What's on at Stromness Museum

Sea Stories brings together objects which have rarely been on public display before, either from our Museum stores or loaned from elsewhere, to explore Orkney’s deep-rooted maritime connections. From shipwrecks to sea magic, from whale strandings to the Southern Ocean, the thread which ties these objects together is their shared connection to the sea.  

As part of this nautical journey, Sea Stories is displaying partial remains of the ‘Stronsay Beast’ for the first time in Orkney. This ‘Sea Monster’ marine carcass washed ashore on the island of Stronsay, Orkney in 1808, and quickly became the subject of widespread scientific curiosity and public fascination with the natural world. Unlike any creature familiar to the island’s seafaring community, it captured the interest of Victorian natural historians and more recent renewed attention in local media, research papers and a public talk at the Orkney International Science Festival. The Stronsay Beast specimen exhibited is on loan from the National Library of Scotland and shown alongside a facsimile of the letter it was originally sent with, by the playwright Joanna Baillie to her friend Lady Byron in 1815.  

Other stories that feature include: 

• William Speirs Bruce’s Scottish National Antarctic Expedition aboard the Scotia in 1902-1904, with the ship’s bell on public display for the first time. 
• ‘A Tale of Two Stromnesses’: Our namesake 8,000 miles away, a former whaling station on the island of South Georgia. 
• The iconic Birsay Whalebone sculpture that stood on the clifftop near Skiba Geo for more than 150 years, until a storm in 2023. Birsay Heritage Trust is now raising money to commemorate the whalebone with a bronze statue. 
• Bessie Millie of Brinkies Brae in Stromness, the ‘seller of winds’ who met Sir Walter Scott in 1814 and was immortalised as ‘Norna of the Fitful Head’ in his bestselling novel The Pirate. 
• ‘Wreck Mermaid’ Kathleen Scott from North Ronaldsay, a pioneering female scuba diver who took part in the 1970’s underwater excavation of the Svecia, shipwrecked in 1740.  

Sea Stories runs until April 2027. Stromness Museum is grateful to the following organisations for helping to make this exhibition possible: 

BAM construction, Siemens Energy, SSEN, UHI Archaeology Institute, TRANSECTS research project, Orkney Heritage Society, National Library of Scotland.