By Pat Kane. First published on JULY 13TH, 2019
I’LL take any excuse to write about Skara Brae and its rings of stone. Every time I’ve visited Orkney’s Neolithic wonder, I’ve felt like a more deeply grounded being as a result.
It’s the combination of the everyday and the cosmic that moves me. In the settlements, you see the stone cots, the fireplace, the domestic display shelves: the human hearth, in all its timelessness.
But also from those shelves, you find the strangest-shaped objects – spiky grenades, three-pronged video game controllers, balls studded with meshing gears. What are they? Child’s toys, religious props, art for its own sake?