Soul Friends & High Seats

Two years ago I set out a plan to write about the folklore of witchcraft in Orkney and its intersection with the lives of Orcadian women accused of witchcraft. During the witch hunts in Scotland, the people of Orkney were slow to demonise witchcraft and the hunts never reached a full blown panic. There are reasons for this that I might unpack further in another post, but the story of the accused is often eclipsed by legend. Scota Bess on Stronsay is an example of a larger-than-life persona—a mixture of storm witch with elements of a creation goddess. The lived reality of an actual woman named Scota Bess, and indeed any historical record of her life, is seemingly lost to the shadow of her tale.

Read the first instalment of my field notes for paid subscribers here. My search for seal pups on Stronsay, Folkloric links between selkies & witches, my initial search for the accused witch Scota Bess, and more… If you are not a paid subscriber, you can become one now and read both posts!

I lay in bed in a room in the modest hotel on Stronsay. One window overlooks the ferry terminal, now in darkness. The view from the east facing window is shrouded in a dirty, salt-spattered fog. The wind picks up; the night is dark and starless. There’s a vague smell of new paint in the dark alcove where the bed sits in this too-big room right over the bar.

This building has seen many travellers before me. In 1889 a fierce gale ran the steamer Dewdrop into a skerry near Linga Holm. Some of the men on board built a raft out of the ship’s wheelhouse, but not all of them made it to shore. Those that survived watched their shipmates slip into the wild sea. The survivors slept here in the hotel until they could find passage home. There is something unsettled about the place, despite its modern renovations in ‘maritime’ grey tones; brine-wracked dreams are part of the foundations.

I imagine my wolf-witch-dreaming is writing and the shared dreamers are readers.