March, 2007

St Clement’s Church, Rodel, Harris, Western Isles

TOUCHSTONES

St Clement’s Church in Rodel is located at the very southern tip of the Isle of Harris. It is a classic small cruciform church with north and south transepts, the nave located at the western end and the choir at the eastern end. Under its roof are some of the finest medieval wall tombs in Scotland. The chief of the Macleod clan of Harris built the church in the early 16th century and his descendent, Alexander Macleod, rebuilt it in 1758 after its destruction during the Protestant Reformation.

While photographing the Calanais sites on Lewis, my friend and advisor on all things involving the Western Isles Ian Wilson, suggested we take a day trip to Rodel. He knew of my love of photographing ecclesiastical structures and thought I might find this small church interesting. And it was. I spent the better part of the day working in and around the small building on that first trip and returned each time I returned to Lewis and Harris. While inside working a group of scholarly-looking tourists entered and began examining the wall tombs of the Harris Clan chiefs. It was interesting listening to their speculations as they tried to work out the meanings of the carvings along the wall. It also got me thinking about the language in the stone. The carvings on the tombs and slabs appear obvious in meaning – but are they? What is the significance of the skull with a jawbone, versus the skull without one? What do the other symbols actually mean? Have we lost the ability or the vocabulary to “read” these stone carvings?

Set on the sill in the window of the church is a Celtic crucifix, something I’d never seen before or since. We are all familiar with the Celtic cross – a cross with a circle surrounding the junction of the vertical and horizontal arms. Many of us grew up with this symbol in the Presbyterian Church. The surprise is the carving of the figure of Christ hanging on the cross. It seems an obvious layering of symbols as one culture appropriates another culture’s symbols and layers on its own. Is it that simple?

The recognition of the layering of symbols was a turning point for me as I began to look at all I was photographing in Scotland in a different light. Aerial photographs of the main site at Calanais show that these stones form almost an exact Celtic cross. They are set in a north, south, east, and west alignment with a circle of stones around the center where the two arms cross. Clearly the symbol of the cross and circle existed in these islands thousands of years before Christianity was brought to its shores. My guess is that when Christianity arrived in Scotland the Celtic cross already existed as a powerful symbol. It was similar enough to the traditional cross that it became incorporated into the liturgy of symbols of the new religion. It was a comfortable symbol to the inhabitants of the islands and highlands. The symbol became a Christian symbol when the figure of Christ was placed on the early symbol. When the upheaval of the Protestant reformation came in 1560, the Christ figure was removed from the Celtic cross and the Celtic cross became the symbol for the new form of Christianity. Interestingly, removing the Christ figure reverted the cross back to the original form and imbued it with a new meaning.

In the north transept of the same church are five tomb slabs that stand like sentinels against the wall. Illuminated by a small window at the end of the north wall four appear to be medieval tombstones removed from the floor of the church and the fifth is an 18th century tombstone brought in from the graveyard. Four have carvings of knight’s swords and symbols as well as letters cover the fifth stone. It is the six symbols on this one that interested me. The first I cant make out, then comes a skull and hourglass, and on the bottom row are crossed bones, a bell (?) and what appear as spades of peat shovels. I can describe these symbols but I can’t “read” them. Perhaps the illiterate farmers and fishermen of the 17th and 18th centuries would have readily read these symbols and understood who this person was and what was important to remember of this person’s life.

There I stood, staring at a blending of cultures, a blending of symbols. I made the photographs. They remained throughout the editing process for TOUCHSTONES because I liked the images, in and of themselves, and because of the questions they brought to mind. I still look at these symbols and wonder.