An Unlikely Story

   At first glance you'd think it's a scene of people walking to a picturesque little chapel.

        Picturesque and little yes, but with a big and old back story.

   It begins in 1943 when 200 Italians, members of the 5th Labor battalion were captured at Tobruk and Benghazi and sent to Camp 60, a world away in Lamb Holm in the Orkney Islands.
   The Italian POW's were assigned to build roads and causeways, known as Churchill Barriers. The structures were meant to block access through the Orkney Islands which housed the British Fleet, anchored at Scapa Flow. 
    The POW's balked at first until the camp commander Major TP Buckland and Padre Gioachino Giacobazzi put together a plan. The Padre, from the Order of Little Brothers, had been sent to the remote camp to minister to the POW's. 
     The men wanted a place to worship and so they were given two Nissen huts. Amongst the prisoners was an artist, Domenico Chiocchetti and the rest is an amazing history in the lovely Orkneys. 

  Using recycled corned beef tin cans and scrap wood they went to work. They used concrete to fashion the facade to hide the shape of the prefabricated metal huts they joined end to end. They covered the interior with plaster board. The altar and altar rail were made from left over concrete, used in building the barriers. 

  

        It looks real, but is paint and illusion.
    Chiocchetti directed the work and the painting, done in a style to make flat walls look like carved stone, brick, wood, stained glass or tile. The ornate metal frame is painted tin cans, cut and shaped by the POW's. The candle sticks were also made that way.

   Chiocchetti's mother had given him a picture to carry during the war. It was a photo of Barabino's "Madonna of the Olives." He used it as the model from which to create the altar painting. 

    The baptismal font is a car exhaust covered with concrete.
The surrounding walls, like the ceiling, is paint on plasterboard.
   Today the Italian Chapel is the only remaining building at Camp 60. Around the waters of the Orkney Islands one can spot a few rusted Churchill Barrier Block Ships that were purposely sunk to impede German Submarines. An irony in the peaceful waters and beauty of the Orkneys, they are now used for scuba diving. 

    The chapel is used for special services and draws about 100 thousand visitors a year.
    And there is a sidebar story. When the POW's were returned to Italy, Chiocchetti stayed to finish some detail work. Legend has it he fell for a local gal, but alas he had a wife at home in Italy. So with some flourish he assured the local woman though he needed to leave, he was leaving his heart at Camp 60. It is there in the recycled cement at the approach to the altar. 

     Chiocchetti returned in 1960 and 1964.  Many of the former prisoners returned in 1992. Chiocchetti died in 1999 but his daughter sang in a special commemorative mass in 2014 marking the 70th Anniversary of the Chapel.
     An artifact of a world war remains and is an unlikely testament to peace, love, cooperation and imagination.

    More from Scotland is ahead, and the itinerary is about to move us to the magic of Ireland. 

     See you down the trail.

Below The Wind and Above The Sea

  Lands end is the northeastern tip of Scotland.

   Calm seas as we queue for the ferry to the Orkney Islands, departing from John O' Groats.

  They say they live "below the wind and above the sea."

There are 70 islands in the Orkney archipelago, 20 are inhabited. 

People have lived in the Orkneys for 8,500 years. There are presently 21 thousand with most of the population on the large island Mainland.

The largest town is Kirkwall with 8,500.

    St. Magnus Cathedral is at the heart of Kirkwall. It is the northern most cathedral in the United Kingdom.

     The sandstone building was started in 1137 and it took 300 years to complete, at a time when Norse Earls controlled the Orkney Islands. It's built in Norman style, the work done by English masons. 

 In 1468 when King James III of Scotland annexed the islands, he gave ownership of the cathedral to the burgh of Kirkwall. It has a dungeon.

  The turret clock was added 1761 and was built by a Scots clockmaker Hugh Gordon. 

    Kirkwall is an administrative center for the Orkney islands. It was first mentioned in records in 1046.

    500 live in the village of St. Margret Hope. Life is gentle, peaceful and quiet. Ferry and air service connects the population centers.

  There are historic sites on the Orkneys, including Skaill Manor near the 5 thousand year old neolithic UNESCO World Heritage site, Skara Brae, detailed in a previous post. 

      There is striking evidence of more recent history, WWII. That is detailed in a future post.
     There is calm and tranquillity in this area of Scotland.

   Back in Scotland, the remote crofting village of Thrumster, Caithness is south of Wick. An old black smith building has been turned into a time capsule of sorts the "Smitty."

   It's a warm and lively pub with a purpose. Raymond, below, is a Seanchai,(shawnakee) a Gaelic storyteller and historian.
    Before written language Seanchais kept and recited lyric poems that contained history and law.

  A music teacher, he works with local kids to keep alive traditional song and instruments.  A 9 year old piper

  and her 11 year old brother are part of Raymond's oral and musical history presentation.

  It wove a rich texture of history, culture and emotion for Scots and those with Scottish heritage. The stuff for dreams and reflection at the end of a day of travel.

   We journey on.

  See you down the trail.

The First History-a mystery

      You are looking at perhaps the oldest discovered evidence of humankind on the planet.
     Both are on the windswept Orkney Islands, the northern reach of Scotland. Above are the Stones of Stenness. Below is Skara Brae, the site of the oldest archeological find on the planet. Both are shrouded in mystery.

