Kirkwall, Scotland, UK
Kirkwall is the largest town in the Orkney archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland. The town was first mentioned in the Orkneyinga saga in the year 1046, when it was recorded as the residence of Rögnvald Brusason, the Earl of Orkney, who was killed by his uncle Thorfinn the Mighty. In 1486, King James III of Scotland elevated Kirkwall to the status of a royal burgh. Today Kirkwall is the headquarters of the Orkney Islands Council and a transport hub with ferries to many locations. It is the center of the St Magnus International Festival and is also a popular stopping off point for cruise ships. St Magnus Cathedral stands at the heart of the town.
Our excursion begins at 09:20. Out the door on time. The weather app says rain, but it looks beautiful out there. We got on the motors coach and headed to the Italian Chapel. We pass through Kirkwall the largest settlement in the Orkney Islands, and from the motor coach looks a lot like a small village, not the capital town.
If any of you have been Shetland, you will know what the landscape is like. There aren’t any trees. Wind swept hills covered in grasses and low shrubs of heather, divided by rock walls and dotted with sheep and cattle. There apparently haven’t been any trees here for thousands of years. Humans and the weather apparently played a lot into making that the case. It is still quite beautiful, but it feels “lonely or isolated.” Probably because it is isolated.
Orkney is an archipelago north of Scotland and south of the Shetland Islands. There are some seventy islands according to the guide, of which about twenty are inhabited. There are some thirty thousand people spread among the islands. Twenty-three thousand being on the main island, which interestingly is call Mainland.
Orkney was colonized by Norsemen, aka Vikings, and annexed by the Kingdom of Norway in 875. In the 15th century the king of Norway was not a wealthy man. He wanted his daughter, Margaret of Denmark, to marry James III of Scotland. But there was no dowry. So, he borrowed the money and pledged the Orkney Islands as collateral. Unfortunately, he failed to pay the dowry, so the islands became forfeit and in 1472, the Parliament of Scotland absorbed the Earldom of Orkney into the Kingdom of Scotland.
The guide prattled on as we rode along the Scapa Flow.The Scapa Flow is a body of water sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronadlsay and Hoy. Its sheltered waters have played an important role in travel, trade and conflict throughout the centuries. Vikings anchored their longships in Scapa Flow more than a thousand years ago. It was the United Kingdom's chief naval base during the First and Second World wars, but the facility was closed in 1956.
Scapa Flow has a shallow sandy bottom not deeper than 200 ft and most of it is about 100 ft deep; it is one of the great natural harbors and anchorages of the world, with sufficient space to hold a number of navies. The harbour has an area of 125.3 square miles and contains just under 1 billion cubic meters of water.
Just before the armistice was signed at the end of World War I a German admiral ordered the scuttling of the German fleet In Scapa Flow. Today these wrecks and their marine habitats form an internationally acclaimed diving location. On 14 October 1939, under the command of Günther Prien, U-47 penetrated Scapa Flow and sank the First World War-era battleship HMS Royal Oak anchored in Scapa Bay. After firing its first torpedo salvo, the submarine turned to make its escape; but, upon realizing that there was no immediate threat from surface vessels, it returned for another attack. The second torpedo salvo blew a 30-foot hole in the Royal Oak, which flooded and quickly capsized. Of the 1,400-man crew, 833 were lost. Many of whom were young boys in their early teens as the Royal Oak was a training vessel. The wreck is now a protected war grave. John Gunther in December 1939 called the attack "the single most extraordinary feat of the war so far".
Three days after the submarine attack, four Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 1/30 led by group commander Hauptmann Fritz Doench raided Scapa Flow on 17 October in one of the first bombing attacks on Britain during the war. The attack badly damaged an old base ship, the decommissioned battleship HMS Iron Duke, which was then beached at Ore Bay by a tug. One man died and 25 were injured. One of the bombers was shot down by No 1 gun of 226 Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery on Hoy. Three of the crew died, while the radio operator Fritz Ambrosius was badly burned but managed to parachute down.
New blockships were sunk, booms and mines were placed over the main entrances, coast defence and anti-aircraft batteries were installed at crucial points, and Winston Churchill ordered the construction of a series of causeways to block the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow; they were built by Italian prisoners of war held in Orkney. These "Churchill Barriers" now provide road access from Mainland to Burray and South Ronaldsay, but block maritime traffic.
Today our first stop is at the Italian Chapel. The chapel was built by Italian prisoners of war, captured in North Africa during the Second World War, and were brought to Orkney in 1942 to work on the construction of the Churchill Barriers. Two-hundred of the prisoners were based at Camp 60 on the island of Lamb Holm. In 1943, Major Thomas Pyres Buckland, Camp 60's new commandant, and Father Gioacchino Giacobazzi, the camp's Catholic priest, agreed that a place of worship was required.
The chapel was constructed from limited materials by the prisoners in the form of a tin tabernacle, and comprises two Nissen huts, known better as Quonset huts in the US, joined end-to-end. The corrugated interior was then covered with plasterboard and the altar and altar rail were constructed from concrete left over from work on the barriers. Most of the interior decoration was done by Domenico Chiocchetti, a prisoner from Moena in Trentino, northern Italy. Part of the Serra family is from Trentino. Domenico painted the sanctuary end of the chapel and fellow prisoners decorated the entire interior. They created a facade out of concrete, concealing the shape of the hut and making the building look like a church. The light holders were made out of corned beef tins. The baptismal font was made from the inside of a car exhaust covered in a layer of concrete.
