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Willingness
to reconsider is
most impressive aspect of New History
The
New History of Orkney, by William P. L. Thomson.
 In
the mid-1980s Willie Thomson wrote a big History of Orkney.
A decade
and a half later he has rewritten it: a massive chore, which might have
daunted or defeated a younger scholar.
The New History of Orkney isn’t a mere revision. Thomson has disposed of large parts of his
original, and inserted new and sparkling material, reflecting the research
of the 1990s.
No
part of the original is untouched. In the first quarter of the new work,
which deals with the period up to the building of St Magnus Cathedral
– the peak of achievement of Orkney’s medieval civilisation
– there are two major developments. The discussion of the relationship
between the Pictish population of the islands and their Scandinavian successors
is far sharper. Thomson surveys the arguments about place-names, ecclesiastical
sites and documents, and argues that in the ninth century “a more
complete break with the Pictish past” took place “than most
archaeologists have hitherto been prepared to envisage”. From the
1960s onwards (the period of Flower Power), archaeologists contended that
there had been “amiable integration” between the two societies.
They based their view on a few sherds of pottery found in the incomers’
houses. Nowadays only a few sentimentalists believe this story.
The
other change in Thomson’s account, this time of emphasis, is about
the sagas. He now devotes more attention to the literary content of these
late-medieval works, and casts doubt on their alleged historicity. The
lesson of his chapter on “Orkneyinga saga and the early jarls”,
for instance, is that we can’t trust much at all of its gory narrative.
I am a little wary about Thomson’s approach here. He has to use sagas,
especially Orkneyinga Saga, for his account of the islands in the
high middle ages. He seems to think that it is possible to differentiate
the trustworthy from the untrustworthy passages, from some quality of
the literature. For instance, he believes that Rognvald Brusason died
in Papa Stronsay at Christmas 1046: he takes the saga account for granted.
But he doesn’t believe that Rognvald, in a heroic attempt to escape,
vaulted over his murderers. I don’t think this is logical. If one
is going to be sceptical about sagas, one must be sceptical about everything.
The
second quarter of the book is mainly about politics, from the travails
of Harald Maddadson, who ruled in Orkney for a staggering 70 years in
the 12th century, until the end of the Sinclair earldom in 1468. There
is no more complicated era in the history of Orkney. Thomson builds on
the pioneer work of Barbara Crawford, and Steinar Imsen’s more recent
enquiries. It is worth contrasting this part of the book with Storer Clouston’s
History of 1932. Clouston found few sources from the late middle ages,
and he regarded what he knew of them with distaste (he much preferred
Orkney’s 12th century renaissance). There are indeed gaps and obscurities
in the documents, but Thomson marshals and expounds them with ease. Sometimes
he revises views that he expressed in the older book: the new account
of Earl Henry I, for instance, is more robust and sceptical than its predecessor.
It is time that the fantasists left that rather dull nobleman in peace!
Thomson
completes this section with a chapter on “Taxing and renting land
in Norse Orkney”. It exemplifies his careful and thoughtful work.
Historians from Captain Thomas to Robert Dodgshon have cudgelled their
brains about the subjects dealt with here: land divisions and methods
of taxation. It is not too much to say that Thomson has quietly solved
most of the problems. Thomas & Co. imagined that the divisions and
the taxation were far more ancient than they could have been, and that
they were devised and used by Pictish or Viking potentates. Thomson proposes
a rational chronology, and shows how the divisions and the exploitation
worked in practice.
Part
three deals with the period from 1468 to 1707. Again the politics come
first, and the sources are now more vivid. There are good portraits of
some eminent members of the Sinclair family: the cultured Henry Lord Sinclair,
in dispute with the aged bishop Andrew Pictor; the “half-mad”
William Sinclair, “The Waster”; James Sinclair of Brecks, whom
“the evil spirit led . . . by the oxter into the sea and drowned”.
There is a good account of Orkney’s Reformation, which – like
Reformations elsewhere – had a lot to do with land and its ownership.
