My House of European History Wants to Hear From You

By theorkneynews on February 3, 2017 • ( 2 Comments )

Do we in Orkney feel European? Well we know that the peedie Orkney vole travelled to our islands all the way from Belgium with the first farmers. Orkney’s settlers built an amazing civilisation across the islands which spread south to populations throughout the British Isles.

Neolithic Stones of Stenness

The remains of stunning stone circles, which must have once dominated the landscape, are just a whisper of the brilliance and engineering skills of those early Orcadians.

The Treaty of Rome is about to celebrate its anniversary of 60 years. It was signed on 25th March 1957 by 6 European countries and saw the birth of the European Economic Community (the Common Market). This eventually led to the creation of the European Union (EU) which we are more familiar with today.

To mark this anniversary there is a temporary website, My House of European History, being set up where people can share their stories and photos about what it means to them to be a European. The site will be interactive once it is up and running. At the moment it is just looking for contributions of photos, audio files, videos and documents in your own language.

My House of European History states:

“What does it mean to be a European? It’s not just the great leaders: all people are a part of this history and they have a valuable role to play in preserving this common heritage and identity of ours. So dig through your photos, your videos or even sound files, find digital content you feel is appropriate to share with everyone and upload it to My House of European History, our collaborative platform that aims to become a virtual library of testimonials and stories from people across Europe.”

“With this platform people enjoy the opportunity to explain what Europe means for them and how they see themselves as having contributed to its history. These stories can be about what it means for you to be European, or even recounting the significant historical events that have shaped our lives in Europe from a personal angle or that of a loved one.”