KIRKWALL
"Voir Kirkwall, et mourir," a French naval officer remarked to me when visiting Scapa Flow. Without inquiring too closely as to whether there might not have been some ironical "double-entendre" in his apparent admiration of the capital of the Orkneys, it was certainly the Orcadian "Mecca" of the Grand Fleet, and never in its history has it known such activity and prosperity as during the five years of war. A sleepy little town of four or five thousand inhabitants, it was suddenly called upon to assist in supplying the needs of a floating population of close on 100,000 men, and its narrow main (and only) street, "where two wheelbarrows tremble when they meet," bustled with unwonted activity—messmen from the ships loading provisions, naval men and officers engaged in an afternoon's shopping and sightseeing, with an occasional motor lorry or car trying to thread its way amongst the traffic.
Kirkwall, as will be seen from the map, is approached from the Flow by way of Scapa Pier, whence it is a walk or drive of about a mile and a half to the town.
The little hamlet of Scapa, incidentally, from which the Flow takes its name, assumed importance during the war as a seaplane station, and is the scene of an old custom long forgotten, which is related rather amusingly in a volume on Orkney by a Rev. John Brand, dated 1701. He writes: "In Scapha about a mile from Kirkwal to South-West, it is said there was kept a large and ancient Cup, which they say belonged to St. Magnus, King of Norway, who first instructed them in the principles of the Christian religion and founded the Church of Kirkwal, with which full of some strong drink their Bishops at their first landing were presented; which, if he drank it out, they highly praised him, and made themselves to believe, that they should have many good and fruitful years in his time." He adds rather regretfully: "The Countrey to this Day have the tradition of this, but we did not see the cup; nor could we learn where it was." The fact that the Highland Park Distillery (the most northern distillery in the British Isles) is on the upper Scapa road rather tends to confirm the legend!
Loading Stores at Scapa Pier.
Wideford Hill and the "Peerie Sea."
Conveyances known locally as "machines" (they do not speak of traps or chars-à-bancs in Orkney) are always available to convey one to Kirkwall from the Pier, and anyone who has travelled over that bumpy road in one of these vehicles will not forget the experience!
Kirkwall Harbour from the Cathedral Tower.
Arrived in Kirkwall and suitably refreshed (let me recommend the Ayre Hotel of many pleasant memories), the most striking building which meets the eye, and which dominates the town, is the Cathedral of St. Magnus. Kirkwall, as its name signifies (Kirkevaag or Kirk Voe), is the bay of the church, although the original church from which the town takes its name was not that of St. Magnus. Founded before the middle of the twelfth century, it is a very fine example of Gothic architecture, which, fortunately, owing to its remoteness, escaped the zeal of the Reformers, and remains to-day a stately witness of the Norse warriors of old, who played such a prominent and adventurous part in the history of Orkney. Near by are the Bishop's and Earl's Palaces, both also eloquent relics of the days when feasting and fighting were the main preoccupations of the Norse Jarls, whose exploits are recounted so graphically in the "Orkneyinga Saga."
Albert Street, Kirkwall.
St. Magnus Cathedral from the Earl's Palace.
Kirkwall during the war was an examination base, and hundreds of craft of all nationalities passed through the harbour to be searched for contraband of war. Later, after the Armistice, it became the headquarters of our own and the American Mine Clearance Service, and the advent of four or five thousand American sailors contributed further to the prosperity and enlivenment of the town. Baseball, for example, and the "jazz," had not hitherto penetrated so far north as Orkney, and dancing soon became almost as great an obsession amongst the fair maidens of Kirkwall as it was further south.
To-day Kirkwall is again outwardly the same quiet town it was prior to 1914, but the infusion of new ideas and modes of life, which was inevitable from contact with so many of our own and American people, has produced many changes of mental and social outlook, and in no town will the years 1914-1919 be remembered for their historical significance more than in the capital of the Orkney Islands.
Old Houses in Kirkwall.