language

On a wild and wet day in Birsay, I am indoors, celebrating the weather and all that it touches while listening to the fantastic podcast Gousters, Glims and Veerie-orums.

For those of you who will make your way to the Orkney islands in the near or distant future, I urge you to immerse yourself now through the voices, language, place-names and stories evoked in Gousters, Glims & Veerie-orums.

Alison Miller says ‘’This is the audio version o Gousters, Glims & Veerie-orums, the book o written bae Orkney Voices and published by the George Mackay Brown Fellowship for the centenary o George Mackay Brown in 2021.

Orcadians don’t aal spaek the same. Aal the perishes and islands hiv thir own weys o spaekeen and thir own wirds. And we even write the wird/wurd different weys/wiys. Some fokk write hid ‘spikk’; some fokk, ‘spaek’; some, ‘spake’. 

In this you’ll hear different versions o Orcadian fae different perts o the islands – Birsay tae Deerness, Shapinsay tae Kirkwall, Orphir tae Harray, Tankerness and Holm. You’ll hear twathree uncan vowels, descended fae Orkney Norn and wir Norse heritage, and a mense o wirds you might no ken but that aer rich and expressive and rooted in the land and shores o wir islands.  

The title hidsel hads three good Orkney wirds: 

Gouster is a sharp breeze o wind or an ootburst o language
Glim is a glimmer, a blink o light or fire
Veerieorums aer fancy patterns or ornamentation; but the word originates in the Latin ‘variorum’, which noo usually means a book wae contributions fae different writers.

We are very prood tae present this audio version o wark fae Orkney Voices: Gousters, Glims & Veerie-orums’’.

Gousters, Glims & Veerie-orums was edited by award-winning film editor and filmmaker Mark Jenkins, who will be contributing to the Group Residency SOUNDINGS and SURROUNDINGS, Orkney 30 Aug – 06 Sept 2025 (Deadline for applications 14 April 2025).

Images
Orkney stone
The Museum of Loss and Renewal residents in the Broch of Gurness