Callanish

Callanish itself is a bit unusual...a cruciform shape has evolved, a couple long avenues, a circle, a ruined dolmen within the circle. Hundreds of years of use, re-use, changing perspectives and interests. Unlike some other major sites, the stones themselves, Lewissian schist, I think, are of interest as well.

Callanish evidently was visited by the 1st century BC Roman, Diodorus Siculus--much closer in time to us than Callanish's builders--who wrote "...beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island...situated in the north...inhabited by the Hyperboreans...and there is both a magnificent sacred precinct...and a notable temple...spherical in shape ... The moon as viewed from this island appears to be but a little distance from the earth...and the god visits the island every nineteen years and...dances continuously through the night until the rising of the Pleiades." The site's orientation involves some of the local geography, the moon, and indeed one of the avenues points to the Pleiades (a celestial event).

Model of Callanish from visitor center...cruciform, avenues,

circle, etc.

Beautiful rock

View from the "natural" temple

Part of circle and transept

Vicki

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