Being a Saturday the diggers have got yet another day off – they get TWO days off a week! Ridiculous if you ask me – back in the day when we were digging for Steve out in Sanday we got one day off a week & were glad of it.
We’re going to start today’s diary with an apology: yesterday I inferred that Vikings were a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates who would happily chop our Pictish folk into bloody collops. In the interests of academic impartiality I would like to point out that there are those who believe that the arrival of the Vikings was an entirely peaceful transition from one administrative regime to another, and that the Vikings have been sorely misrepresented; I leave it to you to make a decision:
Anyway after our little hunk-a-thon, back to the archaeology... In the interests of clarity in archaeology I’ve decided to rename Structure 2 (where our Roman coin was found) - it will henceforth be known as ‘the cute Peedie Roundhouse’ and here it is in all its glory:
‘Peedie’ is Orcadian dialect for small: not to be confused with Peerie, which may or may not also be an Orcadian dialect word for small – or it may be – boo! Hiss! – a Shetland dialect word– you should have heard the kerfuffle on Radio Orkney a few years back when ‘the Cooncil’ decided they were going to rename the ‘Peerie Sea Loan’ to the ‘Peedie Sea Loan’ on the grounds (I think) that ‘peedie’ was more correctly Orcadian than ‘peerie’ (the Peedie Sea is now the boating lake in Kirkwall – it’s all that’s left of the original Norse harbour).
Anyway there were lots of letters to the Radio Orkney postbag & to the local paper along the lines of ‘I’ve been calling it the Peerie Sea Loan man & boy for 70 years & I’m not changing now’ and the council quite sensibly dropped the whole issue & left well alone.