Fernlea film project

We had a lot of fun chatting about the lesser known things about Whalsay’s history and decided that using the film to teach people these things would be a very worthwhile goal. Everyone agreed that it would be a great shame if these stories were lost or not passed on.

One of the most interesting stories that we discussed was the ’12 houses of brough’. The houses all had amusing names that were based on things like the character of the occupant or a quirk of its construction. At one time everyone knew the names of the houses but only a few on the island know them all now. Ruby can recite them all and was brought up in ‘windy grind’.

Younger generations don’t have the same connection to the landscape that older generations had. Today we talked about bits of the landscape that at one time had a lot more meaning and purpose. Jean had similar stories from Orkney and Richard decided to do some filming.