Culture Fund: Orkney College

“Vikings, Pirates and Shipwrecked Princesses”

The project aimed to collect, research and share Orkney family legends about surnames and place names. These aims were all achieved.

The project collected 226 legends in a database (including some variants of the same story). These were drawn from both oral and written sources: Interviews with Orkney people, oral history audio archives at Orkney Archive and School of Scottish Studies, published books (e.g. George Marwick Yesnaby’s Master Storyteller), pamphlets (e.g. produced by heritage groups and projects), magazines (e.g. Sib Folk News) and websites.

In the collection phase, to recruit interviewees I used snowball recruitment, and I also reached out to island Heritage Centres. The oral interviews were supplemented by an online survey where people were asked to write down and submit their stories. The online survey was shared in relevant social media groups such as Orkney Past & Present.

I held 5 Story Sharing events in Westray, Sanday, Kirkwall x2, and South Ronaldsay. Storytellers Marita Lück and Neil Leask contributed to the Story Sharing events in Kirkwall and South Ronaldsay, and at the others I did the storytelling myself. At these events, the storytellers and I told a few selected stories from the material. Then participants were invited to come forward with any stories they wanted to be captured by the project. This worked reasonably well and some stories were collected in this way, but this method alone would not have yielded enough stories so it needed to be supplemented which I did by approaching individuals directly, the online survey, exploring oral history archives and published materials. The Story Sharing events contributed to sharing the collected stories with communities. The two storytellers did a fantastic job. We also recorded Neil and Marita so that their work could be shared online with a wider audience. Several blogs have been published online (on archaeologyorkney.com) to update the public on the progress of the project. Recordings are also on Orkneyology.com. 

Volunteers from Orkney Blide Trust helped in both the collection phase and sharing phase of the project. I started up a group (“Story Detectives”) which met every second week through the project. In May, I trained them in interviewing and recording techniques. We also looked at maps to find names to ask about. From June (when UHI ethical approval came through) I took the volunteers out to meet interviewees and we interviewed them together. Since automatic transcription did not work for Orkney dialect, volunteers helped take notes and transcribe. In phase two, the Blide members helped with the Story Sharing events in South Ronaldsay and Kirkwall where they used semi-professional podcasting equipment borrowed from Kirkwall Library to record the storytellers. Through the winter from October to March the group worked on dramatising three stories they had selected from the works of George Marwick and performing and recording them as radio theatre. The volunteers created scripts, played the parts, operated the recording equipment, edited, and created sound effects. These dramatised stories were uploaded online. The scripts were printed as a booklet.

The ultimate outcome of the project is a book. Publishing is a long process, and it was therefore not possible to see the book or article in print within the one-year duration of the project however it will follow in due course. A first full draft is now ready (55 000 words) but more editing work is needed in collaboration with a suitable publisher. It is hoped that this book will be published fairly soon, with an additional academic journal article to follow.