The islands of the Outer Hebrides are dotted with Standing Stones of various sizes and configurations. Perhaps the most famous are the Callanish Stones on the west coast of Lewis (see photo above). These are relics of Neolithic times, some 5,000 years ago, and some 2,000 years older than those at Stonehenge in southern England. But unlike the stones of Stonehenge which have a clear association with the movement of the sun, the stones of Callanish have no obvious association with any celestial body.
The Callanish Stones form a stone circle of 13 stones with a monolith (~16 ft high) near the centre, but, despite the pouring rain, there were too many people and their dogs to get a good photograph of the whole complex. Within the stone circle is a chambered tomb and there are two long rows of stones running in a kind of avenue from the central stones. These elegant standing stones are made of local Lewisian Gneiss, the hard rock seen everywhere on Lewis and Harris. It is a beautiful rock, full of colour and texture and today covered in green moss/litchen on the sides catching the rain. When these stones were first excavated by Sir James Matheson, the peat layer was five feet deep, and one wonders how many other prehistoric relics have been lost beneath the every growing peat.
On the western side of Harris there are three stones still standing; we have MacLeod's Stone (~12 ft, shown left) and Clach Steineagaidh at Sgarasta (~6 ft, shown below). The third standing stone in Harris is on Taransay which we did not visit.
On Lewis we visited two Standing Stones, the first was Clach An Truisal in Balastrushal on the west coast. This Standing Stone is almost 19 ft above the ground and thought to be the tallest Standing Stone in Scotland.
Just further up the road from Clach An Truisal are the stones of Steinacleit. We had to jump over streams and take care in the boggy peat to reach these stones and you can see why they remained undiscovered until the 1920s. There is some doubt as to the function of this collection of stones, being anything from a chambered cairn to a prehistoric farmhouse.
And in South Uist we have An Carra. This Standing Stone is over 17 feet high, and despite its size, is barely visible from the road below. I have chosen to show a distant view so you might think about its purpose in the landscape. Today access was blocked by fencing of an energy supply company and would have been extra difficult due to the peaty boggy nature of the land under foot here.
And, finally, the Polochar Standing Stone in South Uist, modelled with a rather cold Lawrence for scale!
There are many folk tales associated with each of these Standing Stones and one can easily see how these stories became more elaborate in the telling. I read of mermen being seen on the shores, just in the way sailors talked of mermaids. And I think I found some mermen swimming on the beach in Harris?
Certainly it is clear that these Standing Stones served different functions in different times. For example, MacLeod's Stone is named after the MacLeod chiefs who owned Harris. When the chief wanted to gather 'his people', either for rent payment or for war, the Aird Nisabost stone was used as a central gathering point, hence gaining the name of MacLeod's Stone. But whatever the original purpose of the Standing Stones, today they serve to remind us that these islands were home to a sophisticated bunch of people some 5,000 years ago.
