Setting Far After Gold in the north west of Scotland was both better,
because I had spent many holidays there, and worse because there wasn’t an
equivalent large settlement like Dublin. http://www.ullapool.com/ullapool-history is a starting point for the history
of the area and the latest large scale maps show where the settlements and
brochs, rivers and fords once were and sometimes, but not always, still are.
I could describe the
landscape because I’d seen it, as long as I made allowances for the changes
that have taken place. Forests were much larger around the eleventh century and
land was undrained and often swampy. Fords and known tracks were important for
travellers and travel by sea was deemed much easier than travel overland. I had
experienced the weather of the north west in the summer months and late October,
early November; research told me which animals once lived there. We no longer
have wolves in Scotland, but wolves and bears were certainly present back then.
Orkney is another of those places
where research pays dividends. I’ve never been, but archaeology provides a
great deal of information about dwellings, artefacts used, crops grown and
where settlements were. Google Earth is fantastic for giving an author a
feeling for the size of a place and the geography around it. The satellite
imagery will give a very good idea of where you might beach a ship or find a
way through the mountains and contour lines of maps will suggest whether you
might end up in a bog or fall over a cliff face.
