I meet Tanja in Neolithic darkness. We stand several feet apart and slowly eye each other through the dim of the roughly five-thousand-year-old chambered tomb called Maeshowe.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
“No,” I reply.
“American?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
The earthen tomb resumes its silence. I stare back at the Maeshowe Dragon, an example of eleventh-century Viking graffiti carved into the wall, and prepare a memory of its image. I then make my way to the long and narrow passageway that will open to the rain and winds that sweep over the mainland of the Orkney Islands.
Later, at the kitchen table in a Stromness youth hostel, I eat my dinner of equal parts pasta and parmesan. My bones are still wet from the stormy weather I had biked through since morning. Tanja sits down next to me at the crowded table. I side-eye her plate, an aromatic stew of lamb, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and goat cheese. A few bites into her meal, and after several more side-eyes from me, she leaves the table. A moment later she drops back into her chair and slides a plate of stew in front of me. “Danke schoen,” I whisper to her, and to the gods.
Like me, she is traveling north. And like others traveling north, we have several days to explore the Orkney Islands before the next ship sails north for the Shetland Islands. I tell her a ferry leaves Kirkwall the next day and sails to the small island of Papa Westray. She says she hasn’t decided which islands to visit.
Few are on board the Westray-bound ferry the next morning as I settle into a seat. As the boat begins to turn out to sea, Tanja walks into the passenger galley.
Although a small island in the north of the archipelago, Papa Westray is charmed by history and nature. Tanja and I team up to walk west across the island to the Knap of Howar and explore its remains of two Neolithic stone houses, and then trace the rocky shore to St Boniface Kirk, whose twelfth-century construction still encloses the hush of a sea-struck devotion. We stand along the northern rim of the island and watch the tidal surge of the Bore, where the Atlantic collides into the North Sea, and watch a pod of seals bob in the bay of North Wick on the starboard side of the island.
Through uncanny expanses of sky and sea we inhabit each other’s silence. Our gazes linger in sync. In the absence of words we begin to feel familiar to each other.
We travel together to the south of the islands. On the Isle of Hoy we hike up Cuilags and walk along the cliffs of St. John’s Head. On the summit of Moor Fea we lay in the heavy grass. In the distance south over the Pentland Firth we can see the mirage-like Scottish mainland. The sun ignites the sea into a thousand filaments. Of one mind, we stare out at the glimmering pulses that extend for miles and miles. The worlds we know feel far, far away.
“The day I met you I bought a book of George Mackay Brown’s poetry. On the title page is an image of the Maeshowe Dragon and the first poem is called ‘The Storm.’”
“I would like to hear it,” Tanja says.
Our shadows touch as I lean in to speak the words.
