I thought you might like this: Large Irish Folklore Collection National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project 765,821 manuscript pages, 13,899 photographs and 329 hours of audio are available here www.duchas.ie/en

Happy New Year! At midnight on Hogmanay, the Watch Stone will move from its position guarding the approach to the Ness of Brodgar to take a drink from Stenness loch. (Or so it is said!) Wishing you all a wonderful 2026, filled with folklore, fun and many a hike to an ancient site 💚🪨🎉

I just added some of my photos to the site map so you can get a bit of orientation on the site 👀

1/2 Took a 30 min break from driving today when the sky cleared and stopped by Beaghmore Stone Circles, not far from Omagh. Carbon dated to around 2,600 - 2,900 BC, with 7 circles (6 pairs) plus 10 stone rows & 12 burial cairns. 1,269 stones total. Ground was still frosted in the shade

We accidentally noticed these. Also in county Kerry I believe.

Anyone craving more folklore and folk horror in their bluesky lives might like the starter pack I made. I'm always adding to it, especially trying to include artists, musicians, performers, morris dancers, mummers, etc. Let me know if I'm missing anyone :) go.bsky.app/LXSZqSM

It’s the last #StandingStoneSunday of the year … thinking back to some fantastic sites I saw for the first time in 2025. This is one of the very best - beautiful Uragh on the Beara peninsula, Co Kerry.

Silbury Hill has a baby #StandingStoneSunday

Long before humans created their own richly symbolic environments, we had to navigate meaning and encounters amidst the chaos of nature.

I’m really enjoying this book and appreciate the Roger Martlew bit for his work on Mull! I was with him on his Craven dig in Yorkshire impossibly many years ago, such a great scientist and human.

Excellent Christmas book haul from @johnnymains.co.uk @stonelands.bsky.social @naominovik.bsky.social and Claire Keegan.

Thank you, @stonelands.bsky.social

This year we had a drummer to drum up the sun (behind the clouds) at Hilly Fields stone circle in southeast London. It may be modern but it’s still a stone circle right. Wherever you are, happy solstice! Hooray for the return of the light.

It’s one of the few experiences that is literally shared by all humanity, across tens of thousands of years. The Sun Circle in Tucson.

I & several other researchers have identified what we have reasonable grounds to believe are pictorial depictions of #SolarEclipses, &or #SolarEclipseSymbolism, carved into the #MegalithArt of #Dowth, #Knowth & #Loughcrew. We arrived at our #SolarEclipse hypotheses independently of each other.

People have been marking winter solstice for a very long time. Some 7,000 years ago, the people who built Goseck in Germany aligned the site's entrances to face sunrise and sunset at this darkest time of year. An ancient honouring of the return of the light. (Pic © LDA Sachsen-Anhalt, Gert Pie)

Delighted to receive the North American edition of ‘Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places’ by Fiona Robertson @stonelands.bsky.social! Beautiful cover!

It's #Saturnalia ! Here's the satyr Silenus, companion to Bacchus the god of wine, who's inebriated face appears on this 3rd century AD #Roman copper alloy wine jug Found beneath Dorchester Marks and Spencers in 1936 and now @dorsetmuseum.bsky.social 📷 May 2021 Happy #FindsFriday #FridayFeeling

Final cover - #WritingOnTheMove, out in February from Berghahn. If you're a #travelwriting studies person and you've any sway with a university library, ask them to order it! It's got loads of good stuff inside, I promise!

Out on the tip of the island where liminal lands dot the sea; a fascinating look at the ancient historic landscape of Cornwall at this time of the turning year.

I have an article in the @theguardian.com today about winter solstice in West Penwith – includes a stunning picture by Carolyn Kennett of Chûn Quoit with the midwinter sun setting into Carn Kenidjack! www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/dec/18/west-cornwall-perfect-place-celebrate-winter-solstice

I love the flint mace-head that was found in the nearby tomb of Knowth as well!

Inside the mother of all Neolithic tombs ... Newgrange in Ireland. This photo, from excavator Michael O'Kelly's book, shows the chamber (with spiral carving) that is illuminated via the famous roofbox opening at winter solstice. A 5,200-yr-old celebration of the return of the sun. #TombTuesday

The Merry Maidens, West Penwith

I was there a few years ago - found the stones quite by accident. Originally known as the Four Stones, it was renamed in 1903 when a fifth stone was re-erected to enhance the skyline.

