Two Book Tango: The Old Stones and Voyager

Welcome to another installment of Two Book Tango: an ongoing series in which Unbound Worlds pairs two titles that go well together. Today’s pairing is The Old Stones: A Field Guide to the Megalithic Sites of Britain and Ireland, and Diana Gabaldon’s Voyager (25th Anniversary Edition).

Stonehenge might be one of the United Kingdoms’ best known landmarks, but this ancient circle is but one of more than a thousand standing stones, scattered throughout Britain and Ireland. While they’re commonly associated with the Celtic priesthood known as the druids, the truth is that the majority of these mysterious monuments were built thousands of years ago in the prehistoric path, well before the arrival of the Celts.

If the Celts didn’t build them, then who did? According to The Old Stones: A Field Guide to the Megalithic Sites of Britain and Ireland, our stone builders were mobile: hunter-gatherers who likely wandered far and wide across a landscape dominated by thick forests, flood plains, and long extinct animals. Gathering and erecting these monuments took effort and organization, though, and they were likely the only permanent fixed points in an otherwise peripatetic life.

The stones served many purposes, many of them seemingly religious in nature based on artifacts and remains gathered in and around the sites. Some of these great edifices are oriented in such a way that they align with with positions of the sun, or the stars. Our ancient stoneworkers may have been illiterate, but they were not ignorant.

The stone-builders are gone, but the people who came after them have used them in their own ways, be it by incorporating them into their own religious belief systems, or cannibalizing them for raw materials. While an appreciation for the UK’s prehistoric past seems to have at least slowed down the latter, the former continues to this day, as witnessed by the pagan pilgrims who gather around Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice. 

The stones have earned their place in popular culture, as well. While Stonehenge remains the stand-out star (Who can forget “This is Spinal Tap”?), other stone circles both real and imagined have appeared on stage and page. In Diana Gabaldon’s historical fantasy series Outlander, nurse Claire Randall is transported to war-torn 17th century Scotland after passing through a stone circle known as Craigh na Dun. (The most recent offering in the series, a 25th anniversary edition of Voyager, is set in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. There are no ancient stones at the battle site, but the 2000 year-old  Clava Cairns are only a mile away.)

While Gabaldon’s circle is a work of fiction, it doesn’t stop her many fans from looking for it. Such is the power and mystery of these ancient monuments even now. None of us can’t travel back in time, but the stones remain, in their own way, portals to an ancient past.