Maeshowe

Gavin Francis braves the gales of December to visit Maeshowe at midwinter, when the famous neolithic mound in the Orkneys lets in the last light of the year:

To enter I had to crawl and fumble my way through a tunnel of rock. After about 10 metres of narrow darkness an inner chamber unfolded in a sudden surprise of space. I stretched upright and looked around. The darkness was softened by halogen lamps, bolted to the sandstone slabs. Where they shone algae had grown in the pallid light, nourished by condensation from the breaths of tourists like me, come to stand in this ancient space. The shriek of the Orkney gale was silenced by the immensity of the walls. Seen from the outside, Maeshowe is just a grassy mound among green fields, where sheep graze and gulls wheel. But inside the air was still, heavy with age and pregnant with a meaning that felt just out of reach. Three dark cells led off the main chamber, like portals to another time. The walls had been scrawled with strange symbols, runic writing, and each stone was shaped and placed with precision. The Historic Scotland guide switched off the lights and gradually our patience was rewarded; golden light poured slowly along the floor of the chamber, viscous as honey. We don’t know what language those neolithic builders spoke, but each midwinter the walls must have echoed with mutterings of fear, sighs of relief.

The guide’s voice began to conjure other shadows from the past. The neolithic people crept away as she switched on her torch and began to tell us about the runic writing on the walls, now known to have been written by Norse inhabitants of Orkney some time in the 12th century. The tension dissolved and laughter broke out as she translated:

“Ingibjorg the fair widow; many a woman has had to lower herself to come in here, despite her airs and graces.”

“I bedded Thorni. By Helgi.”

And then some boasting about how well-travelled these Norsemen were:

“These runes were carved by the greatest runester in the Western Ocean.”

And close to a rude carving of a crusader’s cross, “Jerusalem-farers broke into this mound.”

I was not thinking about the winter solstice any more, but remembering teenage scrawls on school desks, trees and toilet cubicles. I instinctively liked these Vikings; they felt so much more free and recognisable than the neolithic people with their immoveable cult of death and stone. Moving on, the guide tried to interest us in Victorian archaeologists (they built a roof for the chamber which is already crumbling), but somehow the spell was broken and we all filed back into the tunnel.