Lost Viking waterway discovered on Orkney
● Boats and grain could have been transported along shallow route
A lost Viking waterway that once connected a large part of theorkneymainlandtoapowerful seat of Norse rulers has been discovered.
The route was discovered after a series of Old Norse place names in the centre of the mainland, which were connected to boats and water despite being many miles from the sea, attracted interest from researchers.
Now it is believed that Vikings were using a route from Harray in the central mainland through the Loch of Banks to a portage at Twatt before reaching the Loch of Boardhouse and ultimately the coastal powerbases of the Norse earls at the Brough of Birsay, a tidal island off the very tip of the north west coast.
The waterway network would have provided a shallow route through which the Vikings were able to haul both their boats and heavy goods, such as grain.
Taxes and rents may have been gathered from the farms around Harray and transported on the waterway to Birsay with the route also offering a way to Scapa Flow and the North Atlantic.
The results, to be published in the Journal of Wetland Archaeology, are a collaboration between the Universities of the Highlands and Islands,
St Andrews and Wales. Dr Alexandra Sanmark of the Institute for Northern Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands said: “I am delighted with the outcome, as multiple pieces of written and landscape evidence suggested the existence of the waterway.
“The results will be used in our continued study of how the Norse used and organised the landscape of Orkney.”
A combination of the place names, modern scientific methods, remote sensing geophysical mapping and sediment samples was used to reveal that the area was connected through a series of ancient waterways or canals.
Professor Barbara Crawford of the School of History at the University of St Andrews and Honorary Professor, Institute for Northern Studies, University of Highlands and Islands, said: “The interdisciplinary investigation of this study provides an example of what can be achieved when scholars of different disciplines work together in pursuing a common research theme.”
A similar Viking-era waterway was discovered at Rubh an Dunain in Skye in recent years.
The place names that sparked the research included Greenay, which means shallow waters in Norse and Knarston, which is derived from the words for both a transport vessel and a farm or to give the name of a place where the vessels were moored.