It's a magical place. My sketch from late last year

Last week I visited Duddo Five Stones, aka the Singing Stones, for the first time - wow! Beautiful weathered megaliths crowning the hill, with Northumberland spreading far and wide, and the Cheviots on the horizon. The stones even whistled for us! Very nice indeed #StandingStoneSunday

Done! (Outer Hebrides, Scotland)

Just so honoured that STONE LANDS has been nominated for @currentarchaeology.bsky.social Book of the Year - please vote for me! Your vote really will make a difference archaeology.co.uk/vote

Treen barrow (the best-preserved one) – a Neolithic entrance grave near the amazing Gurnard's Head pub on the road to St Ives (and the spectacular headland/coast path). Makes for the perfect day out really. #TombTuesday

Before bed here, just a few images from the day we walked up that shell strewn pathway on a very dark but beautiful afternoon. Before it began to rain.

Hello Fiona! Kevin from Canada here. I couldn’t help but notice this photo you took near Tobermory seemed oddly familiar. I was standing in almost the same spot when I took this photo of my wife, Wendy, and her friend Jennifer last May during a visit to Scotland. It’s a small world indeed!

Congratulations to Wynn Griffith @supersequin.bsky.social who won our random draw! Your signed and dedicated books from @stonelands.bsky.social and ourselves will be in the post to you shortly.

All of the original artworks on my Etsy shop are currently on sale at 20% off, including this watercolour of the two standing stones on the Île de Sein, Brittany that are known as 'Les Causers', or 'The Talkers'. Check them out here: shorturl.at/HDzSI #StandingStoneSunday

A Scottish one as it's St Andrew's Day: Baliscate stone row above Tobermory on Mull. There's a path of oyster shells leading up to the field of the stones – very nice. #StandingStoneSunday

Megaliths, Colonsay, Scotland #StandingStoneSunday

They march up and down the hill perpetually Some of the Stalldon stone row #StandingStoneSunday #Dartmoor

Author Fiona Robertson is our guest today, we discuss Fiona's book Stone Lands and some of the ancient sites that inspired the book and feature in it. We chat about memory, landscape, loss and enduring love. We talk about ancient sites and the magic of the old stones. stoneclub.rocks/podcast

Thrilled to receive this endorsement of ‘Stories of the Stones’ from Fiona Robertson @stonelands.bsky.social, author of the excellent ‘Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places’!

🏆Win🏆the perfect Christmas 🎄 gift for a stones enthusiast: STONE LANDS (on the Waterstones and Telegraph Best Books of 2025 lists) AND ALSO THE OLD STONES (The Megalithic Portal guide, winner of Current Archaeology Book of the Year) To win a signed (and dedicated if you like) copy of both books… 1/

P.S. We are running two separate draws with two lots of prizes, one on Bsky and one on Instagram so please do enter both if you like.

* Like and repost the above post ⬆️⬆️⬆️ * Follow @stonelands.bsky.social and @megalithic.bsky.social if you don't already * Have a UK address where we can send the books. Deadline: midnight on Friday 28th November. Winner to be drawn over the weekend. Good luck! 2/

Sweyne's Howes North on the Gower peninsula: tumbledown though not as ruinous as nearby Sweyne's Howes South! Was this Sweyne who came to be associated with the prehistoric burial chambers on Rhossili Down the same Viking who gave his name to Swansea (Sweyns-ey – 'Sweyne's island')? #TombTuesday

Daily #Wales with a little not-so-random archaeology from the village… Oh, it’s #TombTuesday!

From Heel to Eternity on #StandingStoneSunday Gazing down the Avenue, past the Heel Stone sarsen, to distant Stonehenge #Wiltshire, as the sun begins to set on a cold November afternoon 📷 2025

And one of your favourites according to your book! This video embedded in google maps provides a lovely bird's eye view of the stones... maps.app.goo.gl/EiDMuo9gKrFG...

My uncle Trevor gave my dad a fresh block of driftwood from his caravan in Somerset, so you know what that means - more particularly cursed carved phantoms..! 👁️ wellswoodcarving.bigcartel.com

Recent trip to Boscawen-ûn, that quartz stone was more glittery and gorgeous than ever. Whatever the weather, it picks up the light. #StandingStoneSunday

The central 'Devil's Arrow'. This photo is from late August, when I arrived tyres burning, early morning, straight off of the A1M, en route to a Dig near Ripon. They are truly an incredible sight and so beautifully incongruous amongst the ephemera of the modern day. #StandingStoneSunday

Lovely review of STONE LANDS by the Historical Novel Society (thank you so much HNS!). Read it here: historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/ston...