Every Day Is Special: Orkney Island

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September 29 - Michaelmas Day in the Orkney Islands

Posted on September 29, 2019

Today is a holiday that is called, in some places in the world, St. Michael's Feast or St. Michael's Day. In the United Kingdom / British Isles, it's Michael's Mass, or Michaelmas.

(Notice the likeness of this name to Christ's Mass, better known as Christmas.)

The British Isles includes not just Ireland and the main British island that can be divvied up into England, Scotland, and Wales; it also includes the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Islands, Anglesey, and the Channel Islands. Oh! And the one Scottish island I've been to, Arran! All together, there are more than 6,000 British Isles!

(Of course, many of them are small.)

I have already written about Michaelmas Day on the Isle of Skye, which is one of the Inner Hebrides islands; today I'm going to explore a more northern group of islands, the Orkneys.

Eating goose was so popular on Michaelmas Day - after Queen Elizabeth I proclaimed she would eat goose on that holiday, to celebrate England's defeat of the Spanish Armada - that some people call it Goose Day! Another favorite Michaelmas treat was a special scone-like cake called St. Michael's Bannock.

Basically, Michaelmas is a recognition of the turn of the seasons. Harvest is done or nearly done. Blackberries have all been picked. Most flowers are gone - just the late-blooming Michaelmas Daisy still brightens slopes. A chill is setting in - especially in the northernmost parts of Britain, including the Orkneys. The days are getting shorter and shorter - again, the difference is way more noticeable farther north, in the Orkneys, than it is in, say, London. Also, the clearer-skies part of the year will be soon ending, and mostly cloudy skies are about to set in.

By the way, there is so much wind in the Orkneys, plus such wild wind-driven waves, that 103% of electric power needed by the population is from wind- and wave-power!

Check out the Orkneys during various seasons:

These islands are pretty great all year!

Also on this date:

Mutation Day

Birthday of the “Singing Cowboy,” Gene Autry

Anniversary of the launch of Canada's first satellite

Inventors' Day in Argentina

ESP researcher Joseph Banks Rhine's birthday

Michaelmas Day on the Isle of Skye

Boquerón Battle Day in Paraguay

Rosh Hashanah

Plan ahead:

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And here are my Pinterest boards for:

February 20, 2011

Norwegian Islands Pawned – 1472

Have you ever heard of a pawn shop? That's a place where a person can borrow money, leaving something valuable as collateral. When the person repays the loan, he or she gets that valuable item back--but, after an established period of time, if the person does not pay back the loan, the pawnbroker owns the item and can sell it for a profit.

Now, how does someone drag something as large as an inhabited island into a pawn shop?

Of course, that's ridiculous! However, King Christian I of Denmark and Norway was a bit broke when his daughter married King James III of Scotland. The practice in those days was for parents of a bride to pay a dowry to the groom, and Margaret's dowry was set at 60,000 florins of the Rhine--which was a lot of money. Christian I didn't have that much cash laying about—so he paid 2,000 florins and then pledged ownership of Orkney and Shetland Islands to Scotland until he could pay off the remainder.

It seems that the king didn't check with the inhabitants of the island; nor did he get the advice of the Council of the Realm—he just pawned the islands. He was smart enough to include a clause in the contract that he or future kings of Norway could redeem the islands for a fixed sum of 210 kg of gold or 2,310 kg of silver. (However, during the 1800s and 1900s, Norwegian leaders made several attempts to redeem the debt and reclaim the islands—and Scotland refused.)