I was born and grew up in the town of Kirkwall in Orkney. The islands gave me my landscape of the mind. I lived away from Orkney for many years but it was there when I shut my eyes at night, the undulating lines, the patchwork of fields changing with the seasons and the agricultural year, the drama of the sea and sky as the weather shifted from clear and calm to stormy.
Every Sunday when I was young, we walked as a family to my grandparents’ farm where my mother grew up, just outside the town. (Kirkwall has since grown and swallowed it and it’s not a farm anymore.) From the field beside the house, on a fine day, we could look over to Shapinsay and even see Stronsay where my dad came from. Being able to spend time in the space and freedom of the countryside was so good when we were bairns. It was there that the soundtrack and smells of my childhood were laid down: the rippling summer song of the whaap (curlew), the smells of new mown hay, curly doddies (clover) and pineapple weed, the petal-free daisy plant that grows in tracks and yards and smells like pineapple when you crush it. As a bairn I didn’t know where these sounds and smells came from, only that they were in the air I breathed.
One summer, we went on holiday to Stronsay and played every day on the wide sandy shore at Rothiesholm (pronounced Rousam), swimming in the sea and collecting the beautiful delicate pink tellin shells that look like enamel butterflies. For a long time I didn’t feel I could write about Orkney. I was too immersed in it and it was entangled with my family and growing up and all the inevitable complications. It is idyllic, yes, but sad and terrible things also happen to people here and everyone experiences loss at some point. My first novel was set in Glasgow and Florence. The one I’m writing now is based in Orkney, with excursions to Norway and Glasgow. I hope it will capture some of Orkney’s magic, as well as some more sombre things that islanders can face.
I first came to Orkney 11 years ago and I was immediately hooked. I was back 3 months after my first visit and came back regularly until finally moving here this year. There’s something about the wild nature of the place, and the violent history of the Norse, that just captured my imagination as a crime writer.
These islands are beautiful, they pull you in, but they can be dangerous when the weather decides to show its teeth. Then there’s the fact that things appear to be coming out of the ground here all the time! The story of how Skara Brae was discovered after being uncovered by a winter storm inspired the story in Dark Island, and the opening line “These islands are terrible at keeping their secrets. Nothing in Orkney stays buried forever.” So it’s perhaps no surprise that a few crime writers have chosen Orkney as their setting, even though the folk here are so lovely!
Is there a specific place in Orkney that is special to you?
It’s so hard to pick! Maeshowe is a place that has always blown my mind – the way the sunset illuminates the tomb on the shortest day, and the runes carved in the walls by Vikings who are spoken about in the Orkneyinga Saga. It’s just incredible. But I think it’s probably Bay of Skaill for me. That’s where my first book – Dark Island – starts, and there’s something so special about that place. The bay, Skara Brae, the wild North Atlantic rolling in. No matter how many times I see it, and no matter the weather or the time of year, it never fails to take my breath away. And not just because of the wind coming off the sea!
What sounds, smells, or sights from Orkney instantly bring you back into your story world?
It’s amazing how much just being in Orkney puts me straight into my story world, and now I live here it means I’m having ideas all the time. The crashing of the waves, the cries of the seabirds, being buffeted by the wind, and simply watching the shifting light and changing weather really gets me thinking of scenes I want to write. And of course the smell and taste of a Smoke Stack from Leigh’s in Finstown always gets me straight back into the world of my books! I can’t eat there now without imagining Freya and Fergus chatting on the benches by the sea.
I first visited Orkney before I was a published writer. I was on holiday with my wife in 2004 and found the place absolutely magical. I loved the sense of history being evident in the present everywhere we went, and I knew I wanted to write about it one day.
This happened much later, when my eighth novel, Crash Land, was published. It’s a thriller set in Orkney in the depths of winter and starts with a plane crash and goes downhill from there! I visited the islands several times for research, and found it even more wonderful every time.
There are so many sites that feel special, but I think I would have to say the Tomb of the Eagles in South Ronaldsay. The dramatic clifftop setting and the incredible sense of history and place give it an otherworldly feeling. I used it extensively in my novel and I love to revisit every time I return to the islands.
