Off the Beaten Track: Treasure Hunting in Scotland

Our guest guest this week is Gigi Pandian, the child of cultural anthropologists from New Mexico and the southern tip of India. After being dragged around the world during her childhood, she tried to escape her fate when she left a PhD program in favor of art school. But adventurous academic characters wouldn’t stay out of her head. Thus was born the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mystery series. Gigi was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant for her debut mystery novel, Artifact, which was released August 28, 2012. Connect with Gigi online at http://gigipandian.com/.

One of my favorite things about traveling is learning the history of a place. There are some settings that are so evocative of their pasts that it’s impossible to visit them without feeling that pull to the past.

Dunnottar Castle in Scotland is one such place. The first time I visited the ruins, I knew the cliffs where they stood would be a fantastic place to set a mystery—especially a mystery involving history.

Those cliffs along the eastern coast of the Scottish Highlands inspired more than dramatic fiction. They were the perfect place to build the strategic fortress of Dunnottar. Not only is it a remote location at the edge of the sea, but the land mass is actually removed from the mainland. You have to climb down steep cliffs and climb back up again to reach the castle.

In the seventeenth century, the treasure of the Scottish Crown Jewels was hidden at Dunnottar Castle. Going back even further in history, fortifications have existed on the site since Pictish times. The name “Dun” is Pictish for fort.

I first visited Dunnottar castle as a teenager, traveling with my mom on one of her research trips to Scotland. The sweeping landscape made an immediate impression on me, and I knew I’d be back for another adventure. Being there felt like traveling to another century, so it didn’t take much to imagine national treasures being smuggled into the castle as it once existed.

I love archaeological mysteries, so when I began writing a mystery novel, I started with the idea of a Pictish archaeological dig on the cliffs near the castle ruins. As I wrote more, the idea behind the mystery became more complex. I found myself weaving in history that I’d learned from my father, who’s from India, about Scotland’s historical connection to India via the British Empire’s occupation of India.

In Artifact, historian Jaya Jones travels from San Francisco to the British Library in London and on to a Pictish archaeological dig in the Highlands of Scotland, piecing together the secrets of a lost Indian treasure hidden in a Scottish legend from the days of the British Raj.

The next book in the mystery series will take Jaya and friends on a journey from San Francisco to south India on another treasure hunt. The most fun part of writing this series is that it gives me yet another excuse to travel!

Vikings, Secret Handshakes, and Kings – The History of the Sinclairs

In Australia we have a term for dogs that are of mixed breed – “bitsa” (as in bits of this and bits of that). Now, I’m not calling myself a dog, but if anyone looked at my family tree, we could well and truly be classified as bitsas. Norwegian, French, Irish, Welsh, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Scottish… you name a country, chances are my ancestors are from it or tried to conquer it. (Yeah, we have a few bloodthirsty conquerors in our closet).

The Sinclairs hark back to the days of the Vikings in Scandinavia. In 911, Rollo the Viking travelled from Norway to the northwest of France. That same year, in the church of Saint-Clair-sur-l'Epte, he signed a treaty with King Charles III the Simple of France to grant him the position of Count of Rouen. Let me just say, the powers of persuasion in my family are second to none. Rollo the Viking’s descendants became the dukes and duchy of Normandy.

The origins of the surname Sinclair comes from the church where the treaty was signed and in 1162, some family members settled in Scotland when Henry de St Clair of Roslin took over the lands in the north-west province of Lothian. A few generations later, Sir Henry Sinclair fought at the Battle of Bannockburn and in 1320 signed the Declaration of Arbroath that he, along with other influential men, sent to the Pope to initiate Scotland’s independence from England.

We liked to hang out with royalty (as opposed to being hung by royalty), especially with those from France, England and Scotland (perhaps that has trickled down to my young daughter who is obsessed with princesses). We also became earls in Orkney and Caithness in Scotland and have been involved in bloody battles such as the Battle of Hastings in England as part of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. We won, by the way. If I listed all the battles my family were involved with, we’d be here most of the day…

The Rosslyn Castle, situated seven miles (11 kilometres) south of Edinburgh, has been home to the Sinclairs since 1070 and still have in the family today. In 1115, the Sinclairs were involved with a group of knights who patrolled the roads during the Crusades to keep them safe. They became known as the Poor Knights of Christ, and later, King Baldwin II of Jerusalem granted them use of the old Temple of Solomon as their meeting place. The Poor Knights of Christ changed their name to the Knights Templar and so began the legend of a mysterious organisation that many believe launched the group we know today as the Freemasons.

