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The Rings o' Brodgar and Stennis
A response to the idea of SACRED SPACE by Louise Welsh
Every place, building, and natural wonder has a story.
Lists of the Seven Wonders of the World have included feats of architecture and engineering from Stonehenge to the CN Tower, stone monoliths of the past to concrete monoliths of today. In response to the question What is Sacred?, International Readings at Harbourfront approached bestselling author Louise Welsh to write about what Sacred Space means to her. The resulting piece, The Rings o' Brodgar and Stennis, tells of two henges swathed in folklore and legend; hosts to a wealth of stories, they have become revered as sacred places.
(Excerpt from The Rings o' Brodgar and Stennis by Louise Welsh)
The Rings o' Brodgar and Stennis
Circle of light and darkness, be our sign
We move in shadows.
Brodgar has set on the moor a dance of sun
— George Mackay Brown ¹
Only the most sheltered trees survive the winds that scour the islands of Orkney. Beyond the towns of Stromness and Kirkwall, land touches a sky that shifts between a palette of greys, violets, black and blues. The sea follows the sky's hue and sometimes, when chasing clouds cast quick shadows below, it can seem as if the land is changing too.
At the Ness of Brodgar, a narrow promontory between the saltwater loch of Stennis and the freshwater loch of Harray, the elements unite in a trinity of earth, sky and water. This was a sacred place long before the sixty giant monoliths that originally formed the Ring o' Brodgar were raised, six thousand five hundred years ago. Twenty-two of the stones survive, but though the circle is depleted, it still stands, over a hundred yards in diameter; never-ending, broken, yet unbroken. This is the Temple of the Sun and the nearby Ring o' Stennis, a crescent-shaped henge, is the Temple of the Moon.
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We can't be sure of the intentions of the Neolithic architects of the Rings o' Brodgar and Stennis. It's possible that these were giant astrological calendars, places of ancestor worship, ceremonial centres or ancient meeting points. Maybe, as some civic buildings do today, the circles combined several functions. Or perhaps the people who built the circles were simply out to impress, like modern day dictators underlining their power by ordering everything on a grand scale.
Whatever the genesis of their construction, I'm certain the people who built these monuments chose to use stone because they wanted the circles to endure. Maybe that's central to what makes this place sacred. It was built long before we were here and, barring disaster, will be here long after we are gone. The Rings o' Brodgar and Stennis stand surrounded by hills, land, water and sky. Each time I visit them I glimpse the hands of our ancestors, the certainty of my own mortality and the circle of life and death.
¹ George Mackay Brown, Portrait of Orkney (Hogarth Press,1981)
Louise Welsh (U.K.) is the bestselling author of The Cutting Room — which was published in 19 languages and won awards including the CWA John Creasy Memorial Dagger — Tamburlaine Must Die, and The Bullet Trick. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and is currently working on a new novel, The Suicide Artist.
This literary component of the exhibition of architecture and sacred space is presented in partnership by International Readings at Harbourfront and Visual Arts: part of an ongoing interdisciplinary focus at Harbourfront Centre.
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