When his fellow prisoners were released shortly before the end of the war, Chiocchetti remained on the island to finish decorating the newly consecrated chapel. There isn’t anything of Camp 60 left today except for the Italian Chapel. It is owned by a private party and a major tourist attraction. After visiting it, it is easy to to see why. It is a remarkable piece of work. The faux painting on the inside of chapel makes the walls look like they are made of brick. Very realistic, much like the faux marble painting on the inside of Church of Santi Felice and Baccolo in Sorrento.
After the Italian Chapel we went on to visit St. Margarets Hope. St Margaret's Hope is considered the prettiest village in the Orkney Islands. It is known locally as The Hope or The Hup. It has population of about 550, which makes it Orkney's third largest settlement after Kirkwall and Stromness.
St Margaret's Hope is the main settlement of the island of South Ronaldsay. Situated off Water Sound at the head of a calm bay on the island's northern coast, it is connected to the Orkney Mainland by the A961 road running across the Churchill Barriers.
The village is believed to have been named after either Saint Margaret of Scotland (c.1045-1093), the wife of Malcolm III, or Margaret, Maid of Norway, who died in Orkney and possibly in this location in 1290.
The village has a primary school, a small blacksmith's museum, a few shops and a cafe, a pub and a wine bar. Pentland Ferries run a reliable service from the pier in the bay to Gills Bay on the Scottish mainland.
It is also known for its annual Boys' Ploughing Match, a local tradition where young boys plough the sands at the nearby Sands of Wright, and girls (or boys, though this is now a rarity) wear traditional 'horse' costumes resembling a harness. The event, which incorporates The Festival of the Horse, is known to have been in existence for at least 200 years, and takes place on the third Saturday of August.
While we missed the ploughing match you could see photos of the event in the blacksmith’s museum. The village looks like a nice place to spend a very quiet holiday weekend, but again it has that very lonely feeling. Apparently, I am not a country boy. This much isolation would be too much. Not really interested in the large cities either however. Berbenno is about my speed.
After a short visit to St. Margaret’s Hope we headed back to the ship. There were still several hours left here os we took the cruise shuttle into town. The ship is at the cruise terminal about 2 miles out of town. One thing the guide did say to us was that the two largest economies in Orkney was farming and tourism. They appear to make the most of the tourism aspect. We visited Kirkwall. Stopped for lunch at a small shop and had some very good fish and chips. They even had gluten free fish and chips for Maddie.
We walked through the town looking in the little shops. Picked up some more epsom salts for me. Visited the St. Magnus Cathedral. St. Magnus Cathedral dominates the skyline of Kirkwall. It is the oldest cathedral in Scotland, and the most northerly cathedral in the United Kingdom. It is a fine example of Romanesque architecture and was built for the bishops of Orkney when the islands were ruled by the Norse Earls of Orkney. It is owned not by the church, but by the burgh of Kirkwall as a result of an act of King James III of Scotland following Orkney's annexation by the Scottish Crown in 1468. It has its own dungeon. Although we didn’t get to see it.
At the same time as the original cathedral was being constructed, We also visited the Bishop's Palace which was built nearby for William the Old at te same time as the original cathedral was being constructed. It is basically a large rectangular hall above vaulted storerooms.
King Haakon IV of Norway, overwintering after his defeat at the Battle of Largs, died at the bishop’s palace in December 1263, marking the end of Norse rule over the Outer Hebrides. The King was buried in St Magnus Cathedral until the weather was good enough to return his remains to Bergen.
The palace fell into ruins, then after 1540 was restored by Bishop Robert Reid who added a round tower, the "Moosie Toor". He presided at St Magnus from 1541 to 1558. Opposite the Bishop's Palace, the ruins of the Earl's Palace give a reminder of the cruel reign of the Stewart Earls of Orkney during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
The Earl’s palace was built after Patrick, 2nd Earl of Orkney, decided that the accommodation provided by the Bishop's Palace was inadequate for his needs. Lord Orkney is widely acknowledged to have been one of the most tyrannical noblemen in Scotland's history. He decided to extend the complex by building a new palace on the adjoining land. This was complicated by the fact he did not actually own this property. He quickly acquired it by fabricating charges of theft against the unfortunate owner, trying him and having him executed. Upon his imprisonment at Edinburgh in 1609, his bastard son Robert began a rebellion on his behalf and seized the palace, along with nearby St Magnus's Cathedral and Kirkwall Castle. An army led by the Earl of Caithness laid siege, and the Castle was destroyed. Lord Orkney and his son were later executed for treason.
After the Earl's death, the palace continued to be the residence of the Bishops of Orkney sporadically until 1688, when it became the property of the Crown, and fell into ruin in the 18th century. The palace is currently in the possession of Historic Environment Scotland as a protected scheduled monument.
We then walked back to the visitor’s center and caught the cruise shuttle back to the ship. We started up to Sette Mari for dinner about 17:50, but stopped at the cruise consultant’s office to talk about the second spring 2026 cruise which has been rerouted and not going to go through the Suez Canal.
We rebooked one for the fall of 2026 which is currently still routed to go though the canal. Not really happy with the program of ports. It is an Athens to Doha. No stops in the Mediterranean. The first port is Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt after the Suez transit. Of the twenty-one day cruise, nine are “at sea”. Just not sure about that.
Mary left me at the cruise consultant and went to get in line about 18:05. There was already a long line waiting for the 18:30 opening of the restaurant. It is very strange because we often were the first people at Sette Mari on the world cruise. It often didn’t fill up.
We got in and had a wonderful dinner. Afterwards we went and contributed to the casino for a little while before turning in for the night.
Buonanotte e Ciao, Enrico & Maria
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