And of course Robert Stewart and Patrick Stewart play star parts. Thomson’s
account of their careers, based on Peter Anderson’s scrupulous research,
is judicious. He shows how Earl Patrick brought down the complex edifice
of medieval Orkney round his ears: not because of any master-plan on his
part, as older historians imagined, but through incompetence.
I am
less impressed by the chapter on the 17th century. By contrast with the
rich sections on the Stewart earls it is thin. There is huge scope for
research on Orkney during that period: the sources, most of them unpublished,
are prodigious. By contrast, Thomson’s account of “Old-style
farming” is path-breaking. More nonsense has been written about runrig
agriculture than almost anything else in the history of Scotland. Thomson
shows how it worked on the ground, partly by discussing the interesting
history of Herston, a small township in South Ronaldsay.
The
final quarter of the book is about social rather than political history.
Thomson’s predecessors didn’t think that the 18th, 19th and
20th centuries were “history” at all, because they imagined
that history is politics. Again, Thomson is a pioneer here, whether discussing
“The false dawn of agricultural improvement”, the rise of linen
and kelp, or the participation of Orcadians in the work of the Hudson’s
Bay Company. He is particularly good on the social structure of the agrarian
community in the Victorian age, and the rise of “polite” society
in Kirkwall and Stromness.
Most
original of all is his chapter on “Farming in the 20th century”.
No-one has written about the break-up of the Orkney estate system after
the Great War, and the rise of owner-occupation. By 1930 a massive two-thirds
of Orkney land was owned by owner-occupiers. Thomson also deals in detail
with the technicalities of Orkney agriculture: dairying, egg production,
tractors. Your reviewer, who for a long time imagined that “Charlie
Steer” was a prosperous Orcadian stock-owner, found these pages very
instructive.
If
a book is worth reading it is worth arguing about. I have three critical
points to make about The New History of Orkney. First, there is
a dearth of comparisons with societies outside Orkney. So much has been
written about the economic, social and political structures of medieval
Scandinavia, for instance, that we might have expected an account of how
Orkney resembled and differed from the motherland. There are no such comparisons.
Similarly, there is no comparative material about runrig in Scotland.
When Thomson does make comparisons they are original and interesting:
for instance, when he compares the services and renders made by an Orkney
tenant in 1834 with those made by a peasant Bodo, who lived near Paris
in the ninth century.
Secondly,
there is still too much “History from above” in the New History.
There’s an impression that only earls, lairds and merchants, and
latterly governments, made things happen in Orkney. We don’t get
the impression that Orcadians have ever had political ideas, for instance,
and there’s next-to-nothing about the gradual extension of the franchise.
It is very striking that no member of parliament from the early 19th century
until Jo Grimond makes an appearance: no Fred Dundas, no Lyell, no Wason,
no Neven-Spence. Grimond himself only gets half a sentence. And one might
get the impression from the New History that no Orcadian has ever been
a member of a trade union. There is plenty of information about co-operation
in agriculture, but none about industrial co-operation.
Finally,
and most important in my opinion, there is a certain pessimism about modern
times. There’s a suggestion that when Orcadians were engrossed in
local affairs – pre-eminently in the 12th century, but right up to
the 17th – things went well. When the outside world impinges, however,
things begin to go wrong. There’s gloom about “cultural loss”,
and the etiolation of “cultural identity”. I detect the influence
of George Mackay Brown on Thomson’s thinking here, and I think it’s
inappropriate.
But
it isn’t all-pervading. In the old book, Thomson lamented that the
fall of Earl Patrick had precluded Orkney from having “the home-rule
status which is found in other islands with a Norse past such as the Isle
of Man and Faroe”. This time he concedes that “very small sub-nations
sometimes have difficulty in maintaining forward-looking institutions”,
and that “there might be drawbacks as well as benefits” if Orkney
had become an “offshore tax-haven”.
It
is that willingness to reconsider that impresses me most about The
New History of Orkney. Let’s face it: no community in Scotland
has a History as complex and thoughtful as this. It is a massive piece
of scholarship – 530 pages - illustrated throughout by beautiful
and unusual images. The publisher has managed to take it out at an incomprehensibly
low price. Buy!
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