The thing that most jolts me back into the world of Orkney is the wind! I have mostly visited in the winter, and the wind can be ferocious. I put in my novel that you had to hold onto your car door when you opened it or it would blow away, and Orcadian author friend Alison Miller said that was spot on! But that aside, it’s always the views of the sea from various cliffs around the coast that really feels the most Orcadian. Yesnaby in particular is a dramatic and wonderful place in this respect.
My first knowledge of Orkney, its people, landscape and history was through George Mackay Brown’s An Orkney Tapestry, gifted to me by my fellow teachers when I moved to the islands from Glasgow in the early seventies.
My husband John and I lived at Orakirk Farm in Orphir with Vina and Geordie Pirie on the shores of Scapa Flow. Geordie was a great storyteller and when the wind was high he would bring us in from the caravan and we’d sit by the fire drinking his homebrew and hearing his tales of Orkney folk. Geordie’s stories became the inspiration for my later writing set in Orkney.
When my forensic crime series starring Dr Rhona MacLeod was established, I took Rhona to Orkney in four of the books, using some of my favourite places, namely Paths of the Dead (featuring the Ring of Brodgar), None but the Dead (set on Sanday), The Killing Tide (featuring Yesnaby) and most recently The Dead and the Dying (with Skaill Bay as the star). All inspired by my continuing fascination with Orkney, its history and its people.
The Orkney books in the Rhona series all feature DI Flett, who lives in our old home of Langwell on the Scorrodale Road. Hence Erling enjoys the view I remember so well, when I used to travel each morning to teach at Kirkwall Grammar school. Cresting the hill at Scorrodale and looking out over Scapa Flow to a majestic Hoy, is truly a view to die for.
I visit Orkney regularly for inspiration and I have my Orcadian newspaper delivered every week to my home in the highlands. As a big fan of Orkney Library and Archive I dedicated The Dead and the Dying to the library and the fine folk who work there.
Best of all, this July 30th sees the launch of the first in an offshoot series starring DI Erling Flett, set solely in Orkney. In The High Island, Hoy is the star.
When I was conceiving The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, a Norse myth about Hel of the Underworld set in modern times, I knew there could be no other place than Orkney to set it. I wanted a place with a Norse feel, still connected to its Viking history but also with a timeless sense of history even further back, to Neolithic times and beyond.
I spent many winter weeks walking and driving around the Orkney Mainland, drinking in the wind and the rain and the powerful seascapes and the deep sense of connection to the islands’ Norse past.
The Neolithic chamber of Maeshowe is the symbolic heart of my book, in which my characters begin to get sense of who they are and what they mean to each other. Light in the darkness is the theme of The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, and what better way of dramatising that than the annual drama of the sun entering Maeshowe at the time of the winter solstice?
I lived in Orkney as a teenager, my parents were doctors here (my Dad Dr. Olaf Cuthbert was the Evie GP) and I left when I was 16. When Dad died I returned to erect a bench in memory of him at Aikerness by the Broch of Gurness (the photo is of me at the bench). While I was here, I met an old boyfriend from schooldays and long story short, we just celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary.
I had already started Dark Water a while before I returned to Orkney and, with my husband’s encouragement, finished it and sent it out to publishers. It was published not long after.
I would say that the parish of Evie and, in particular, Evie Bay (or Aikerness sands, depending on who you talk to) is the place that is really special for me. There’s a tiny bay just below where Dad’s bench is, separate from the main beach, and it’s where I remember spending a lot of time as a child.
Orkney has a strange kind of hold on creatives, I think. Partly, it’s the place’s history and the breathtaking landscape, which feels as if it has endless stories just beneath the surface. I love the folklore, then there’s the sound of the birds, the sea, the wind, and of course the lilt of a true Orcadian accent. Artists come here for the light I think and even though I can’t paint, it is the light more than anything else that I miss when I’m away, whether it’s the dark night sky full of stars or, if you’re lucky, the northern lights or the simmer dim of summer, or just that break in the weather after a storm when you think the clouds will never clear and suddenly the sun is out and calm returns.
