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The Scottish Collection
Early in Orcadia
Early in Orcadia was first published in 1987, and consists of five stories, set hundreds of years apart in time and dealing with different characters, but connected by their location in a particular corner of Orkney during the period known as the Stone Age. Mitchison links them formally by interpolating passages of fact and explanation between the fictional episodes, and by speculating in her own voice about what happened in prehistory, as far as it can be known from archaeological research, and how it fits in with the world of today.
The slightly awkward jumps from one story to the next indicate that the development of the human race was not a completely smooth and seamless process. There must have been significant moments when a highly important discovery or invention took place. The structure of the book is demonstrating its theme - that there are sudden advances but just one story running from the earliest times to the present day, and it is the story of humankind. From the Introduction.
The slightly awkward jumps from one story to the next indicate that the development of the human race was not a completely smooth and seamless process. There must have been significant moments when a highly important discovery or invention took place. The structure of the book is demonstrating its theme - that there are sudden advances but just one story running from the earliest times to the present day, and it is the story of humankind. From the Introduction.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
2 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Naomi Mitchison
163 books138 followersNaomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland and traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.
Mitchison lived in Kintyre for many years and was an active small farmer. She served on Argyll County Council and was a member of the Highlands and Islands Advisory Panel from 1947 to 1965, and the Highlands and Islands Advisory Consultative Council from 1966 to 1974.
Praise for Naomi Mitchison:
"No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison."
-- The Observer
"Mitchison breathes life into such perennial themes as courage, forgiveness, the search for meaning, and self-sacrifice."
-- Publishers Weekly
"She writes enviably, with the kind of casual precision which ... comes by grace."
-- Times Literary Supplement
"One of the great subversive thinkers and peaceable transgressors of the twentieth century.... We are just catching up to this wise, complex, lucid mind that has for ninety-seven years been a generation or two ahead of her time."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Gifts
"Her descriptions of ritual and magic are superb; no less lovely are her accounts of simple, natural things -- water-crowfoot flowers, marigolds, and bright-spotted fish. To read her is like looking down into deep warm water, through which the smallest pebble and the most radiant weed shine and are seen most clearly; for her writing is very intimate, almost as a diary, or an autobiography is intimate, and yet it is free from all pose, all straining after effect; she is telling a story so that all may understand, yet it has the still profundity of a nursery rhyme.
-- Hugh Gordon Proteus, New Statesman and Nation
Mitchison lived in Kintyre for many years and was an active small farmer. She served on Argyll County Council and was a member of the Highlands and Islands Advisory Panel from 1947 to 1965, and the Highlands and Islands Advisory Consultative Council from 1966 to 1974.
Praise for Naomi Mitchison:
"No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison."
-- The Observer
"Mitchison breathes life into such perennial themes as courage, forgiveness, the search for meaning, and self-sacrifice."
-- Publishers Weekly
"She writes enviably, with the kind of casual precision which ... comes by grace."
-- Times Literary Supplement
"One of the great subversive thinkers and peaceable transgressors of the twentieth century.... We are just catching up to this wise, complex, lucid mind that has for ninety-seven years been a generation or two ahead of her time."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Gifts
"Her descriptions of ritual and magic are superb; no less lovely are her accounts of simple, natural things -- water-crowfoot flowers, marigolds, and bright-spotted fish. To read her is like looking down into deep warm water, through which the smallest pebble and the most radiant weed shine and are seen most clearly; for her writing is very intimate, almost as a diary, or an autobiography is intimate, and yet it is free from all pose, all straining after effect; she is telling a story so that all may understand, yet it has the still profundity of a nursery rhyme.
-- Hugh Gordon Proteus, New Statesman and Nation
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 12, 2023
Early in Orcadia is about prehistoric people with funny names (Hands, Me-too, Skinny-legs, Lovelove and Catcho) who see the glimmer on the sea and build a boat to explore it. They find an island with other odd-named people on (Sister, Hunter and Barebum). They’re surprised, because it’s not a magical world and now the glimmer seems to be where they came from. The island is safe from big predators but it’s hard to build up a community, but they do. They then gain more confidence with the sea and find they can trade with their former home.
It’s an interesting depiction of very early human existence. There isn’t notions of marriage, poor Barebum finds herself fingered a few times, though she’s eventually reborn as Sweetlips. Life is tough and death is easy. Children aren’t even named for most of their childhood, because it’s silly to waste a name on them. Everything is difficult, work is hard and the smallest improvements need great leaps of thought and skilled action.
Then the book jumps ahead to other characters. There are more islands in play and society is more complex. The story is of a good storyteller who becomes the first to make a living entertaining others.
Then another jump, more islands, more complex society - this one matriarchal. The Good Woman gets to try the first and best of everything. There’s a spiritual element. The main character is learning to make pots. This is a skill in the first section of the book but is now specialised to a group of people and has rites, rituals and religious significance.
Then more jumps, more islands, development of marriage, development of religious notions, development of specialised professions and even monumental buildings like the Eagle tomb and the standing stones. Why do we leave the story where we do?
