Man Made Islands

If you think man has only recently decided to build their own islands, think again. In Scotland, Wales and Ireland, they started doing it nearly 6,000 years ago. They are called crannogs and while some of them are partially natural,  quite a few were entirely artificial, built in lakes and estuarine waters. Crannogs are not like the prehistoric pile dwellings of the Alps, which were built on the shores and became inundated later. Crannogs were actually built in the water, forming artificial islands.

These new islands were used as dwellings for over five millennia, possibly to the early 18th century. Some were free-standing wooden structures, although they more commonly existed as brush, stone or timber mounds. However, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, timber was unavailable, so their crannogs consisted of stone, with drystone architecture sitting atop the base stones. Today, crannogs typically appear as small, circular islets, 30 to 100 feet in diameter, covered in dense vegetation because they are inaccessible to grazing livestock.

Crannogs are wide-spread in Ireland, but are frequently undercounted in Scotland, as they can be called various things, depending on who you talk to. Mainland Scotland and the Scottish isles also refer to them in various ways. Previously unknown crannogs are still being found, as underwater surveys find completely submerged examples.

Crannogs were built with whatever material was most available in the immediate area. Several feet above the water’s surface, an ‘Atlantic roundhouse’ was built on the new island, connected to the shore by a causeway. At the time, most communication and travel was achieved by waterways. They may have served as simple farmsteads or as boltholes in times of danger. Their limited access may have served as a status symbol, and their inherited location would have implied legitimacy towards ownership of the surrounding landscape.

The earliest known crannog in Scotland appears to date from 3650 BC. It is interesting to note that crannogs were often reused after a period of non-use. Defense does not appear to be the major reason for building and living on a crannog, as there is little evidence of weapons or of destruction in the excavation of prehistoric crannogs.

I have to admit, I was unaware of any such method of building a home until I googled this word for information. My first thought is that it would be a wonderful home for a water spirit or for a child of a water spirit.

My second thought was that it could be useful as a toll bridge across a river, with a causeway or bridge going from the home to both banks. Why break your back every day for the rest of your life to ferry people from one side of the river to the other when you can work hard as a youngster to build a home and 2 causeways, and still collect tolls as you totter into old age?

The article also mentioned kings and lords living on crannogs, of crannog islets being enlarged repeatedly and therefore being home to an extended family. What about a city growing up on an ever-enlarging crannog? Lots of ideas from this one word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crannog

Dr Who? Experience

After the World SF Convention in London, we took a train to Cardiff in Wales.

The map showed our hotel as a straight shot east of the closest rail station, about 2 or 3 blocks. In real life, the road made an S-curve, and the distance was 4-5 blocks. But we got checked in, and it was still early afternoon. This room had a desk and chair, drawers and a closet!

My husband does not sit quietly well. He decided we should walk ‘into town’ and visit the museum. It was pretty much a straight shot to get there, but distance was a little vague. Well, if I reached the utter end of my endurance, we would have to figure something out.

The center of Cardiff is one big shopping area, no cars allowed, and a wonderful mixture of new buildings among the really old ones. We went through that, and turned a block too soon, but it was simple to correct our aim and get to the museum... 45 minutes before it was scheduled to close!

They had a wonderful section on history of Earth that I had to race through, and I had almost reached the point where people began to evolve when I was told they would close in 5 minutes. Bummer! Now for the walk back.

When I’m getting tired, I count my steps. It simply distracts my mind and keeps a rhythm. When we finally reached the hotel, I pretty much collapsed into a chair in the restaurant for supper. I had made it!

We had tickets for the Dr Who Experience the next morning. Again, the distance was kind of vague (I thought it was about half a mile), and this time, the directions were vague, too. (It wasn’t shown on the map.) “Go into that shopping mall across the parking lot, and just before you get to the theater, turn left, exit the building, follow the path, and you can’t miss it. Happily, the ‘path’ was marked by signs with a Dalek to show us which way to go.

I won’t spoil the experience by telling you much about it. On the other hand, they will probably change it soon, for what we experienced was the Matt Smith doctor. But it did have Daleks, and the Doctor tried to convince them that we were not worth ‘extermination’ because we were obviously an inferior type of human known as ‘shoppers’.

After this entertainment, we were in the museum, where John took lots of pictures. We weren’t allowed to touch anything, but I had John taking close ups of buttons and lace bits, lapel styles... And then it dawned on us - there are no Dr Who costume police! As long as your costume is recognizabe, you are enthusiastically accepted!

Even so, we still analyzed the costumes on display, especially those not made of cloth, like the rubber suit that looked like it had octopus suckers all over it. We could see a small slit (maybe 9 inches) in the lower back, but was that the only opening? Further study revealed the feet were separate, as were the hands, and probably the head as well. I am not eager to wear an entire rubber suit - think sauna - but I am trying to learn to make such prosthetics, so I was happy to study these items.

We could not take a tour of the studio, as the sets were being revamped, getting ready for filming. So that left the souvenir store.

John had a particular shirt he wanted, but he couldn’t find it. Bummer. I found a shirt and a poster for me, and he settled for the sweater vest of Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor. We went to the snack bar for something to drink, then walked back to the hotel, where we had a quiet afternoon as he surfed the net, trying to find the shirt he’d wanted.

We also did not find any jelly babies in the Dr Who shop, although we had found them at Stonehenge and in London. Not finding them in the DW shop was a real bummer!

To me, Cardiff was better than London! Not as crowded, in other words. I enjoyed our brief stay there. At one time, I would have hated the idea of walking that far to see a museum, but this time, I saw it as a challenge, one I managed to survive. And I got the reward of seeing a fantastic display about the History of Earth that I could have spent at least half a day in, if given the chance. The Dr Who Experience was icing on the cake.