Stromness Shopping week!!! It’s really an excuse for a week long carnival, with a carnival queen, pipe bands, games and on the Thursday night a parade through the town, which in 2008 included a Viking boat and 2 Viking armies(!) and a big bonfire at the Stromness Point. There were a couple of thousand spectators all trying to squeeze along the main street behind the boat. There were about 10-15 men in each of the armies, all beautifully dressed in Viking replica clothing. Below are just a couple of the photographs I took of the parade and and the bonfire.

photograph of the boat in the main square before the parade

Before the parade the Island photgrapher for the local Gazette took lots of photographs of the guys in their costumes with the boat which started its route through town in the main square.

Photograph of a Viking on Orkney

And then finally the boat is set on fire after some posturing and brandishing of the fire brands infront of the boat, all the vikings threw their fire brands in to the boat and watched it burn until it got so hot they had to move away.

Photograph of a Viking in front of the burning boat.

I just love the light round the rim of the hat in this photograph.

Tags: Basingstoke Photographer, Basingstoke photographer on holiday, hampshire photographer, hampshire photographer on holiday, photographer, photography

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Orkney, holiday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.