Stromness

Quality 0.50 · 4 views · Updated 2 months ago

title: "Stromness" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["stromness", "ports-and-harbours-of-scotland", "fishing-communities-in-scotland", "towns-in-orkney", "parishes-of-orkney", "mainland,-orkney"] topic_path: "geography/united-kingdom" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromness" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::data[format=table title="Infobox UK place"]

Field	Value
country	Scotland
official_name	Stromness
scots_name	Strumnis
population	2,490
population_ref	()
population_demonym	Stromnessian
area_total_km2	0.89
os_grid_reference	HY2509
coordinates
unitary_scotland	Orkney Islands
lieutenancy_scotland	Orkney Islands
constituency_westminster	Orkney and Shetland
constituency_scottish_parliament	Orkney
post_town	STROMNESS
postcode_district	KW16
postcode_area	KW
dial_code	01856
static_image_name	Stromness - Orkney Islands.jpg
static_image_caption	A view of Stromness
edinburgh_distance_mi	208
london_distance	530 mi
::

Stromness (, ; ) is the second-most populous town in Orkney, Scotland. It is in the southwestern part of Mainland, Orkney. It is a burgh with a parish around the outside with the town of Stromness as its capital.

Etymology

The name "Stromness" comes from the Old Norse Straumnes. In Viking times the anchorage where Stromness now stands was called Hamnavoe.

Town

A long-established seaport, Stromness has a population of approximately 2,500 residents. The old town is clustered along the characterful and winding main street, flanked by houses and shops built from local stone, with narrow lanes and alleys branching off it.

First recorded as the site of an inn in the sixteenth century, Stromness became important during the late seventeenth century, when Great Britain was at war with France and shipping was forced to avoid the English Channel. Ships of the Hudson's Bay Company were regular visitors, as were whaling fleets. Large numbers of Orkneymen, many of whom came from the Stromness area, served as traders, explorers and seamen for both. Captain Cook's ships, Discovery and Resolution, called at the town in 1780 on their return voyage from the Hawaiian Islands, where Captain Cook had been killed.

Stromness Museum reflects these aspects of the town's history (displaying for example important collections of whaling relics, and Inuit artefacts brought back as souvenirs by local men from Greenland and Arctic Canada).

Stromness harbour was rebuilt to the designs of John Barron in 1893.

At Stromness Pierhead is a statue by North Ronaldsay sculptor Ian Scott, depicting John Rae standing erect with an inscription describing him as "the discoverer of the final link in the first navigable Northwest Passage", which was unveiled in 2013.

The town has two schools, Stromness Academy, a secondary school and Stromness Primary School, a primary school.

Stromness Lifeboat Station is the town’s lifeboat station, one of three lifeboat stations in Orkney (the others being Longhope Lifeboat Station and Kirkwall Lifeboat Station). A lifeboat was first stationed here by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in 1867. Stromness is served by two passenger ferries: the MV Hamnavoe, run by Northlink Ferries, connects the town to Scrabster, and the MV Graemsay, operated by Orkney Ferries, runs to Graemsay and Hoy, Orkney.

Parish

The parish of Stromness includes the islands of Hoy and Graemsay in addition to a tract of land about 5 by on Mainland, Orkney. The Mainland part is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south and southeast by Hoy Sound, and on the northeast by the Loch of Stenness.

Antiquities include Breckness House, erected in 1633 by George Graham, Bishop of Orkney, at the west entrance of Hoy Sound.

Media and the arts

The Stromness branch of the Orkney Library and Archive is housed in a building given to the library service in 1905 by Marjory Skea Corrigall.

Writer George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) was born and lived most of his life in the town, and is buried in the town's cemetery overlooking Hoy Sound. His poem "Hamnavoe" is set in the town, and is in part a memorial to his father John, a local postman.

Stromness is also named in the title of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's popular piano piece "Farewell to Stromness", a piano interlude from The Yellow Cake Revue, which was written in 1980 to protest against plans to open a uranium mine in the area. The title refers to yellowcake, the powder produced in an early stage of the processing of uranium ore. The Revue was first performed by the composer at the Stromness Hotel on 21 June 1980, as part of the St Magnus Festival; plans for the uranium mine were cancelled later that year.

Stromness is also the title of a 2009 novel by Herbert Wetterauer.

Stromness plays host to the Pier Arts Centre, a collection of twentieth-century British art given to the people of Orkney by artists such as Margaret Gardiner.

Geology

Stromness presents to the Atlantic a range of cliffs between 100 and high, and to Hoy Sound a band of fertile lowlands. The rocks possess great geological interest, and were made well known by the publication of the evangelical geologist Hugh Miller, The Footprints of the Creator or The Asterolepsis of Stromness (1849).

Gallery

File:Pier, Stromness - geograph.org.uk - 1460.jpg|The Pier, Stromness File:Stromness Museum 2017.jpg|Stromness Museum File:John Rae statue, Stromness Pierhead, Stromness, Orkney.jpg|Statue of John Rae File:Stromness 1825.jpg|Stromness in 1825 File:Stromness Harbour.JPG|Stromness Harbour

References

[http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/component/content/article/2999-list-of-railway-station-names.html List of railway station names in English, Scots and Gaelic – NewsNetScotland]
{{Scotland settlement population citation
''Straumr'' refers to the strong tides that rip past the Point of Ness through [[Hoy Sound]] to the south of the town. ''Nes'' means "headland". Stromness thus means "headland protruding into the tidal stream".[http://www.orkneyjar.com/placenames/parish.htm "Parish Names"] {{Webarchive. link. (7 July 2016 Orkneyjar. Retrieved 27 Dec 2010.)
Iain Mac an Tàilleir. "Placenames K-O & P-Z". Pàrlamaid na h-Alba.
Murton, Paul. (2019). "The Viking Isles: Travels in Orkney and Shetland". Birlinn.
"The History of Stromness".
A dinner service Captain Cook used on his final voyage is on view at [[Skaill House]], [[Bay of Skaill]], home of 19c. [[Skara Brae]] excavator William Watt, a mansion built by George Graham, Bishop of Orkney 1615-1638, on the site of a farmstead dated to the Norse period.
"Ethnography {{!}} Stromness Museum".
David Goold. "Dictionary of Scottish Architects - DSA Architect Biography Report (March 15, 2020, 12:08 am)". Scottisharchitects.org.uk.
"John Rae statue unveiled at Stromness Pierhead". The Orcadian Online.
"Stromness' Station history". RNLI.
Wilson, Rev. John. (1882). "The Gazetteer of Scotland". W. & A.K. Johnstone.
{{Historic Environment Scotland
(20 August 2019). "Wasps: An Artistic Chapter in the Story of Historic Buildings". Historic Environment Scotland.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20061004035607/http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1540 "Hamnavoe by George Mackay Brown"]. Poetry Archive. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
"The Yellow Cake Revue (1980)". Boosey & Hawkes.
"Stromness: Roman: Amazon.co.uk: Herbert Wetterauer: 9783898414876: Books".
Adams, Kari. (9 July 2019). "Margaret Gardiner". Piers Arts Centre.
Miller, Hugh. (1849). "The foot-prints of the Creator: or, The Asterolepis of Stromness". Gould and Lincoln.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::