We began the first day in a lecture room at the University of the Highlands and Islands’ Orkney College. The team from Orkney Museum had transported a selection of inscriptions for us to examine. These included runic inscriptions on a variety of objects, all catalogued with Signum numbers such as Or 1, Or 10, Or 15, for example, with Or indicating their Orkney findspot. One of the highlights for me was Or 15, also known as Orphir II (see image below). It is a rib bone bearing an inscription that declares “this bone was…”. The object was discovered during excavations at Orphir, a site associated with the Orkneyinga Saga and Earl Paul’s Yule feast of 1136. Perhaps it was carved post-meal, where the rib meat was eaten by a rune-carver who then used the now-clean bone as their writing surface of choice. The inscription’s explicit reference to the object itself makes it particularly compelling to me, given my research interest in the relationship between runic inscriptions’ functions and the objects on which they are carved. Indeed, what could the function of Or 15 be, if it was carved after dinner on food waste, and then deposited with the rest of the scraps? Not all runic inscriptions were designed as monuments to great deeds, as Or 15 clearly shows! In the afternoon, we departed Kirkwall for Breckness and also visited the Bay of Skaill. Snacks from Argo’s Bakery (the best in Kirkwall!) and a little whisky were enjoyed while taking in views across the bay. The day concluded with a Rune Relay held at the St Magnus Centre in Kirkwall, where runologists each presented a favourite inscription to an audience of fellow scholars and members of the public. 

‘Or 15’ (Photo by Jasmin Higgs)

The second day began early with a site visit to Orphir, guided by the knowledgeable Colleen Batey, after which we divided into two groups to explore different locations. One group visited Maeshowe, where special permission allowed us extended time inside the chamber to photograph and study its runic inscriptions, while the other group went to the Ring of Brodgar before the groups swapped. At Maeshowe, I was particularly intrigued by Or Barnes 20 (see below). This inscription begins with twig runes, a cryptographic form of runic writing, before turning to more standard younger futhark runes, and states: “That man who is most rune-skilled west of the sea carved these runes with that axe which Gaukr Trandill’s son owned in the south of the country.” I enjoyed musing over the fact that, though we would never know whether this anonymous person was the best rune-carver, we are still deciphering their twig-runes and reading their inscription. After returning to Kirkwall, the day ended with a community dinner at the Town Hall.

‘Or Barnes 20’ (photo by Jasmin Higgs)

On our final half-day, we reconvened at UHI to review the inscriptions we had studied and to discuss new readings. This was followed by presentations on recent finds from Norway and Sweden, a reintroduction to Runor, an online database of Old Norse runic inscriptions, and the launch of a new collaborative initiative, The Runic Post, which aims to share new runic discoveries with a wider audience. 

During this trip, I was able to view many of the Orkney runic inscriptions and make my own readings, which will contribute to my upcoming research with Judith Jesch. I would like to thank the Scottish Society for Northern Studies for providing me with this fantastic opportunity.

– Barnes, Michael P. (1994), The Runic Inscriptions of Maeshowe, Orkney. Uppsala.
– Barnes, Michael P. and R. I. Page (2006), The Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions of Britain. Uppsala.

• Dr Jasmin Higgs (University of Nottingham)

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Amanda will graduate with an MA in Medieval Literatures and Languages from the University of York in January 2026 and is hoping to pursue a PhD starting fall 2026. Her research interests include Old English and Old Norse literature, Viking Age England, animal studies, and environmental studies.

She is the fifteenth winner of the prize, which is named in memory of Magnus Magnusson KBE, scholar and journalist of the northern world. A call for submissions for the 2026 edition of the prize will open soon.

Many congratulations, Amanda!

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Common Ground in Scottish Archaeology, edited by Kelly Kilpatrick, celebrates the work of Dr Ritchie, esteemed archaeologist, author, and lifelong advocate of Scotland’s premodern history and heritage. As well as reflecting on Anna’s enduring contributions, the book contains a range of novel and interdisciplinary research on elements of premodern Scottish (art) history, archaeology, and onomastics.

