Imagining time travel through ancient standing stones
In the newest book in Diana Gabaldon's fictional Outlander series, Claire Randall, honeymooning in Scotland after World War II, visits Craigh na Dun, a make-believe prehistoric stone circle near Inverness, and falls through the stones—and into the 18th century.
Written in My Own Heart's Blood is the eighth book in the series. In all, the Outlander books have cracked the New York Times Best Seller list six times and have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, in 26 countries and 23 languages.
Well-drawn characters and vivid descriptions are part of Outlander's
appeal, but Gabaldon's use of historically accurate details—aside from
the time travel—also undergirds the plots. Through her writings, she's
become an expert in 18th-century Scotland.
The long-awaited Outlander television show premieres tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on STARZ.
Coincidentally, National Geographic's August cover story,
"The First Stonehenge," is about recently discovered Neolithic ruins in
Scotland's Orkney Islands that, author Roff Smith writes, are "turning
British prehistory on its head."
Gabaldon's story lines center on Scotland's ancient standing stones, so we asked her to give us a Scottish history lesson—Outlander style.
Our August story focuses on the Orkney Islands. Have you visited Orkney?
I actually just visited Orkney about 18 months ago. A guide
we know in Scotland took us to a number of the places mentioned in the
article. We went to Skara Brae and Maeshowe and the Ring of Brodgar, and
all of that. Fascinating place!
When reading the NG Orkney story, did you connect it with Outlander at all?
Oh, yes, indeed. Not with the present book or the one I'm
about to start working on, but to a different project. It will be a long
time coming, but for a while now I've intended to write a book—or
possibly more than one, as these things have a tendency to grow—about
Master Raymond. He's the little apothecary Claire meets in Paris in Dragonfly in Amber [the second book in the series].
The moment I looked at Skara Brae, I said, OK, this is it.
This book will focus on Master Raymond, and Orkney is part of his story.
I don't know what the whole story is yet—I just feel this deep
resonating connection with him in Orkney.
What resonated with you the most when you visited the Neolithic sites in Orkney?
The connection the culture had to the landscape. Orkney has
the kind of landscape that sort of lends itself to a relationship with
the people. I think that relationship is intensified because of its
remoteness and the long periods of time when there was no interaction
with other cultures.
One structure remaining in Orkney is the standing
stones. You use a similar circle of stones as a time portal for your
main character, Claire Randall. Why did you choose the stones for a time
portal?
Originally, I was just going to write historical fiction,
but at about the third day of writing, I introduced this English woman,
just to see what she'd do. I loosed her into a cottage full of Scotsmen,
and one of the men stood up and said, "My name is Dougal McKenzie, and
who might you be?" Without stopping to think, I just typed, "My name is
Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp, and who the hell are you?" And then I
thought, "You don't sound at all like an 18th-century person."
[Chuckles]
I fought with her for several pages, but she wasn't having
any of this—she just kept making smart-ass modern remarks. She also took
over and started telling the story herself, so I said, "Well, I'm not
going to fight with you all the way through this book. Go ahead and be
modern. I'll figure out how you got there later." So it's all her fault
that there is time travel in these books!
I was doing a lot of research on Scotland at that point
because I'd never been there and kept coming across the standing stone
circles. Every time I'd read about the stone circles, it would describe
how they worked as an astronomical observance. For example, some of the
circles are oriented so that at the winter solstice the sun will strike a
standing stone. But all the texts speculate that nobody knows what the
actual function of these stone circles was. And so I began thinking,
Well, I bet I can think of one. [Laughs]
In the Outlander universe, how did you make time travel seem plausible?
If you're going to write time travel stories, you have to
sort of figure out how does time travel work in this particular universe
that I'm dealing with.
There are lines of geomagnetic force running through the
Earth's crust, and most of the time these run in opposing
directions—forward and backward. In some places they deviate and will
cross each other, and when that happens, you kind of get a geomagnetic
mess going in all different directions. I call these vertices.
Essentially, it could be possible to have something like
this nexus of crossing lines to create a little time vortex. And if you
could have a person whose sensibility to geomagnetism is sufficiently
advanced so that they can not only detect this but enter into it in some
way, then you have a plausible way of time travel.
