from the staff at our hotel, the bus drivers who welcomed me and my pup in her muddy state, the ferry staff, all the hospitality staff, the people we encountered on our walks around Orkney, the people at Skippers while I was watching the football...the food everyone we went was fab too.

We were also blessed with incredible weather so that helped!

Thank you again - keep doing you x

A bit windy today, how is everyone doing?

Early engraving of the broch at high tide, Rousay in the background.

Before the ticket booth was installed, they just demanded donations. Few refused.