The volume is the result of an eponymous conference, which was co-organised by the Scottish Society for Northern Studies (SSNS) and the Pictish Arts Society (PAS) in March  2022. The event sought to re-examine some of the richest veins of research discourse contributed to by Anna Ritchie, whilst exploring new research, themes, and ideas. Several of the essays presented in this volume stem from this event.

Common Ground in Scottish Archaeology is published on 14 November, and is available to order now from bookshops worldwide, or from our own website (at a 10% discounted rate with free shipping, when using code ‘ritchie10‘)

The Society extends its congratulation to the honouree, as well as the editors and contributors for bringing this important work to publication.

Details

Purchase

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Anna’s extensive and enduring contributions to the field of archaeology, particularly on the topic of prehistoric and early medieval Scotland, were celebrated at the Common Ground conference, jointly hosted by the Scottish Society for Northern Studies and the Pictish Arts Society in 2022. Several of the essays presented in this volume stem from this event.

Edited by Kelly Kilpatrick

• Preface
  Kelly Kilpatrick and Sheila Hainey
• Introduction: Anna Ritchie and Scottish Archaeology
  Ian Ralston
• Bibliography of Anna Ritchie
  Ian Ralston

  I. The Kirtomy Hat: A Unique Bronze Age Horse-Hair Hat from Sutherland
    Alison Sheridan, Susanna Harris, and Lilja Husmo

  II. Hidden in Plain Sight: Pictish Settlement in Shetland
    Val E. Turner

  III. Preliminary Results of the Comparative Kingship Project at Aberlemno:
    An Elite Centre of the Fifth to Twelfth Centuries AD
    Gordon Noble and James O’Driscoll

  IV. The Oxford Librarian and the Inscribed Stones from Burghead, Greenloaning, and Kilmadock
    Kelly Kilpatrick

  V. The Abercorn Assemblage: New Insights into the Sculptural Repertoire of a Central British Monastery
    Christina Cowart-Smith

  VI. Commensality in Context: An Onomastic Review of the Socially-Embedded Economies of Scotia Scandinavica
    Alan Macniven

• Notes on Contributors

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The grant is named in honour of Dr Ryan Foster, who passed away unexpectedly in early 2024. As well as a much loved member of the SSNS community and committee, Ryan was a diligent and devoted scholar of Viking Age, whose work was found at the confluence of historical, ecological, and onomastic inquiry.

A generous donation has been made by an anonymous benefactor to support this initiative.

Details of the grant can be found here, with applications for the inaugural grant welcome until 5 Dec 2025.

As a charitable learned organisation, the Society offers a variety of grants and bursaries to students and scholars at any stage in their career. Opportunities include grants for fieldwork, publication, as well as funding for conference organisation and attendance.

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The XX International Island Games are being held in Orkney from Saturday, 12 July through Saturday, 19 July. The competition started in 1985 as part of the Isle of Man’s Year of Sport, and it has been held in Atlantic Rim ‘islands’ (broadly defined) every two years since (with the exception of the COVID-cancelled 2021 Games).  Orkney 2025 is the second time the competition will be hosted in Scotland – the last time was 20 years ago, in Shetland – and it is arguably a unique sporting and social gathering that tells us a great deal about how communities, territories, and polities on the edge have survived and sometimes thrived. But what is the relationships of these places with sport – historical and otherwise?

I sought to organise a conference to discuss this. Of course, there is a difficulty in organising a conference that examines Island Games polities. Membership of the International Island Games Association (IIGA) includes Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles, the Isle of Wight, and Ynys Môn/Anglesey: is it fair to make experts in these places travel to Edinburgh, or Leicester, or even London? (This is before we get to Gozo, Bermuda, the Falkland Islands…) Travel within the Island Games is usually funded by athletes themselves, who typically engage in an elaborate series of fundraisers to be able to do so: is it fair to make to make academics travel similar distances, especially since our systems of getting internal and external funding are less plentiful than they used to be? One year, we might hold an online conference to examine these places; certainly, the logistics are much easier. But this time, I thought it was important to have a small, in-person meeting. Let’s all find our own way to Orkney, I thought, and let’s understand how Orcadians (and other islanders) have to negotiate their relationship with ‘mainlands’.

