Highlights from Events 2013

There was the story of exploration in the Arctic and in the depths of the sea, on Greenland’s glaciers and in the space probes pushing outwards through the Solar System. There was the search for the people of the lands beneath the waves, and the story of a journey through mountainous seas, running before a hurricane. There was the physics of the organ pipe, the mathematics of dancing – and the story of a mathematician who recorded information about very old traditional dances. There were progress reports on new technologies of wave and tide, demonstrations of the weffects of extreme pressures, stories of seabird survival and a heartbreaking picture of current losses. From the sand and the tide in the Solway to the coruscating aurora over the Thurso River, there were stories and pictures in a programme of over 60 events. And the haunting strains of The Flooers o’ the Forest, sung in the the drawing room of Skaill House, looked back 500 years to what was lost at Flodden – and what survived in scholarship and philosophy, to reach into the age of Descartes and Galileo.