THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

In his definitive study of life on the islands, With the Fryoese (1922), Gilbert Thorsby recalled one of the last permanent inhabitants, Idunn mar Sjoren, whom it was claimed lived to over one hundred years old without leaving her birthplace of Mardoll.  mar Sjoren, whose surname literally translates as ‘siren of the gulls’ in Fryoese, wore a cloak made from hundreds of kittiwake beaks.  Unlike other later Fryoese, who built their homes from wood and other materials salvaged from shipwrecks, mar Sjoren continued to live in a traditional Fryoese hella, or cave dwelling, until her death in 1910.  Said to have been so beautiful in her day that she would stand on the rocks and lure ships to wreck, mar Sjoren was also widely believed to possess powers to summon storms and bestow curses upon those who betrayed her.

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