THE STANDING STONES OF STENNESS von summonedbyfells

These stones are among the oldest in the country and have stood here for over 5,000 years, a fact confirmed by carbon-dating. Forty years ago (a long time for me but no carbon-dating required), I was on one of my regular selling trips to these islands I was taken out one evening and we drove past Stenness. I did a double-take, never having seen anything like this before. Their enormous size quite staggered me. I knew that I would come back one day but somehow its taken almost a lifetime to return. Still, here I am and today I have the place almost to myself and the sun shines while Orkney's apple-sweet breezes tease-up the white horses on the Loch of Harray. This is a henge site though there is little trace of the dyke and ditch system that once surrounded the stones. Originally there were twelve stones in the circle but the attrition of time has reduced their numbers severely, helped in no small extent by a local tenant who started to break-up and destroy the stones early in the nineteenth century. Mercifully he was stopped but not before great damage was done. Some reconstruction followed but its hard to know how closely what we see today resembles the original circle. Stenness stands at the centre of Orkney's wonderful neolithic estate, a concentration of well-preserved sites in such close proximity to each other that it seems miraculous, no wonder they enjoy World Heritage status. Within sight stands the Ring of Brodgar, Maeshowe and almost immediately adjacent to Stenness the remains of Barnhouse Village, only uncovered in 1984. Its doubtful if what happened here around 3,000 BC will ever be known for sure but some form of ceremonial significance for those early Orcadians seems likely. Their lives were undoubtedly short, brutal and probably nasty, nevertheless their monuments are among us yet, examples of the human creative spirit, the struggle for identity and meaning and early markers for the ascent of man . Primitive they are, but they are fully magnificent. I get an eerie feeling here and it makes you think.