Christmas 2021

Well, Christmas has come and gone once again. Among the many thoughtful gifts that I received during our Christmas celebration with my in-laws, my sister-in-law scored a pristine, antique copy of The Orkneyinga Saga. It's a 1981 facsimile of the 1873 edition by Edmonston and Douglas - the same one to which I've linked several times previously. About half of this edition is an extensive introduction that covers such topics as early Christianity in the Northern Isles, the various dynasties that ruled Orkney between 872 and 1469, and such. I told my sister-in-law that she'd hit a home run. Apparently that home run involved purchasing from an actual specialty book shop in the United Kingdom, and the customs slip on the packaging took my brother-in-law by surprise.

Christmas also involved two five hour road trips - normally, that would be a couple of three hour road trips, but road conditions significantly altered the normal experience (and route) of my round trip from our home to Lady Jaye's family compound. I like to fill these road trips with podcasts, and I wanted to share three selections from Dan Snow's History Hit that I enjoyed during my longer-than-usual drive:

The Origins of Scotland

The Sinking and Recovery of Germany's Battle Fleet in Scapa Flow with Ian Murray Taylor

From the Punjab to the Western Front

The first of the three is pretty self-explanatory. Longtime readers of this blog will know that Scapa Flow is Orkney's large natural anchorage, and they may also remember that in 1919, the German High Seas Fleet was scuttled in the Flow while diplomats were negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. I was aware that some of the ships had been salvaged, but the podcast linked above goes into really fascinating detail about the specifics of that effort. The third podcast doesn't deal specifically with Scotland, but I took some interest due to my ongoing research on the First World War. I've been a beneficiary of the wealth of documentation that's made its way into publicly accessible channels in recent years, so learning of the records that were (somewhat) recently discovered in a basement museum on Lahore brought a satisfied grin to my face.