The conference, entitled ‘Sport, “islands”, people and politics’, was held on Saturday, 28 June, at the St Magnus Centre in Kirkwall. Generous funding for the venue and plenaries’ travel and accommodation was given by two organisations. The Scottish Society for Northern Studies (SSNS), to my knowledge, has never had a conference on sport before. I have been a member since 2021 (when I gave an address at its online conference): the SNSS and its members explore the history of Scotland (and other places) as it relates to the idea of ‘the north’, in particular interrelationships with ‘Nordic-ness’ and ‘Celtic-ness’. Meanwhile, I am assuming that this the furthest-north event (though I could be wrong) that the British Society of Sports History (BSSH) has ever funded. The BSSH is the pre-eminent scholarly organisation for historians of sport, with an increasing remit to work with heritage. Sport scholars are more attentive than most to the idea Scotland and England are not the same thing; here, we sought to figure out how islands were different from each other, but additionally what they had in common.

Our three plenary speakers certainly worked towards this end. The only Orkney-based academic at our conference, Professor Donna Heddle (University of the Highlands and Islands, Institute for Northern Studies) gave a brilliant opening address which placed the Island Games in a context most SSNS members would be very familiar with: a long view of Scandinavian ideas of ‘leikr’, or play, and how modern sport in islands with Nordic histories such as Orkney, Shetland, and the Isle of Man inherit much older concepts discussed in the likes of the Orkneyinga Saga. Dr Paul Wheeler (retired, University of Chichester), a native of the Isle of Wight, and current BSSH Treasurer (and a well-known figure at sport history conferences), went down a very different road when discussing the Isle of Wight’s relationship with golf – not just a tale of how the island moulded its economy to cater to tourism, but about the place’s and people’s (and golfers’) relationships with the wider world. Dr Matthew Benwell (University of Newcastle), research performed with now-MP (and fellow geography academic) Dr Alasdair Pinkerton concluded on a more contemporary note, discussing the 2019 Island Games in Gibraltar, which coincided with the British territory’s detainment of Grace 1, an oil tanker allegedly working in service of Iran. But Gibraltar, not an island but effectively “islanded” during Spain’s Francoist regime (whereby the dictatorship sealed Gibraltar’s only crossing frontier), for its 2019 iteration essentially grappled with the limitations (and metaphorical symbolism!) of the land, including rock that refused to be easily dynamited to make way for sporting facilities.

Connections with these addresses arrived in the other papers. Stuart Gibbs (Manchester Metropolitan Uni PhD student, and another staunch BSSH regular and current media/website manager) highlighted some episodes of women’s football in the Isle of Man, Orkney and Shetland. Women’s football in the Isle of Man existed largely in proximity to the holiday destination’s status as a place of entertainment, whilst women’s football in Orkney and Shetland was a fixture around gala days and agricultural shows. (Gibbs additionally discussed the discontinued iteration of the women’s Kirkwall Ba’.) My own paper examined the sole non-British Island Games territory discussed on the day. Åland is an autonomous region of Finland whose residents are Swedish speakers: controversies initially arose about the ability of Åland’s state gambling authority, PAF, to fund Island Games participation, but the tournament has proven a means of allowing the province to gain access to political power in regional sport. One of my main duties on the day, however, was reading Kara Hanlon’s paper. Hanlon, an MSc Sport Policy, Management, and international Development graduate from the University of Edinburgh, wrote the most contemporary paper of the day: an examination of Orkney Island Council’s pre-Island Games legacy planning. It was a reminder that, for all that the Island Games presents a unique sporting experience, it too is tied to macro- and micro-politics.

As a result of the conference, we are hoping to put together a special issue of Sport in History. Ultimately, however, the real success will come when we finally begin to understand sport in these islands as less of a novelty, and more as part of the island way of life.