  Skara Brae is at least 5000 years old, putting it before the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, Mayan, Incan, or Aztec temples. 

     A North Atlantic storm in 1890 stripped the dunes and laid bare evidence of a community on what is now the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, the largest of the Orkney's.

   Skara Brae was a community. Individual stone homes, linked by tunnels and passage ways.

  Historical interpreters have fitted one of the homes with artifacts or replicas. Each home featured a kind of center shelf and cabinet.

  There were separate chambers for sleeping.

   The homes were built in a fashion of interlocking stones without the benefit of mortar. 

  The original excavation work was supervised by Gordon Childe of the University of Edinburgh from 1928-1931.

 Study and exhibitions have continued since. Skara Brae is a world heritage site.

  The builders were from what we call the neolithic or stone age. Stone age perhaps, but the people were clever, ingenious and reasoning. 

   I can't speak for the veracity of these images, but they are offered at the interpretive display as a suggestion of how life in the homes may have been conducted.

   This depicts what the homes may have looked like from the top.

   Scholars continue to study and speculate, but little is known about the people who lived here, or their fate.

    It's fascinating to consider that some of our earliest ancestors sketched indelible evidence of social order and intelligent life in an age most regard as a time of "cave men."
    And there is the mystery of from whence they came, the source of their knowledge and learning and where did they go. How much of their DNA may be pulsing through own bodies now?
    And a few miles south is yet more mystery.  

     On the shores of Loch Stenness are the Standing Stones.

   The Standing Stones of Stenness are a companion to the nearby Ring of Brogdar. They are from the era of Skara Brae and older than other standing stones like Stonehenge.

   Scholars think Brogdar was known as the Temple of the Sun and these Stones of Stenness were the Temple of the Moon. No one knows for sure, because they too are a mystery.

    Mystery is a companion to these stones as it is to all standing stones on the planet. How were they milled or cut? How were they transported the distances they were? Why were they placed where and how they were? Where did the knowledge of Astronomy derive?

       There were more Stones of Stenness, but in 1814 a tenant farmer, wary of the scholarly interest began to dynamite them. Scotland intervened and has cared for them since. 
        I find that hardworking farmer's behavior rather symbolic of modernity's lack of regard for the wisdom and knowledge of native and sovereign cultures.

     

     Some 500-600 miles south in Ireland is another UNESCO World Heritage site, of the approximate age. And the mysteries here are staggering.

Bru na Boinne, or Newgrange, is a marvel in County Meath, in Boyne Valley. It was built some 5,200 years ago and thought to be an ancient transit tomb.

   Newgrange is one of 3 such structures, with nearby by Knowth and Dowth. Each has a different astronomical alignment. 

         The sites are large circular mounds with inner chambers and stone passageways. Some 200 thousand tons of stone were used to build Bru na Boinne. The stones were cantilevered and stacked and no mortar or cement was used. It is nearly 300 feet across, 40 feet high and covers more than an acre.

   The tomb is partially covered with reflective white quartz stone on a base of kerb stones. The kerb stones are each between 1 and 10 tons.
   Some of the stones were from as far away as the distant mountains of Wicklow and Mournes, the tallest in Ireland.

  Human bones and grave offerings were found in the inner chambers. After it's original use it was sealed for several thousand years.
   Newgrange is a pivotal venue in Irish mythology and folklore. It is said to be a place of deities, particularly Dagda and his son Aengus.
   Dagda is regarded a father like king. He has powers of fertility, agriculture, manliness, strength, magic and wisdom and according to the mythology has influence over life and death. 

  Many of the kerb stones are covered with symbols. The site has a commanding view of the Boyne valley.

  There is no understanding of what the site was used for other than some ceremonial or perhaps religious activity.

     The entrance is built in alignment so on the winter solstice, December 21st, the sun enters the passage way via the top, the "roof box." It makes it's way into the inner chamber.

   We were not permitted to photograph the passage or the inner chamber. When the lights are out it is as dark as dark can be. A simulation of the solstice sun begins to illuminate the inner chamber and quite phenomenally the cantilevered and corbelled stones that arch above you begin to assume a soft glow and shapes. It is quite stunning. Magical perhaps.

    I am not fond of tight spaces and so our guide aligned me near the entrance of the inner chamber, my back to the passage way . Because the passageway is built on a slight incline, once you are in the inner chamber one would need to lay on their stomach and inch forward into the passageway to see out. What extraordinary architecture design!
    There is no agreement on the meaning of the megalithic art. Scholars also have differing theories on how long it took to construct.
    Mysteries remain at Bru na Boinne and the other Irish passage tombs. They are similar to sites in Scotland, Wales and Brittany.
    There was in fact a palpable and even physiological response to our experience in the chamber.
     For generations people cue up or enter lotteries for the opportunity to be in Newgrange, especially on solstice day. Many visit the site frequently. Though as our host Kay noted being a world heritage site, eventually the direct human contact with the inner chamber will likely end, so as to preserve it. The affect of human breath is being measured and they've begun to see a slight affect.

    So, I come away from these interactions with "Stone Age" mysteries marveling. Why, How, what did they know, what was the origin of their knowledge for construction, design, logistics, and what does it mean?

    These were fellow human travelers on this blue marble and we know so very little about them, or their intent. But they have left us mysteries and a history to ponder.

     See you down the trail.