Flame academy. The ancient art of fire-making is being rekindled on the Orkney Islands -
and when the spark appears, it's pure magic
By Dave Flanagan
If it was my turn to get the fire going for the welfare of my Neolithic tribe,
I'd have been dispatched long ago by a blow from a stone axe to the back of the
neck. As it is, the chances are that I will collapse from the effort and
archaeologists will find me 4000 years from now, my skeletal hands outstretched
towards an imaginary can of petrol and box of matches.
Overlooked by the brooding lump of Ward Hill, Orkney's highest point, Warbeth
Beach near Stromness is a suitably dramatic location in which to attempt the
ancient art of fire-making. The Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae is only a few
miles up the coast, and it's easy to imagine early hunter-gatherers tackling
this very exercise, albeit more efficiently. Thankfully, my audience today
consists of a few tourists, rather than hungry and impatient villagers.
I'm crouched on top of a stone slab the size of a dining room table, closer to
the busy beach car park than I would have liked. One of my bare feet is clamped
over a flat piece of pine with a round indentation and a notch on its edge. This
is my hearth. My left hand is pressed down hard on a limpet shell, acting as a
bearing for the wooden spindle that I'm trying to rotate into the pine hearth at
a speed fast enough to generate heat. Providing the driving force for the
spindle is a primitive bow made from a branch and strung with natural cord.
Getting into a position where I can bow, put enough force on the limpet shell
and keep the spindle steady is like playing a Stone Age version of Twister. The
notch in my hearth is designed to collect any hot dust I manage to create, but
all I seem to be gathering is bemused stares.
My first attempt fails within seconds. I don't put enough weight on the shell
and the spindle wobbles. Then the cord on the bow starts to work its way up and
my firemaking grinds to a halt without even the slightest hint of smoke. I
overhear a tourist betting money on my making fire sometime within the next
millennium. I'm breathing heavily, astonished at how much effort I've expended
for so little gain.
"Take your time and think about what you're doing, " says my instructor, Malcolm
Handoll. For the previous two hours, he has taken me on an informative journey
through traditional fire-making processes and materials. This is my chance to
put what he's taught me into practice.
After adjusting my body position and correcting my hopeless bowing technique,
Malcolm adds some of his own weight to the shell and I'm ready to go again. This
time I hit my stride and soon smoke pours from the end of the spindle. "Faster
now, " Malcolm says. "Finish with a flourish."
With more furious elbowing, everything seems to be up to temperature, if the
volume of smoke I'm producing is anything to go by. I place my bow drill to one
side and remove my foot, then gingerly scrape the remaining hot black dust into
the notch and on to a small piece of goatskin.
Removing the hearth as if disarming a nuclear bomb, I'm left with a little
smouldering cone of material that I gently tip into the middle of a dried grass
tinder nest I prepared earlier. Within it is a cocktail of natural materials
with good firelighting properties - cotton grass, birch bark and cramp ball
fungus.
Cupping the nest in my hands I begin to blow gently, excited by a dim glow. It's
still touch and go, but I blow a bit harder and suddenly I'm actually holding a
fireball in my hands. I'm so mesmerised by my achievement, and the surreal
experience of grasping a living fire, that I come close to setting my hands
alight. Inexplicably, I also want to strip off and beat my chest triumphantly.
Thankfully, Malcolm is there to break the spell and he tells me to put the
fireball down before I harm myself or frighten the tourists even more.
Normally, the next stage would involve placing the burning tinder nest into the
centre of a pile of sticks, but today I'm just getting a quick taster session.
I'm babbling, as if I had just discovered how to travel at the speed of light,
but my reaction is nothing new to Malcolm. He has been running fire-making
courses since May as part of a range of experiences offered by his Orkney-based
company, Five Senses.
The business, which he runs with his American wife, Rachel DuBois, draws on his
experience as a mountain leader and his background in hospitality. It offers
everything from guided tours of Orkney's archaeology to independence outdoors
training and rites of passage ceremonies. It may sound a bit NewAge, but the
emphasis is on learning long-forgotten and useful skills while also getting in
touch with the countryside around you.
"People love fire, " says 39-year-old Malcolm, a former instructor at Glenmore
Lodge, Scotland's national outdoor training centre. "I started with the fire
aspect because it's the glamorous one. There is something special about it. If
you're sitting around a camp fire, or there's a nice wood fire burning in a
cottage, people love it. But we're so disconnected from that nowadays. There are
so few houses now where you have that on a day-to-day basis."
During the training, self-taught Malcolm displays a remarkable depth of
knowledge on the natural materials one can harness to create fire. For example,
I learned how good cotton grass can be used as tinder, after years of squelching
past the stuff in bogs. Lichen, fungi, bark - the list is extensive. It's just a
case of knowing what to look for. It smells nice too when compared to a box of
firelighters or a can of petrol.
"The essence of all this is to connect people with their environment, " Malcolm
explains. "It's also to connect them with the past, because that's a really rich
area for learning. We've lost the awareness of the outdoors because we no longer
need it. People are responding to that. It's not because they really want to
light a fire with a bow drill every weekend, but through that process, people
use their senses and become aware of the environment."
While Malcolm is keen to avoid being perceived as some kind of NewAge crank,
there is an element of spirituality in the ancient process that even the most
clinical of his participants couldn't fail to feel. "Until very recently, fire
was life and death and I think people just don't realise that, " he says. "Ever
since we discovered petrochemicals we've not given it its true status. But back
then, the realisation that you could actually create fire where there wasn't any
suddenly changes the whole scenario. I can only speculate as to quite what
significance that would have had.
"The person who could make fire must surely have been looked up to. The first
demonstration of it would be like magic, " he says. "How else would they explain
it? Whether that person was a shaman or a chieftain, it must have given them
tremendous status. That's something that people discover when they create fire
for themselves. No matter how much you think about the process beforehand, when
it ignites it is magical. I still find that really special because you never
quite know if it's going to happen. It's not like striking a match - you never
take it for granted."
