Stromness Museum at OISF
The Orkney International Science Festival (OISF) 2026 festival programme has a variety of events related to our current Sea Stories exhibition and our permanent collections, especially our Hudson's Bay Company and Dr John Rae artefacts. Further details and tickets for all events are available online via the OISF website.
THE MYSTERY OF THE STRONSAY MONSTER
Talk at Kirkwall Baptist Church, Victoria Street on Thu 3 Sept at 11.30am-12.30pm. Dr Howie Firth will tell the story of this strange marine carcass that washed ashore in 1808, partial remains of which are shown in Sea Stories, and how it inspired great nineteenth century scientific and literary minds.
SWONA ON A MORNING TIDE
Film at Orkney Theate, KGS Kirkwall on Sat 5 Sept at 10.00am-11.00am. Our Museum Climate Change Exhibitions and Outreach Officer Katy Firth joins Selena S. Kuzman in her new film to meet William Annal, whose family owned the island for several generations, and naturalist Penny Martin. They are joined by students from Gordonstoun School, visiting to help restore its buildings and study the island’s story with their housemaster Dan McLean.
FINDING JOHN RAE
Show at Orkney Theatre, Kirkwall on Tue 8 Sept at 9.00pm-10.00pm. The story of the chain of events that caused John Rae's life to fall apart and how the pieces eventually came back together, told by Rae's gret-gret-grandneice Jane Hamilton, with readers Dave and Laura Grieve and fiddle player Owen Griffith.
WHERE MIGHT THE CABLE HAVE RUN?
Talk at King Street Halls, Kirkwall on Wed 9 Sept at 2.00pm-3.00pm. Dr Fleur Ward describes Dr John Rae's account of the terrain once mooted but never enacted as a potential route for the first tranatlantic telegraph cable: via Shetland, Faroe, Iceland and Greenland.
JOHN RAE AND THE NORHTERN TELEGRAPH ROUTE
Concert at St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall on Wed 9 Sept at 4.00pm-5.00pm. Four brand-new works by northern composers – inspired by Dr John Rae’s northern telegraph survey of 1860 aboard the Fox and performed by Nordic Viola and the Faroese chamber ensemble Aldubáran alongside poetry by Lesley Harrison.
