Around the world

Limpets and jellyfish, cockles and mussels, oysters and snails… They have gone from being famine food or the food of the poor to expensive delicacies for recherché feasts. They may even become the staple foods of the future.

Before the comparatively recent arrival of modern industrial farming and global transport systems, famine was a constant possibility in Europe, as it still is over much of the world. Only the most privileged did/do not have to worry about starving to death. Farmers watched the sky and their fields and livestock, and prayed to a multitude of gods in an attempt to guard against bad weather and disease wiping out their crops and herds. The brutal demands of unscrupulous landlords for excessive rent and labour often made matters worse. Nowadays , we have the growing realisation that there are too many people for the planet to support in the way we are used to, and food in the future may be very different from today. Invertebrates may be the key to survival, as they have been for millennia in difficult situations. Invertebrates are animals without backbones, about 95% of all animals. This includes cockles and mussels and oysters and limpets.

It is weird to think that many of the foods scavenged in the wild by starving peasants or hunter-gatherers in marginal environments have become much-prized delicacies, or suggested as a possible source of protein for the future. In Orkney, limpets (Patella vulgata) grow on every rock. Limpets were normally used as fish bait but were eaten as ‘famine food’ in bad years. They are considered to be quite nutritious, although rather chewy. Yet in some parts of the world limpets are regarded as a delicacy. On the island of Madeira, they actually have a limpet festival, where the shellfish are served grilled in their shells and flavoured with garlic and lemon.  

I cannot imagine why anybody would want to eat snails (Helix pomatia) if they weren’t starving. I found them just like small pieces of chewing gum in a strong garlic sauce. I wouldn’t serve them at my feast. I would feed them to my pig and roast the pork. Flora Thompson in ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, Penguin Modern Classics 1973, Chapter I page 24, mentions being sent out to collect snails to fatten the family pig. However, snails have been popular treats for millennia. One of my favourite letters by the Roman writer Pliny the Younger was to his friend Septitius Clarus, who hadn’t turned up to a dinner invitation. It mentions snails as one of the hors d’oevres he had missed. Mind you, the Romans considered sows’ udders and boiled parrot to be delicacies, so one wonders about their tastes.

When Charles Dickens was writing his novels commenting on life in 19^th century London, oysters  (Ostrea edulis) were the food of the poor, in fact, according to his character Sam Weller in the Pickwick Papers, eating oysters was a clear sign of poverty. Oysters are now an expensive treat. Wild oyster stocks have been depleted and we have to farm them, as indeed the Romans did. There is also an interesting debate at the moment about whether vegans can eat oysters and mussels because they don’t have a central nervous system, or whether the concentrations of nerve tissue in various parts of their bodies count as a brain. 

And finally (for now), the most obviously invertebrate of all invertebrates is the jellyfish. When I read in a historical novel about people in 16^th century Japan eating jellyfish, I wasn’t sure whether the author was making it up. But my son was offered fried jellyfish as a special treat while on holiday in Malaysia. He said they didn’t taste of much but they looked like scrambled egg, and he clearly enjoyed them. They remind me of the description of human beings by an alien life form in a Star Trek episode: “big ugly bags of mostly water”. Somehow I don’t think that the future of human nutrition lies with jellyfish!

It’s August, and many people are going on holiday. Some of them will be seeking sunshine, sea and sand in the countries south of Britain. Some of them will be culture vultures, visiting interesting historical sites and taking selfies in front of the ruins. Some of them will be having a staycation in Britain, seeking to calm their psyche by spending time in wild places and getting the benefits of fresh air and solitude, as counselled by many a celebrity blogger and women’s magazine.

Well, they are all out of luck. Planet Earth is groaning under the numbers of humans. The climate has changed and it isn’t safe to go out in the sun around the Mediterranean this summer. Cruise liners now disgorge thousands of passengers at a time at famous cities. Those who go ashore don't get to meet the locals, who are all staying at home to avoid the crowds. They have to shuffle shoulder to shoulder with their fellow sightseers for an hour to get close enough to the historic object to actually see it, let alone take a picture of it. And the wild spaces of places like Scotland are now stuffed full of camper vans (so are their town car parks).

Don’t blame me. I told you so. Fifty years ago. It was clear to me half a century ago, when I was in my twenties, that the world population was rising too fast to be safe. I joined a charity known as “Population Countdown” and we tried to get people to think about it, but to no avail. In 1973 the world population was 4 billion; in 2023 it is 8 billion. Or if you prefer it, in 1973 there were 26 people per km² and now there are 54 people per km².

The result is exactly as predicted: global warming, rising sea levels, changes in weather which are wrecking harvests, flooding low-lying areas and turning marginal farmlands into deserts. Famine, plagues and war over scarce resources are historical constants, only this time we have brought it on ourselves. Like the covid pandemic, we were told it was going to happen, but we refused to listen.