So if prehistoric people noticed that every so often when
people crossed that particular patch of grass, they disappeared, it
would cause considerable consternation, and they might think it
worthwhile marking that spot. So that might be the reason why the stones
are there, and why they're set up the way they are, as in, "People
tended to disappear on the winter solstice when they step over here, so
don't do that!"
I will have to do a write-up called the Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel. [Laughs]
How much research have you conducted for the Outlander series?
I'm not sure how you would quantify that. I've been doing
research practically nonstop since I started writing. I do the research
at the same time as I write, and it kind of feeds off itself. I would
say I've been in a constant state of research for the past 24 years.
Can you give us a quick rundown on what history you have covered in your plot lines so far?
The story traces the political and physical revolution from
the Jacobite rising all the way through the American Revolution. And on
the other side of the time travel, we're dealing with World War II, and
Claire's occasional flashbacks and knowledge of that war.
We began in 1743, just before the Jacobite rebellion and
traced the climactic confrontation at Culloden, which crushed the clan
system and all but destroyed the Highlands for a hundred years. We move
on from there, as the Scots did, to America. That's because in the 1730s
a large number of the Highland Scots had already immigrated and settled
along the banks of the Cape Fear River [in present-day North Carolina].
By the late 1740s most of these earlier immigrants were settled and
fairly prosperous, and kinship being what it was in the 18th century,
you went where you had relatives.
A lot of Scots ended up settling in the mountains of North
Carolina and Tennessee. And of course, these people were ideally placed
to be in the middle of the American Revolution, and that's where Jamie
and Claire are at the moment. At the time of the revolution, one in
three colonists came from Scotland and, in fact, there were Scots
fighting on both sides with great ferocity.
Was there ever a time when you purposefully wrote something you knew to be historically inaccurate?
Yes—only once that I can think of, and that was in Outlander [the
first book]. I wanted to have a witch trial, but looking into it, I
could see that the last witch trial in Scotland took place in 1722. So I
was telling my husband that I'd really like a witch trial, but it
doesn't fit. He looked at me and said, "You start right off with a book
in which you expect people to believe that Stonehenge is a time machine,
and you're worried that your witches are 20 years too late?" [Laughs]
So I did stretch that point. I figured that possibly this witch trial
was an ad hoc affair that didn't make it into the record. That's the
only place where I can remember I deliberately moved something that I
knew was not quite there.
Claire Randall goes back in time through the
standing stones and immediately meets a band of Scottish Highland
warriors. What was the clan system like in Scotland?
The clan system was very tribal. It was composed of
extensive family units, and as it grew larger, the clans became
political entities. And you didn't have to be born to a clan, you could
come in and swear allegiance to your clan chief, and you'd become a
MacKenzie or a Grant or whatever, and then you'd change your surname.
People usually did this as a trade of armed service or farm service in
return for food or land.
If the clan chief decided to declare war on someone, you
had to bring whatever you owned in the way of a weapon. These tactics
worked on a small level, but get in with the British army and you were
in trouble.
The level of the clan chieftain was different than the
system in England—it wasn't hereditary. The son of a chief might have
the inside track, but the next chieftain was elected by consent of the
senior clansmen present. So they sometimes got better leaders than the
British did on a hereditary system.
That said, the system was good for the clan, but it wasn't
necessarily good for Scotland. The way the clan system evolved was
cellular: You had very strong people who couldn't lead more than their
own clan without a lot of trouble.
Out of all the Highland clans, why did you choose Clan Fraser for the beloved character Jamie Fraser?
Through the course of my research, Jamie was just called
Jamie Blank for a long time. I took Jamie from the name of a "Dr. Who"
character who originally caused me to choose Scotland as my setting. I
was reading a book for research called the Prince in the Heather,
by Eric Linklater, which described what happened after Culloden. It
said that, following the battle, 19 wounded Jacobite officers took
refuge in the farmhouse by the side of the field. There they lay for two
days with their wounds, unattended in pain. At the end of that time
they were taken out and shot, except one man, a Fraser of the Master of
Lovet's regiment, who survived the slaughter. And I was thinking that if
I expect Jamie to survive Culloden then his last name better be Fraser.
A referendum on Scottish independence is coming up. Do you have thoughts on that because of your connection with your characters?
There's a line of philosophy in the events in my books to
the events happening in Scotland now. That said, I'm very careful not to
take a public view on it. It's not my country, so its not my business
to be telling them what I think.