• Dr Matthew L McDowell (University of Edinburgh)
  Former BSSH Chair

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What can we learn from the margins, the peripheries, the ‘between’ places? We attempted to answer this question at our first Medieval and Early Modern Conference, held at the University of Aberdeen. This theme was chosen as Aberdeen itself can feel on the fringes of research, and the conference committee wanted to further explore and challenge this perception. This conference marks the beginning of what we hope will be a longer tradition here in Aberdeen. It was especially well attended considering that this was its first year running, and we had over forty people attending throughout the two days, both in-person and online. We had postgraduate and early career researchers from around the world presenting, with topics ranging from Old Norse eco-criticisms, marginal bodies on the stage and texts, early modern military marginalities, and more. Our keynote speaker, Dr Charlotta Hillerdal, presented on Scotland’s own marginal Viking-Age history.

With the support of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies, we were able to ensure that we could host a free conference, allowing our postgraduate and early career delegates to attend without further costs to themselves. This allowed for enlightening in-person discussion and networking across the thematic and field divisions. Without this grant, this conference would not have been the success that it was, and we are very thankful. We hope that this will be the beginning of a new tradition, but for now, we gained greater understandings of how to read marginality in the medieval and early modern north, and made connections between our own peripheral fields.

• Erin Benton (University of Aberdeen), June 2025

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It was a privilege to delve into the RESP archives, which aim to “make widely available primary source material that illustrates everyday life and society in Scotland, past and present.” The RESP works with communities across Scotland to collect material relating to local life, endeavouring to represent people from all parts of society in their born-digital archive. This is achieved by the European Ethnological Research Centre, who support volunteers with training to conduct interviews with members of the community. Volunteer fieldworkers sit down with an individual and ask them to share stories and memories from their life. The recordings of these interviews are publicly available and free to download on the RESP website, with many accompanied by transcription and photographs too.

Caption: Photograph ofLogan Paterson using a traditional horse-drawn plough in a field. 1970s, Dumfries and Galloway. Used with permission from David Paterson.

Showcasing audio recordings, images and videos from the RESP archive, the ‘Animal Encounters’ exhibition highlights how connections between humans and animals have shifted in Scottish society over the past 50 years, reflecting on the development of wider cultural and environmental concerns. By selecting the accessible and interesting subject of ‘animals,’ the exhibition provides a window into the RESP archives and encourages audiences to consider how ethnography, oral-history and born-digital archives might bear witness to the usually voiceless groups in our society, such as animals.

The exhibition provides both a timely and evergreen resource for educators, researchers, students and anyone interested in local and social history; encouraging discussion about the changing relationship between Scotland’s people and the natural environment.

The aims of the work carried out by RESP and the exhibition in particular, are innovative examples of how research into Scotland’s past and it’s people remains a relevant topic that can provide insight into our understanding of how history is made, recorded, interpreted, and accessed today.

Caption: Quote from Logan Paterson, interviewed by Edward (Ted) Cowan 25 April 2013, New Galloway.
Reference: EERC/DG/DG29/1. Illustrated by Rebekah Day-Wood 2024.

A Shared Past

Past president and long time member of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies, the late Prof. Ted Cowan contributed hundreds of hours worth of recordings to the RESP project, with portions of the conversations he captured featured throughout the online exhibition. Noted in the SSNS obituary for possessing an esteemed ‘oratorial presence,’ Ted’s voice does not take centre stage in the RESP recordings but rather provides guidance to the interview subject, encouraging them to describe the memories and stories of their lives – demonstrating Ted’s ability to observe and reveal parts of Scottish history whose access is unintentionally restricted, only accessible when coaxed out of one’s memory.

Fellow of the SSNS Dr Margeret Mackay has also contributed to the development of the RESP, writing in her 2013 publication A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology Volume 1: “Evidence from non-written sources, from the material culture and from oral testimony, local and family history, contributes in unique ways to an understanding of the past and the present.”

The involvement and sentiment of these celebrated members of the SSNS community is testament to the importance of supporting ethnographic enquiry into the history of Scotland and its people. Being given the opportunity to attend the Harley Prize in person allowed me to promote the value and relevance of Scotland’s archives and social history to a national and highly-engaged audience. I am incredibly grateful to both RESP and the SSNS for providing support to enable this attendance.

• Rebekah Day-Wood, 16 May 2025

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