And people still refuse to listen. Not just those who are only concerned with short-term profit or who are simply so woefully ignorant that they cannot understand that yes, it really is happening. There are plenty of well-intentioned folk who believe that becoming vegans and turning down the heating two degrees will do the trick by itself. When I have raised the subject I have met with reactions ranging from an embarrassed silence to quivering hostility. It just isn’t done to speak of it in many respectable middle-class circles.

Eating more plants is a very good idea. Condoms are an even better one.

PS If you want to know more about it, Population Matters have a good website.

I have had to do with many human sanitary arrangements in my time, but I have never met quite such an enchanting one as the Hillswick public toilet. It started with the choice collection of 18C earthenware chamber pots I had to catalogue in a museum. At one point I collaborated with an artist to reconstruct a Roman public toilet from the excavated remains at Verulamium (see Hertfordshire Archaeology & History vol.17). Then there was the collection of plum and blackberry pips which had been tipped down a medieval cesspit in St Albans. I regularly walk past the stone outlet shaft of a medieval toilet in the Bishop’s Palace in Kirkwall. Before the reclamation of the foreshore it would have emptied onto the beach, cleaned up every high tide.

I have used an earth trench while working on an excavation in the French countryside, and taken my turn emptying the ghastly drum from a chemical toilet while working on another dig in the English countryside. The deal was that if the girls did their turn emptying the loo, they got a turn driving the dumper truck as well as the boys. During lockdown when there was a shortage of toilet paper, I investigated the ultra-modern Japanese toilet, which if correctly programmed (I understand foreigners often get it wrong) will automatically wash and dry your bottom for you. Or flood the cubicle.

But never have I met with such a charming bog-house as this community-run public toilet in Hillswick, Shetland, with its forecourt filled with lavatory pans used as planters. A flowery delight!

Orkney has many very beautiful wildflowers, some of them quite famous, such as the Northern Marsh Orchid, and Primula Scotica, the Scottish primrose. But my favourite is the Creeping Willow, Salix repens. Its lemon yellow puffs in spring have an unsung beauty.

The first thing a visitor to Orkney notices is the lack of trees. This dates from prehistoric times, when agriculture and climate change combined to deforest the islands. The second thing is that various species of willow make up quite a large proportion of what trees there are. They can withstand the gales which lash the islands every winter, and are often used as windbreaks to allow taller trees to get started. But very few people are aware of a minute species of willow growing under their feet as they take a clifftop walk.

Walking along the cliff tops in South Ronaldsay in the cool morning sunlight, with skylarks singing far above in the infinite sky, violets and primroses grow along the cliff edge, the first of the spring flowers. And almost hidden among the dried stems of last year’s grasses are delicate little pale yellow puffs, the tiny catkins of creeping willow. Its weeny stems with their dark-green leaves lie flat along the ground, interwoven with the grass stems. Most of the plants along the cliff edge are miniaturised, I suppose because of the shallow layer of soil covering the stone, and the constant strong winds. It’s like a natural bonsai garden.

Creeping Willow is a shrub-like member of the willow family found in northern and western Europe especially on sand dunes, coastal heaths, and moorland. I had never heard of it before. I have one in a container in my garden now. It grows upright in the shelter of my house, but the catkins are the same fragile little yellow puffs.

The first tourists tend to arrive when the earliest spring flowers are over. In any case they do not usually walk on the wilder cliff tops of South Ronaldsay. So I don’t think these exquisite little flowers are going to be appearing on postcards or fridge magnets any time soon.

The Flotta altar front is one of my favourite Pictish carved stones from Orkney. It was found in 1871, re-used in the wall of a medieval church on the island of Flotta. The stone slab, broken in two halves, is carved with a simple but particularly beautiful cross with an interlaced pattern. It measures 165cm by 81 cm by 9cm. It is believed to be 8^th century in date and to come from the front of a Christian altar or a tomb.  There are slots on the back of the slab where side panels were fitted. A second slab with incised lines, found in the nearby churchyard in 2017, may have been the back of this altar/tomb.

The Picts produced very beautiful ‘symbol stones’: stone slabs carved with birds, fish and animals, and stylised symbols such as rods, mirrors and crescents. The meaning of these symbols remains undeciphered to date. Later carved stones include Christian symbols, like the Flotta stone. The Picts were the first Christians in Orkney.

Another altar stone from Orkney comes from the tiny island of Papa Stronsay which lies just off the island of Stronsay. The name “Papa Stronsay” suggests a settlement or monastery of Pictish monks, who were called “Papae” or “Fathers”. The sandstone slab was found during excavations in the nave of the 12C chapel of St Nicholas by Headland Archaeology in 1998. It had been re-used in the floor of the nave. Only part survives, and one corner is missing. It would have been about 30cm by 27cm and 4cm thick, probably part of a portable altar. It is decorated with a small compass-drawn circle in the centre and one in each of the surviving corners. Each circle contains a cross: the central cross and two of the corner crosses are saltire or diagonal crosses, the other surviving corner cross is a Roman or vertical cross.

The Flotta stone is on display in the National Museum of Scotland. Worth a visit.