Events for September 4, 2025

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James-Millent-photo-by-AnneTetzlaff

THE EMERGENCE OF THE QUANTUM WORLD

Phoenix Cinema, Pickaquoy, Kirkwall

It gives us lasers and computer chips, and it explains the bonds that build atoms into materials and the forces that power the sun; and Heisenberg completed the first stage in the island of Helgoland 100 years ago. The story starts with something familiar – heating an object and observing the heat it emits. To make the calculations fit, Max Planck suggested that radiation – till then pictured as waves – comes in tiny units; he called them ‘quanta’. The outcome was the groundwork for the whole of modern physics, as Prof. James Millen of King’s College London explains.

£5 – £7

Hafliði-Halldórsson

COOKING LAMB ICELANDIC STYLE

Overblikk Restaurant, UHI Orkney, East Road, Kirkwall

Icelanders grill it in the summer, make soup in the autumn and serve it specially at Christmas and Easter. The sheep graze on mountainous pastures on lush green grass, wild herbs and fresh berries, which gives the meat a distinctive flavour. Master chef Hafliði Halldórsson, managing director of the Icelandic Lamb cooperative, who grew up on a family farm, describes some Icelandic ways of using the meat in the kitchen, and shows how to make cured lamb and lamb fillet with lamb jus.

£12

Prof. Andrew Briggs

THE PROMISE OF QUANTUM COMPUTING

Phoenix Cinema, Pickaquoy, Kirkwall

It’s an utterly different type of computing, which we’re told will make it possible to do things that have never been done before. But how does it work? And what are the dangers? And when will the first working machines arrive? Prof. Andrew Briggs of Oxford University is working on the development of quantum computers. He explains the underlying ideas and the application of AI for taking them forward.

£5 – £7

Raziskovanje-v-naravi–Andrej-Detela

TIME FROM UPSTREAM

King Street Halls, Kirkwall

We often picture the quantum world as ‘uncertain’, a world of probabilities and randomness. Not so, says Slovenian physicist Andrej Detela. It's more like a dance, with entangled particles part of a deeper layer of harmony – which we break when we interact with them. To understand, he says, we have to look afresh at the concept of disorder – entropy – that has dominated physics since the 19th century. Alongside it we must put the concept of order, syntropy – which leads to a second stream of time.

£5 – £7
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SEAWEED AFTER STORMS

Phoenix Cinema, Pickaquoy, Kirkwall

We’re used to seeing glistening heaps of kelp thrown up on the beach by a strong storm. With extreme weather events becoming more frequent, how are seaweed forests coping? Researchers in seven regions, from Portugal up to Orkney, are working together to find out. They’re finding that some seaweed forests are surprisingly resilient, with Orkney showing differences from elsewhere – as Ruby George from Swansea University explains.

£5 – £7
Meg-Rodger—-The-Birlinn-Yarn-Company—norse-cloak

WOOL’S NEW HORIZONS

The Old Library, Laing Street, Kirkwall

In an age of technology, wool is back – taking advantage of that very technology to open up new products and new markets for yarn spun from traditional breeds of sheep. Visitors from islands along the old Norse sea-routes have come to Orkney to show what they are doing and find out about Orkney’s own developments.

£12

Great auk cover-Bruce Pearson

THE LAST OF THE GREAT AUKS

Phoenix Cinema, Pickaquoy, Kirkwall

It was the only flightless seabird in the northern hemisphere, and the last one in Orkney was shot in Papa Westray in 1813. Paleontology researcher Ilari Pätilä from the University of Helsinki tells the story of the great auk – and also some of the other magnificent seabirds from the prehistoric past, among them the ancient albatrosses whose fossils were first discovered in Britain.

£5 – £7
MinhyongKim-byPhilippAmmon-Bench-1536×914

A WORLD OF SHAPES OR A WORLD OF NUMBERS?

King Street Halls, Kirkwall

Geometry deals with shapes, algebra with numbers. To bring them together fascinates Prof. Minhyong Kim, director of Edinburgh's International Centre for Mathematical Sciences. He is a leader in arithmetic geometry, which seeks to build the familiar world of geometry from deep number structures. He also has a long interest in physics, and its huge challenge: how to reconcile quantum theory with Einstein’s general relativity? Is the question, he asks: is the universe algebraic or geometric?

£5 – £7

Prof. Karen Johnson

BRINGING LIFE BACK TO THE SOIL

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

Soil is much more than a mass of sand and clay, says Prof. Karen Johnson of Durham University – it is a mass of life, with a myriad of tiny micro-organisms carrying out a myriad of processes, and all adding to the life and potential of whatever we decide to grow. If we listen to what the soil needs and feed the soil rather than the plants, then plants and soil will both succeed.

£5 – £7
Image-by-Hilary-de-Vries

ENTANGLEMENT

The Orkney Club, Harbour Street, Kirkwall

The synthesizer trio QRM perform a non-stop piece of electronic music heavily inspired by 70s/80s musical genres, shaped by their own style, accompanied by specially-created art from Hilary de Vries. The music follows quantum themes including entanglement, wavelike particles, and sometimes-random event outcomes.

£10

IcelandicLamb-5

ISLANDS OF SHEEP

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

More than a millennium ago, Norse settlers brought native sheep to Faroe and Iceland and began a long tradition. Its value continues today, with new markets opening for the meat and wool. Dorthea Joensen works for the Faroese Agricultural Agency which collects the wool, and also works on her own family farm. Jens Ivan í Gerðinum is an agricultural researcher, with degrees from Aberdeen and Copenhagen, and a farmer and sheep breeder and a judge in the national tup ring. Hafliði Halldórsson is a master chef and managing director of the Icelandic Lamb cooperative, which recently took part in a project which highlighted nutritional levels in the meat.

£5 – £7
kessock-bridge-and-inverness

IT’S THE WAY THAT YOU BUILD IT

King Street Halls, Kirkwall

Behind every big construction project is a massive world of logistics planning, movements, and producing materials. It all goes by the name of temporary works, and it’s anything used to support people, plant and the ground, and to test things onsite. Chartered civil engineer Jemma Quin has worked on airports, buildings, electrical substations and railways. The work at times has involved varied challenges – like having to demolish and rebuild a bridge in a weekend.

£5 – £7

Decca portable gramophone1

HIS MASTER’S VOICE SO BRIGHT AND CLEAR

King Street Halls, Kirkwall

A hundred years ago gramophone record technology made a breakthrough with electrical recording. The wax master disc was still stamped out mechanically – but the recorded sound could now be amplified, filtered and balanced electronically and the process was under way that would lead to LPs and CDs and all the digital forms of today. Prof. Tom Stevenson tells the story, with recorded examples.

£5 – £7
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NORDIC TUNES FOR ORKNEY JOURNEYS

The Orkney Club, Harbour Street, Kirkwall

Sit back and enjoy traditional music from Orkney and other parts of the north - from Norway, Faroe, Shetland, played by Lesley MacLeod (fiddle), Fran Gray (accordion) and Hamish Bayne (concertina), with Tom Ward (concertina and small pipes) making a welcome return to Orkney; and meet some of the northern guests taking part in the Festival.

£10