Orkney’s Silver Bangles, Carols and Yuletide Trees
Most UK Jewellery Shops Aren’t a Match For Orkney Jewelers
Silver bangles made within Orkney remember our cultural links with Norse history. Two exceptional Christmas tokens have arrived in Orkney to mark a friendly relationship between local communities which has bonded these islands with Norway since the Viking Age. Each year the people of Hordaland provide us with Christmas trees to stand inside and outside St Magnus Cathedral. Silver bangles and bracelets depicting St Magnus’ window sell amazingly well in the UK and overseas.
While London, Edinburgh and New York each receive a Christmas tree from Norway; Orkney is presented with a pair. The tree which had been lit in front of the cathedral on Saturday was provided by the county of Hordaland, that’s been twinned with Orkney Islands Council for 26 years, whilst the smaller-sized tree placed within the cathedral comes from the folks of Grimstad, that has a special connection with Orkney’s history.
Viking earls St Magnus as well as his nephew Kale Kolssn, (born 1100) known subsequently as Earl Rognvald the constructor of St Magnus Cathedral , spent their youth as boys on the farm Bringsvrd at Grimstad in southern Norway, now in the county of Aust-Agder. It is in this particular forest that the tree meant for Orkney is felled.
Kale was born at the huge farm where his father Kol Kalessn was the king’s representative. He was wedded to Magnus’ sister Gunhild and was to become Earl Rognvald in Orkney on the martyrdom of his uncle Magnus. He put up the cathedral to honor his uncle.
In Grimstad the Fjre Kirke (church) on the farm is linked to St Magnus Cathedral although the present-day natural stone church built around 1150 by neighboring farmers updated the solid wood church that Magnus and Kale knew. In 1987 the 850th anniversary of the founding of St Magnus Cathedral was marked when the society sent a plaque and a tree to Kirkwall. And that’s the way the tree gifting custom started. Both church buildings were once in the Norwegian diocese of Trondheim.
Silver Bangles Open a Window on History
Grimstad has a population of nearly 20,000, much like the total number of inhabitants of Orkney, and is a maritime town set among many small isles. A renowned son of Grimstad was the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Writer Roald Dahl visited his grandfather and grandmother there and writer Knut Hamsun was a native of the community.
In the cathedral a Christmas service, which usually has standing room only offers carols and music from school choir and pipers of Orkney and performers from Norway. Just above them is the Rose windowpane that’s depicted on Silver bangles from our website.
If silver bangles are not your thing then certainly several of the other items of fine jewellery on our www.olagoriejewellery.com online site will please you. For other things with a Norse stimulus just click here.