Stormbound in Orkney
Storm after storm rolled over the Orkney Islands, stretching our planned four-day visit into a two-week immersion in Orcadian life.
We ducked into 5,000-year-old cairns, visited St Magnus Cathedral and ruined castles, walked along the cliffs and watched the seabirds.
Midhowe chambered cairn - stepping 5000 years back in time
On a rare sunny day, while enjoying a coffee on Garden Square in Kirkwall, we realised we didn’t mind having to spend two weeks here, even though we had already seen all the main sites. Something was helping us make peace with the delay. We weren't sure what.
There was hardly any litter along the roads or in the parks, something we had seen often on the mainland. Murals on walls, historical signposts in the streets, shipping containers turned into a square with pop-up cafes and restaurants. The place felt tended to.
People were talking to each other in the streets or in the cafes. There was a quiet attentiveness to others. Our bus driver stepped off to check with a lady who was rolling her luggage between stops, seemingly lost, whether she needed to get to the airport. One morning we spotted a fishing vessel unloading bags of scallops. From the diving gear on deck, it looked like they had been hand-picked. We asked where we could buy them, but they were not sold here, they were sent to Southern England. Probably noticing our disappointment, the captain disappeared for a second and came back with a bag full of scallops: “take what you need”. Our dinner on board Capsula felt very different that night.
Attention also means that everyone notices you. A tour guide in Rousay: ”You came with your sailing boat? I saw you arriving yesterday!”. A ferry captain in Westray: “I saw you turning in the harbour from my home last night: You struggled to find where to moor, didn’t you?”. It made us smile, but we wondered what it feels like to be checked on, even with kindness, every day.
Ethically sourced scallops, straight from sea to plate
Looking back, we saw the same sense of care in most, if not all, of the small islands we had visited, from France to Norway, via the Baltic.
Perhaps on small islands people feel a stronger sense of responsibility for their surroundings: what they leave behind is what they have to live with. Or when you can feel, if not see, the boundaries of where you live, the whole island becomes your home, and you care for it accordingly.
Later, we came across the concept of ‘islandness’, used to describe the particular character of island communities and how they relate to place and to each other. It resonated with what we had been noticing.
We will not be short of islands in the months and years to come, from tiny islets to Greenland. I’d be curious to see how this feeling evolves.
Anne, Kirkwall, March 2026