Festival aims to rekindle storytelling tradition

A two-day storytelling festival takes place in Orkney this weekend promising to be an autumn treat for all who love the spoken and written word.

Tall Tales for Short Days will bring together some of the finest storytellers around who keep the ancient tradition alive.

“In my life I remember a time when there were no televisions in the islands and folk would invite friends and relatives around to their homes for evenings we called In Aboot da Night,” says Lawrence Tulloch, a master storyteller from Shetland who has travelling to Orkney to spin a tale or two at the festival.

“The conversation would start in general terms – work on the croft, how the fishing was going – but soon the stories would start. Sometimes there’d be a very special type of storyteller telling a very special kind of story and it would be like listening to some scintillating music as you felt the hairs prickling on the back of your neck.”

Lawrence’s first storytelling arena during Tall Tales and Short Days is the Stillroom at the Stromness Hotel. With lights dimmed, he’ll sit by the flickering fire as he takes his audience away from their everyday lives into the world of the selkie folk.

With him will be leading practitioners of the storytelling art from Orkney, among them Tom Muir and Marita Luck whose contribution to the evening will be called Seduction and Fatal Affairs.

Tall Tales for Short Days is a celebration of the spoken and written word in Orkney. There will be storytelling sessions at local primary schools and the Orkney Library and Marita will be running a storytelling workshop.

There will also be a rare opportunity to explore Orkney’s literary heritage in the company of Simon Hall, an author and leading expert on Orcadian literature.

Simon will lead a tour beginning in Stromness at the home of writer and poet George Mackay Brown. Literary landmarks linked to the works of Edwin Muir, Robert Rendall, Gregor Lamb and the 13th century Orkneyinga Saga will be visited en route. The tour will finish at the Merkister Hotel, the former home of Eric Linklater.

The festival ends at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness where Andrew Greig and five other Orkney-based writers and poets will read favourite Orcadian pieces as well as from their own work during an evening of words and music.

Also during the festival there will be a promotional reading corner and display of Orkney books in The Orcadian Bookshop.

Full details of the two day festival, which starts on Friday, October 27 are available from Orkney Tourist Board, Broad Street, Kirkwall. Contact Sheila Faichney on 872856, but it should be noted that there are very few seats left for any of the evening events.