Island life is defined by its association with the sea. One plentiful resource for the coastal dweller is the rich abundance of the sea garden, seaweed. Perhaps seaweed is so abundant and commonplace that it fails to be recognised for its significance to the experience of coastal life. The kelp industry changed the isles forever and neither the lairds or the tenants tending the kelp pits could deny seaweed’s centrality in their existence.
However, despite its ubiquity seaweed has been regarded as strange, occupying the liminal zone of the shore, not always visible, and our relationship with it is different from that with land plants. This is an attempt to try and disentangle the social history of seaweed in Orkney, revealing a life on the edge, looking to the sea’s garden as provider of food for soil, animal and human; as fuel for the hearth and the imagination; and an industrial wheel of fortune.
ORKNEY SEAWEED STORIES 