‘Aha!’ said a member of Glasgow airport’s security staff as a small Royal person was revealed lurking at the bottom of my suitcase. Ten years ago this summer, whilst returning from the Outer Hebrides, my luggage set off a shrill alarm.
For two weeks that August I’d been running workshops in seven schools dotted round the coast of the Isle of Lewis, showing children my books, and encouraging them to write and draw stories, often in comic strip form. And doing a bit of exploration.
The first school I visited, on the west coast of Lewis, was at Bernara, where all seven children had colds. We made a Book of Germs from their drawings, which cheered them up. The second workshop was at Uig. Recently I found notes and drawings from my visit:
Afterwards I nip into a nearby Pictish jelly-baby house. Named after its interior shape, not ancient diet. Later take a brief walk on Uig beach, where the tiny twelfth century Lewis chessmen, carved from walrus tusk and whale tooth, were discovered two hundred years ago.
Locals thought they were elves. No one knows for sure where they were from, but probably from Norway? ’Where exactly were they found?’ I asked at the little shop, but locals won’t say. They don’t want visiting treasure hunters digging on their beach. The beach is beautiful, miles of white sand. ‘It’s very crowded today,’ a new friend observed. There were five people on the beach.
Nobody’s exactly sure how many original chess pieces were found, possibly more than those now in museums. Secret sales probably took place. Some of the originals are in the British Museum, some in the Museum of Scotland. I’m impressed by the berserkers, so called because they’re biting their shields, presumably working themselves up to a battle fury.
One theory about their origin is that they were carved by an Icelandic woman, Margret the Adroit, wife of a noble priest, but who knows? And the Queen in my suitcase? I wasn’t smuggling a precious artefact out of the Isle of Lewis. She’s a metal-bottomed replica given as a parting gift from the arts centre who invited me to the island. The Queen has settled in my small London home now, but is her disconcerting stare a longing for the sea and the far islands?
Background for the Isle of Lewis Queen photo is a detail from a print by Emerald Mosley