The first half of this book is best, the readers bonds with the characters and follows their difficulties, the smaller snapshots of the later characters don’t have time to do that or set up the society as well. However, it is interesting to see the development of their society and the texture of their lives. It’s an interesting work of research and imagination, but not so much of fluid plotting.
It’s an interesting depiction of very early human existence. There isn’t notions of marriage, poor Barebum finds herself fingered a few times, though she’s eventually reborn as Sweetlips. Life is tough and death is easy. Children aren’t even named for most of their childhood, because it’s silly to waste a name on them. Everything is difficult, work is hard and the smallest improvements need great leaps of thought and skilled action.
Then the book jumps ahead to other characters. There are more islands in play and society is more complex. The story is of a good storyteller who becomes the first to make a living entertaining others.
Then another jump, more islands, more complex society - this one matriarchal. The Good Woman gets to try the first and best of everything. There’s a spiritual element. The main character is learning to make pots. This is a skill in the first section of the book but is now specialised to a group of people and has rites, rituals and religious significance.
Then more jumps, more islands, development of marriage, development of religious notions, development of specialised professions and even monumental buildings like the Eagle tomb and the standing stones. Why do we leave the story where we do?
The first half of this book is best, the readers bonds with the characters and follows their difficulties, the smaller snapshots of the later characters don’t have time to do that or set up the society as well. However, it is interesting to see the development of their society and the texture of their lives. It’s an interesting work of research and imagination, but not so much of fluid plotting.
February 21, 2025
I was interested when I saw this on the local 'Orkney' shelf of the public library, as I've submitted stories about Orkney from the Paleolithic through to modern times to a Scottish press about six months ago. A lot of my writing has been about the early Neolithic, but I'd not found anything about this time before, only research material.
Mitchison writes well, and has some interesting ideas about what life in Orkney may have been like at that time, but I suspect certain details of the flora and fauna of Orkney were not known to her, or were not available at the time when she wrote this, although it was less than half a century ago. However pollen analysis has probably developed a lot since that time.
I think it highly unlikely that foxes were present in Orkney though, as they are not likely to have swum or been carried on floaring wood from mainland Scotland, and the driftwood found here usually arrives from Canada raather than fron lands to our south.
The stories were a little uneven, and sometimes her personal digressions intruded rather than lnked the stories which cover a fairly lengthy time period. But it was a good read.
Mitchison writes well, and has some interesting ideas about what life in Orkney may have been like at that time, but I suspect certain details of the flora and fauna of Orkney were not known to her, or were not available at the time when she wrote this, although it was less than half a century ago. However pollen analysis has probably developed a lot since that time.
I think it highly unlikely that foxes were present in Orkney though, as they are not likely to have swum or been carried on floaring wood from mainland Scotland, and the driftwood found here usually arrives from Canada raather than fron lands to our south.
The stories were a little uneven, and sometimes her personal digressions intruded rather than lnked the stories which cover a fairly lengthy time period. But it was a good read.
January 22, 2024
This is Mitchison’s imagination of what life in pre-historical Orkney might have been like for its human inhabitants. It is not much differet from her tales of the times when Vikings were the dominant force in the islands.
The characters she shows us, however, have names which are more descriptive than abstract (Metoo, Barebum, Hands, Thinlegs, Keeper, Good Woman, Big Woman,) as they cope with their world and seek to understand and exploit it. Hands is fascinated by what he calls the shining edge, glimmering out beyond the sea horizon, and builds a rudimentary boat to get to it, taking some of the others with him. What they find there is more of the same but the new land contains less than a handful of fellow humans, some of whom had disappeared from their settlement years before. Along the story’s way these ancient indigenes learn to spin wool and weave yarn.
This may not have been exactly how Orkney's earliest humans lived but seems plausible enough.
The characters she shows us, however, have names which are more descriptive than abstract (Metoo, Barebum, Hands, Thinlegs, Keeper, Good Woman, Big Woman,) as they cope with their world and seek to understand and exploit it. Hands is fascinated by what he calls the shining edge, glimmering out beyond the sea horizon, and builds a rudimentary boat to get to it, taking some of the others with him. What they find there is more of the same but the new land contains less than a handful of fellow humans, some of whom had disappeared from their settlement years before. Along the story’s way these ancient indigenes learn to spin wool and weave yarn.
This may not have been exactly how Orkney's earliest humans lived but seems plausible enough.
February 21, 2019
This book takes snapshots of life on Orkney at different stages of prehistory - which either means it has a sweeping vision, or is actually several separate stories rather than a single novel, depending whether you like this sort of thing or not. It has the focus on innovation often found in books on prehistory (things are being invented, rather than being taken for granted, as relevant technologies would be in a book set in the present or more recent past), and the attempt to depict a 'primitive' society seems to amount to making the characters not quite as intelligent as modern humans. I also found the writing style confusing.
no-active-interest
May 29, 2020
June 3, 2022
I liked it a lot, bit of an abrupt ending though.
February 7, 2026
As a child I liked these collection of historical stories, set in prehistory Orkney. From early inhabitants to later descendants. It further encouraged me to try and visit this Island, which I was lucky to be able to do so over 30 years later.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews