Some of All the Stones

The images shown here are an excerpt from a document of all the Gorsedd circles in Wales. These have been erected since 1851 when the Gorsedd of the Isles of Britain was incorporated into the National Eisteddfod of Wales (an annual celebration of welsh language culture).
 
These photographs engage with current ideas of the authentic as well as themes that emerged with the development of landscape as a genre. The Gorsedd stone circles are often referred to as the ‘fake stones’ by non-Welsh speakers, and yet their function and role is known. In contrast, while Neolithic stone circles seem authenticated by their age, their purpose and the mindset of the people who built them are inventions of our modern sensibilities.

Iolo Morgannwg, who invented the Gorsedd of the Bards and laid out the first Gorsedd circle, lived through both the Enlightenment and the Romantic Age. He is possibly the Arch-architect of the modern myth of Wales, but he was also a revolutionary whose radical ideas fed into the early labour movements in South Wales.

Contemporary Wales is a country divided by language. The Gorsedd circles can be seen as monuments to the Welsh language, alluding to the prehistoric monuments of the indigenous people of Britain who spoke Brythonic (the predecessor of modern Welsh). Whilst far from overt in the pictures there is a question here about welsh language culture and its relationship with the landscape.

No new Gorsedd circles have been erected for the National Eisteddfod since the Eisteddfod at St David’s in 2002; nowadays, where an existing circle is not close enough to be used, a fibre glass ‘stone’ circle is erected on the festival site.

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