Protect Yourself Against Trolls – Get A Celtic Pendant
Why A Celtic Pendant Is So Popular
A Celtic rings is a much sought after gift for browsers who are online jewellery shopping. However some of the pendants made in Orkney have much more age-old ideas behind the style and design.
The well-known Skara Brae pendant is modelled on graphics located on the walls of this 5000 year-old village whose dwellings now cling to the edges of the windswept sandy shore. Those who built Skara Brae, which was established further in from the coast when sea levels were lower, were Orkney’s first farmers.
One of the many crops they planted was bere, a basic form of barley that had been common in the UK from Neolithic until Viking times. Impressions of whole grains of bere were found on ceramics in a tomb in Unstan, Orkney, dating back to 3000BC. It is believed to be the oldest cultivated grain in the world. As recently as 1769 more bere than barley was grown in Scotland and it is still harvested in Orkney with a small amount in Shetland and Caithness in the far north of mainland Scotland. In Norway bere, referred to as bygg is still farmed where it might be called korn, as it was in Orkney.
There were lots of rites and rituals surrounding sowing seed and the cropping of bere. The few people believed to have the sowing hand were permitted to sow. A straw bitch or bikko was created from the last sheaf that was exhibited at the harvest home or muckle supper and then kept up high in the barn. In Norway this convention would guard the house from trolls
In these modern times no ceilidh, dance or harvest home would be complete with no serving of bannocks – griddle or girdle cakes – produced from bere. These are eaten with a portion of farmhouse cheese.
While online jewellery shopping for a Celtic pendant or Skara Brae earrings, pendant or cufflinks, spare a thought for the millers at Barony Mills in Birsay, Orkney. This glorious 19th century watermill still crushes bere grown on land owned by the mill’s trust as well as other farmers. The millers have just carried out shovelling and drying out 15 tons of bere. Their work will continue to grind this into beremeal.
In Skara Brae the farm owners of ancient times would use a quernstone to grind the grain by hand. And their necklaces were very different from the Celtic pendant. They were constructed from bone pins and beads in the New Stone Age, not gold or silver.
If you are online jewellery shopping you might want to have a look at an exclusive Celtic pendant which may only be seen on that website.
