The Orkney Image Library
Help us get organised! If we haven't correctly identified which area this picture is best listed under, please select it below and click Done!
Ian Cameron's interesting pic #26079 started me wondering whether the crest it carries has any particular significance. Here it is alongside OIC'c coat of arms, to which it bears little resemblance apart from having a stylised ship on it (but not a traditional longship). To me, heraldry has always seemed an arcane branch of knowledge, but to others it will all be plain as day. Maybe one of those others will explain?
Picture added on 01 February 2012 at 16:24
Bruce Gorie is the man to ask. He works in The Lord Lyon Office in Edinburgh now
Added by Tim Wright on 01 February 2012
The OIC arms, apart from having different supporters, are much the same as those of the old Orkney County Council. Those were matriculated by the Lord Lyon in 1931 and were the subject of a paper by J. Storer Clouston in that year's Proceedings of Orkney Antiquarian Society (volume IX). As Bruce Gorie has already said in a comment on picture #24204, the left-hand device of the ship comes from the arms of the Earls of Orkney and the right-hand lion is derived from the arms of the King of Norway. According to Clouston, the gold galley on blue ground was shown in a manuscript of the then Lord Lyon in 1542 as the arms of 'The Erle of Orknay of auld' and Clouston traces it further back to 1296. The Norwegian lion appears on the seal of the Community of Orkney of 1425. The 1931 grant was strictly speaking a confirmation of pre-existing arms which had been used to represent Orkney since before 1672, when an Act called upon the holders of arms to register them with the Lord Lyon. I'm not sure however if the two devices ever appeared on the same coat of arms before 1931, which may explain why the Earldom arms cropped up on things like china ornaments in the Twenties. But immediately after the coat of arms was confirmed in 1931, it found its way on to the cover of John Gunn's 'Orkney the Magnetic North', published 1932.
Added by Paul Sutherland on 02 February 2012
Thank you Paul. If I understand you correctly, the two quite different ships shown above have a common origin in the arms of the old Orkney earls. The move towards a Norse-type vessel is interesting if not necessarily significant in political terms. Bruce Gorie's comment on picture #24204 also referred to a 'double tressure flory counterflory' surrounding the ship in the old earldom arms and, by gum, if that isn't flory counterflory on a double tressure in the left-hand picture I don't know what is.
Added by Ian Hourston on 02 February 2012
That's right, Ian. As for the differences between the ships, I don't know much about heraldry, but I think there is a certain amount of scope for variation in depicting what may simply be referred to as a ship in the verbal description, though certain details may be significant. For example Clouston says the arms of the Earls of Caithness showed the ship with its sail set. The 1542 drawing of the Orkney arms showed the ship gold on a blue ground with a white sail furled and crossed oars. The Burgh of Stromness I think used the same basic design, though quite unofficially. I see that the arms Stromness Community Council obtained are slightly different, showing a Viking ship under sail and with oars in use above a set of scales.
Added by Paul Sutherland on 02 February 2012
Trying to find the coat of arms for the Hourston family
<< back
Added by Caitriona Shoer on 06 October 2022
Kirkwall
The picture will be live in a day or two, once the earlier pictures in the queue feed through.