This is a short telling of the journey of the Orkney #Vole.
It is the story of how a European species of rodent, the Orkney Vole, travelled from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands to Orkney over 5,000 years ago, without actually setting foot in Britain.
No convincing explanation for this phenomenon has been researched or provided.
To understand how this was possible, the formations on the floor of the North Sea must be explained.
At the end of the ice age the North Sea didn't really exist. There was a deep trench along the Norwegian Coast called the Norwegian Channel, and deep water features along the east coast of England and Scotland.
Between those deep water coastal features was a ridge of land linking the well-known Doggerland in the southern North Sea to the now-removed Land-East-of-Shetland.
There was no direct access from the #Atlantic Oceanic waters through the Dover Strait, or between Scotland and Orkney, or between Orkney and Shetland.
Animals, and people, were able to walk from mainland Europe onto Doggerland until 10,000BP when rising seas connected deep water on the English coast with the Norwegian Channel around the south coast of Dogger Bank.
Animals inhabiting Doggerland, and the Land-East-of-Shetland would have been able to migrate from mainland Europe to Orkney without passing through Britain.
The Orkney Vole was one of those animals that did.
At about 3000BC, as rising sea-levels surged down the Norwegian Channel, and through the Dover Strait, the narrowest region of land separating #Doggerland from Land-East-of-#Shetland collapsed.
This event was followed by the swift removal of loose sands and gravels from the whole of the northern North Sea.
In this process, land bridges joining Scotland to Orkney and Orkney to Shetland were removed.
People who had been nomadic shepherds living in Orkney for summer months were denied access to the place where they had built stone circles, and Cairns.
Some people remained on Orkney, either by accident or on purpose. They were marooned on the islands and as a result they set about developing the more permanent and weatherproof settlements of Skara Brae and the Ness of Brodgar.
A detailed account, with substantial evidence is in the blog:-
http://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-orkney-riddle.html
#Orkney #Neolithic #archaeology #Prehistory #northsea #Orkneyvole