Scotland is dotted with many remnants of our history, the most impressive one being Rosslyn Chapel (not to be confused with the castle of the same name) in Roslin. Built in 1446 by William Sinclair, the elaborate stone carvings are often referred to as “Bible in Stone.” Quite a few Sinclairs are buried there, fully clad in their suits of armour.

As with most family histories, not all the facts are available now, yet we do know that when the Scottish Sinclairs arrived in North America, most were illiterate, and so when asked by the census clerks how to spell their surname, they didn’t know how. Their thick Scottish accents also made it difficult to be understood, so many more variations of the surname were invented – Sinclere, Sinkler, Sinklaire and so forth.

Within half a century of arriving in North America, most clan members had changed their surname back to the correct spelling aside from a few who have remained Sinkler to this day. 

On my mother's side we were involved with the Spanish Armada and the Battle of Waterloo, so if you haven’t got the hint yet, don’t mess with my family or me – we know people.

I don’t know about you, but I find it fascinating to learn about family history. I think there are some legacies in our bloodlines that carry on through the generations.  Every time I hear Scottish bagpipes and drummers, I get shivers and feel the music pump through my veins, yet I’ve never set foot in the country. I’ve not invaded any countries or joined any secret organisations (yet), but my family’s history lives inside me. I’m a product of my ancestors, and they’re a part of me. I reckon that’s kinda cool. By the way, you may now refer to me as Countess Sinclair.

How about you? Have you ever looked into your family history? What did you discover?

At Last, We Meet

On my recent trip to the UK, I took a train to Edinburgh, Scotland, much anticipating the red and green plaid skirts and a few old tales about Mary, Queen of Scots. I expected to find a charming old city, but I didn’t expect to visit one of my favorite writers of all times: Robert Louis Stevenson. More so, when I was reading his books in Russian translation, in my ignorance, I thought him an Englishman. Not only was he a Scot, but Edinburgh was his hometown.

The Royal Mile – Edinburgh’s main street – leads down from the Edinburgh Castle, the former residence of legendary Mary Stuart, to the Scottish Parliament and the Holyrood Palace, which King James converted from a medieval monastery into a royal residence. Packed with little museums that feature everything from weaving to childhood toys, the Royal Mile can easily monopolize your attention, but it’s the little narrow side streets that lead to the off-the-beaten paths and undiscovered treasures. 

Edinburgh’s Writers’ Museum is one of them. You can’t even quite see it from the main drag; you have to be a wanderer at heart to find it. And perhaps, a writer too – to notice the hanging sign in the shape of a scribe, jotting down those precious words with an ink feather as fast as he can. A writer’s words are always fleeting, by quill or by keyboard. 

The entire first floor of the Edinburgh’s Writers’ Museum was all about Stevenson.

I've always loved Stevenson’s books and admired his poems. As a child, I liked his work so much, I even read the preface for The Treasure Island – and, surprisingly, found out we had something in common! We were both sickly kids who spent days in bed, watching others play outside while our own caretakers wouldn’t open our windows even a crack. He seemed to be susceptible to the cold and damp Edinburgh weather, I suffered from tonsillitis and pneumonia in the icy Russian winters. So we let ourselves get lost in books, invented our own little worlds and created imaginary friends, with whom we embarked on the most incredible adventures. I wrote mine down sometimes. I’m pretty sure he did the same. “When I suffer, stories are my salvation,” he wrote. “I take them like opium.” 

The son of Thomas Stevenson and Isabelle Balfour, Stevenson was born to a family of engineers. So was I. Only his engineering dynasty specialized in lighthouses while my kinfolk built planes, trains, and automobiles. He didn’t do well in technical sciences in school, and I spaced out in my math classes. He became a writer, and so did I. I even learned to write with a fountain pen in school.  

And now, we’ve met at last. 

Originally built in 1622 as a private home for one of the city's wealthiest families, the museum also hosts exhibitions to two more of Scotland's great literary figures: Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, whose books I also love. The dining room of Scott's North Castle Street home has been reconstructed, complete with the his own chessboard and dining table. 

Yet I kept going back to the Stevenson’s exhibit, with its collection of photographs, many of which came from the Island of Samoa where he used to live later in life. I spent the majority of my time at the museum there, in fact. It was as if I'd been able to travel 150 years back in time. As I read his letters and eavesdropped in on his thoughts, I learned something else he and I had in common: he was an explorer too. “I travel not to go somewhere – but to go,” one of his scribbles said.  

You never know what you may find and who you may meet when you travel foreign lands. I met Robert Louis Stevenson. I even told him his books had once been my opioid salvation.