WW BOOK CULT: Stone Lands by Fiona Robertson
Journeys to megalithic marvels
As you know, we love the old stones here at Weird Walk. Those numinous sentinels in the landscape will always fascinate us. It’s a passion that is shared by the writer and editor Fiona Robertson, whose book, Stone Lands, arrives in June, and is available to pre-order through the Book Cult shoppe now. As well as an inspiring tour of Britain’s megalithic landscapes, Stone Lands is a very human journey into grief, hope and love. It’s a fantastic book, richly illustrated with stunning black and white line drawings by the illustrator and printmaker Philip Harris. We caught up with Fiona to discuss her explorations below.
How did the book begin? Had you always wanted to write something long-form about the old stones, and perhaps what John Michell termed ‘megalithomania’?
I started writing it as a distraction really, after my husband became ill. I hadn’t planned to write a book on standing stones, but somehow I’ve always been drawn to make notes about my visits to the sites. I’d be crouched in the tent writing it all up by torchlight and thinking to myself why am I bothering, no one is ever going to read this… perhaps a part of me knew that one day I might use those notes in a book.
Why do you think these stones have the power to comfort and reassure people during dark times?
Because standing stones have been in the landscape for such an unfeasibly long time – some of them standing in that same spot for four or five thousand years or more – they seem to put our human troubles into perspective. Whatever we humans have to endure, the stones have seen it all before – and I find that very comforting. It’s as if they’re saying ‘ultimately, none of this matters’ and also (because every one of us will be outlasted by the stones), ‘life is short so make the most of it’. And because standing stones are imbued with magic, legend and folklore and are ultimately so unfathomable, symbolising ways of thinking that we can never truly understand, they also seem to say that there’s more to life than our worries and struggles. Whatever is going on for me, standing stones seem to offer an escape into another world that exists in parallel to our everyday one – a world in which anything might happen.
How important do you think the wider landscape is when experiencing a megalithic site? Did some monuments you visited have more impact because of their location?
I think the wider landscape is massively important in experiencing a site, even if the surroundings have been reshaped since the stones were put up (eg hedges and fields created, trees removed or added). There is so much fun to be had in trying to work out whether the stones were placed to point at a particular natural or prehistoric landmark. The landscape can give us a sense of what was important to the site builders, who perhaps found divinity in features like huge rocky outcrops, such as Carn Kenidjack which dominates Tregeseal stone circle or Carn Galva which looms up behind Boskednan. Stonehenge was probably placed where it is because of natural chalk ridges on Salisbury Plain that were aligned with (in opposite directions) midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. Given that Stonehenge’s builders would have relied on the sun for warmth, light and the growth of food, they no doubt found it hugely compelling that these key solar turning points were enshrined in the very ground there. Sometimes an ancient site’s surroundings will induce such feelings of awe and exhilaration – the ring of mountains around Castlerigg or Swinside, for example, or the great bowl of sky upturned over the Ness of Brodgar peninsula – that I wonder if we are getting a real sense of what ancient people felt there too. And it’s amazing to feel that we might be sharing that with them.
As you note in the book, there are a lot of folk tales associated with monuments that feature humans being turned to stone, and you also mention people who feel the stones have their own character and personality. Why do you think we have a tendency to anthropomorphise megaliths?
A stone that has stood on the moor day in, day out for thousands of years seems to exemplify human qualities such as strength, endurance, perseverance and patience. It may be cracked and broken, just as a human face becomes lined over time, yet it remains in its place – and that is so inspiring! Standing stones are very individual, each seeming to have its own character, just as a person does – no two stones are the same, and some are very beautiful (like the silvery, whorled stones of Callanish), while others look stumpy, pitted and a bit knackered and broken down (like the Rollright Stones). And the short answer of course is that stones are quite human-shaped and often human-sized too, and seen from a distance really do look like people – the Cornwood Maidens look like a line of (very tall) hikers striding over Stalldown Hill; the Merry Maidens glimpsed across the fields look like a circle of dancers. Some archaeologists say that stones could have been raised to represent real people who were known to the site’s builders.
This might be an impossible question, but what is your favourite megalithic walking route?
That is a tricky one indeed so I’m going to cheat by giving a multi-part answer. West Penwith (the Land’s End peninsula) is one of my top megalithic walking areas because there’s such a dense concentration of stones there, so whichever direction you strike out in you’re liable to find a stone or two, and some routes will take you past an outstanding array of sites. There’s a reason why John Michell used this region as a testing ground for his theories about leys, and spent much time tramping about the peninsula with a very large map in hand tracing lines of intervisibility between standing stones. Walk Two in Journey to the Stones (Ian McNeil Cooke’s fantastic walking guide to West Penwith) takes you past the Mên-an-Tol holed stone, Mên Scryfa inscribed stone, Boskednan stone circle, Bodrifty settlement, Mulfra Quoit, Lanyon Quoit and more – it’s an incredible route and highly recommended!
Having said that, if you forced me at gunpoint to pick just one walk, it would have to be following the Ridgeway from the White Horse and Wayland’s Smithy to Avebury. This two-day hike is the route that more than any other has shaped my imagination and I still find it utterly uplifting to walk along an ancient chalk path through a mythic terrain of barrows, forts, hill figures and stones on my way to the awesome prehistoric circles and avenues of Avebury. Plus there’s a pub inside a stone circle at the end of it, and no other megalithic walking route offers that.