Orkney Image Library

Crests on Orkney books

Paul Sutherland's helpful comments on picture #26091 induced me to pull 'The Magnetic North' off my shelf to take a closer look at the crest on its front cover (above left). The next book on the shelf came out as well; it was 'The Orkney Book' of 1909, whose back cover (above right) also carries a crest, which I now looked at properly for the first time. All I knew was that Stanley Cursiter designed it - and what a fine 'logo' it is, evoking the past but still not 'dated'. I'd never before read the inscription around it, and having done so wasn't much wiser. BRANDR AF BRANDI BRENN. Rolls off the tongue quite nicely, but what does it mean and what's its relevance to the book? Google to the rescue! Forgive me if you know this already, as some viewers undoubtedly will, but it's Icelandic for 'firebrand to firebrand burns' or, perhaps, fire spreads from tree to tree [until the whole forest is aflame]. Apparently it's part of the 57th saying of Har - a semi-mythical figure in Icelandic writing, much given to sayings - which is interpreted to mean speech, or knowledge, goes from person to person (hardly an amazing insight) or, in a more roundabout, not to say hard-to-follow, interpretation: how they speak is what distinguishes one person from another, the wise from the silly etc. Cursiter may have used it to suggest that readers of The Orkney Book will receive the fire of knowledge from its contributors, but I'm just guessing.

Related Sites: Kirkwall East Church