A Pictish Pilgrimage To Shandwick Stone

At the end of February, I took the opportunity to spend a weekend in northern Scotland to visit early medieval stone carvings with Paul Sherman of NW Heritage CIC.

North of Inverness lies the Tarbat Peninsular, a fertile area of stunning coastal scenery where some of the most elaborate examples of Pictish sculptures are found. The Picts were a mysterious people who once dominated the eastern seaboard of Scotland, but their language and culture was eclipsed after their merger with their Gaelic speaking neighbours in the west in the tenth century. The biggest legacy that remains of the Picts in the Scottish landscape is their monuments.

Our tour of stones began at the quiet seaside village of Balintore is on the south of the peninsular looking out across the Moray Firth. Shandwick is a short distance to the west of the settlement, along beaches strewn with pebbles and seaweed. At the top of a gentle slope by the shore is a large glass case on a concrete base with a standard issue front door, surrounded by a neat metal fence. It looks so incongruous it could have been a time capsule or a tardis dropped overnight, but what is inside has been there for a long time.

The Shandwick stone sits lower than the current land surface which has been hollowed out around it, so that the viewer’s eyes are drawn down to the base, and then up across the deep carved intricacies of the design. It is a three-metre tall visual feast. On the landward side the stone is divided into panels with frames reminiscent of the borders in a comic book. The base has geometric patterns and interlace but above that is a striking scene of spirals radiating out from a central cross shape, neat and precise but dizzying like an optical illusion. As if that weren’t trippy enough, above that is a scene of multiple animals, men, and more people on horseback. This does not seem like a single narrative of a hunt. Some of the people and creatures appear to be opposing each other and there is a bird as big as a horse among the quadrupeds, like a strange dream in stone. Overlooking that, there is the symbol of the Pictish beast. No-one can quite agree what it is. It has been called among other things, a swimming elephant or a Loch Ness monster. Yet despite its aquatic features, there are land animals around it. The beast’s distinctive outline appears on other sculptures. At Shandwick it seems to bear a wry smile, more enigmatic than the Mona Lisa. Above this at the top of the slab, is a worn and ornamented double disc, another strange symbol from the Pictish era.

The eastern face of the monument looks out to where the soft greens of the landscape merge towards the sea. On this side, the carving is deeper. More effort seems to have been invested in marking out the shape of a cross adorned with three-dimensional bosses. Under the cross arms are two figures framed with saltires, and further down strange animals and a writhing interlace patterns of snake and bird-like creatures. While much of the meaning of the carving is uncertain, the purpose of the cross is unambiguous. The stone draws our eyes upwards, perhaps intentionally to contemplate the heavens, towards a constantly shifting skyscape. At one moment the early spring sunlight sets the gorse flowers ablaze in neighbouring fields, and their luminous yellows contrast sharply against the blue sky. The warbling trill of the skylarks enhances a sense of joy at being outdoors. It is at moments like this when nature feel benign. A moment later and the clouds are rolling in along the coast, and everything is suddenly swathed in brooding greys. The wind that felt like a caressing breeze moments ago, now seems biting and sinister as it moans discordantly around the poles of the metal enclosure. The changes of weather around the fixed point of a stone seem to be a reminder that all things in life are fleeting.

Standing by the cross, early Christians would have looked east, across the sea, towards the rising sun and the resurrection of Christ. Did monks choose this spot over a thousand years ago as a place where members of the local community might have gathered to witness the end of times, believing themselves to be living at the edge of the world and on the cusp of a new one? Or was there a more prosaic purposes in creating a signpost by the sea? However people choose to interpret it, a visit to Shandwick feels like taking a moment away from mundane considerations. Such sites help us reflect on the natural world, human creativity and the innate desire for meaning and permanence. It may be a place where our thoughts can align for a moment with others who visited it many centuries ago.

For more information on visiting Pictish sites in this part of Scotland, see the Highland Pictish Trail/ Slighe Chruithneach na Ghàidhealtachd: https://highlandpictishtrail.co.uk/the-easter-ross-peninsula/.

 

Professor Downham would like to thank Catherine Carfoot, Fiona Campbell-Howes, Adrián Maldonado, Elizabeth Boyle and Lexie Henning for kindly taking the time to read a draft and provide comments in advance of publication.