Professor Donna Heddle on the stories so wild that Hollywood turn them down
If you had just 24 hours in Scotland where would you go? Add in teleportation, time travel and even the magic of pausing time you can conjure up the day of your dreams.
That is what Our Scotland is all about, highlighting the places and people that are memorable.
My name is Alison Fraser and I love all things Scotland, the people, the food, the music and the places.
In this episode I’m joined by Professor Donna Heddle who is going to take us on a historic 24 hours around Scotland and share some fascinating stories with us, some you may know, and some you might not.
Professor Donna Heddle is the Director of the Institute for Northern Studies at University of the Highlands and Islands.
Based on the UHI Orkney campus, her research interests include Scottish and Northern isles cultural history, small island studies, Scottish language and literature, and Old Norse.
Here’s a snippet…
“I’m going to teleport to Iona.
My name for the first three weeks of my life was Iona so I feel quite a strong connection there. I've been several times. It is incredibly beautiful.
The sea off Iona is the most exquisite shade of turquoise blue I've ever seen. I've been lucky enough to teach a summer school in the Abbey; it was great fun.
We stayed in the cells and they were so small you could touch the walls on both sides and my boarding school training came back to the fore when I remembered that you get up five minutes before the rising bell to be first in the showers. It just came right back to me. But it was a wonderful experience.
We were looking at early Christianity in art and so on, with a group of students from all over the world, and we spent a week there in May.
May and September, I think, are the best months to visit Scotland. They're the most beautiful months. And it was beautiful, and Iona has cuckoos and all sorts of things there.
There's something really, really, really marvellous about sitting on that mound outside the Abbey and looking out to sea and thinking that Columba did the same.
And also the fact that there are supposed to be 66 Scottish kings buried on Iona. I like to think about that too, and to think about them and their stories.
Because after all, Scottish history is so full of stories. If you took them as a script idea to Hollywood, a lot of them would say that's far too far fetched.
No, no, no, that could never possibly have happened. Oh yes, oh yes it did.
So I would be there on Iona and I would take a walk from the pier up to the Abbey and I would walk around the Abbey and I would sit for a while in the Abbey church there and just reflect on life for a moment.
And look at the beautiful scenery and so on and just think about that for a moment and look at the standing stones and imagine what it was like for people who were living there because the settlement that Iona was, was Celtic Christianity, which is very different from the Catholic Christianity, which came in with St Margaret and people there were working, they were making things, they were articulating with the local people.
So it was a working environment as well as, of course, a spiritual one and one for contemplation.
It's nice to think about them. I like to almost imagine that I can see them moving about as I sit there on the, on the hillock there, outside the Abbey.”
Donna’s perfect day:
Where:
Cluny in Fife , Papa Westray, Orkney, Iona, Lochindorb Castle, Elderslie, St Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh Castle, Milnes Bar, Rose St, Edinburgh, St Magnus Cathedral, Torvhaug Bar
Food: Leith for seafood
People and stories she mentioned:
Robert Henderson, Testament of Cresseid
Neil Gunn, Highland River
Anon, Sir Patrick Spens
Hugh McDiarmid, The Bonnie Broukit Bairn
Music: Simple Minds, Runrig - Loch Lomond (Live), Dougie McLean - Caledonia, Flower of Scotland as sung by the Tartan Army, The Proclaimers, Johnny Cash, ACDC - Problem Child
