Highland Park and the Orkney Islands: Where Scottish Traditions and Viking Spirits Intersect

Aug. 17, 2017

For all intents and purposes, getting a tattoo is a permanent decision, and deciding to do so is not done lightly. Most people choose to get a tattoo to symbolize something meaningful in their life, or to illustrate a core belief. The favorite car of a friend who passed away too soon, a musical icon who sparked a career or perhaps a small book on the wrist for the forever bibliophile. But what about getting a pectoral sized tattoo of your company’s logo? That’s not something many would ever dream of doing, but it is exactly what Martin Markvardsen did six years ago.

“If they fire me, I actually will have no idea what to do because this is what I live for,” said Markvardsen, Highland Park Distillery’s Senior Brand Ambassador. “This is where my heart and dedication is. Not just for my job, but also for the guys and girls working at our distillery themselves. The tattoo means a lot to me and I wanted to put it very, very close to my heart.”

For Markvardsen, Highland Park is not just his job, it is his life. The Orkney Islands, where the distillery is located, is his spiritual home. In Markvardsen’s heart, working for Highland Park is his dream job in every sense of the word.

“When Highland Park called me to be the brand ambassador for them, I imagine I felt what a 16-year-old football player would feel like who just received a call to play from Barcelona,” he said.

Markvardsen’s passion for Highland Park goes beyond the whisky and the brand. It extends to the Orkney Islands, its people, and its Nordic – i.e. Viking – history. Which makes him the perfect person to talk to about Highland Park’s newest whisky, Magnus, the first bottle to bear the name of Highland Park founder, Magnus Eunson.

Magnus Eunson the Man

“Magnus Eunson is the first distiller we can trace the distillery back to today. He was also a descendant of the vikings. He came from a Swedish family that came to Orkney a few hundred years ago, way back when the vikings still lived there.

Now Magnus was quite the clever man. When he was starting out, he had three jobs. During the daytime he was a butcher and every Sunday he worked at the church. At night however, he was secretly distilling and smuggling whisky around both the islands of Orkney and the Northern part of Scotland. He actually used the church he worked in as a hiding place for his whisky. He didn’t work for the church because he believed in a god or was religious; he worked for the church because he needed to have a hiding place for his whisky.

For a very long time he got away with it, until he got caught for the first time in 1798, which is the year we claim we were founded in because that was the first license and duty Magnus had to pay for the spirits he produced.”

Magnus the Whisky

“One of the reasons we chose to name our newest whisky expression Magnus – which is only for the American market – is because we wanted to go back to the beginning of where things started for Highland Park. We wanted to introduce people to our story, which begins with Magnus. This is what Highland Park is all about. So, that’s how we chose the name and we think it is an important story that we need to share around the world, especially in the U.S.”

All-American Casks

“We used both American oak first-fill sherry casks and refill casks for Magnus. We could have used ex-bourbon casks and made it ‘all American,’ but we feel this combination between American oak, which gives us all of these lighter notes of citrus, vanilla and bright fruit flavors, combined with the spice and sweetness that the sherry casks provide, was a good combination. You see, when Magnus began distilling whisky back in 1798 he would have had access to old wine casks or virgin oak. So this is our way to make a whisky as close to what Magnus may have done.”

Age is Just a Number

“One of the things I always explain to bartenders and shop owners is that the age statement is not a sign of quality. It is simply the age. You can actually have whisky that has aged for 10 years, and taste like a 20-year-old Scotch whisky. You can also have whisky that has aged for 30 years and taste like an eight-year-old. It all comes down to the wood, the quality of the liquid and where the two are matured.

Leaving the age off the bottle also gives us a little bit more freedom to choose the best of the best casks, and best casks are not dependent upon age. Now and again we’ll find casks that have only matured eight or 10 years, but simply blow our minds away. We’ll also find casks that have aged 20 or more years that we actually need to completely re-cask because the liquid is just not very good. So to be able to choose from more casks by not being limited with age, it gives us the ability to create beautiful whiskies like Magnus and Valkyrie.”

Maturation on the Orkney Islands

“The climate on Orkney is very, very different than the rest of Scotland. If you look at our maturation on Orkney, we very rarely have temperatures in the negative [Celsius] and if we’re lucky, a summer day on Orkney could go up to 15 or 16 degrees Celsius. It is not a place you’d visit on a summer holiday to get a tan, or visit in the winter to do snow sports.

The evaporation, or angel’s share, is very low on Orkney because we do not have much of a difference – temperature-wise – between summer and winter. We are also surrounded on all sides by the sea, so we have this maritime flavor come out of our whiskies. It is subtle, but there is this slight saltiness and spiciness that the sea are imparts into our whiskies.”

Inspired Bottle Designs

“The bottle for our core range – the 10, 12 and 18 year old – comes from a Norwegian stave church in the middle of nowhere. The woodcarving designs we put on the bottles are from that church. It was something we did to again call back that connection between Orkney, our home, and Norway, the original home of the Vikings. I was actually in Norway last week to see the church and it is just amazing. It is quite unique to see the similarities between the wood carvings at the church then those inspired designs on the bottle.

What Makes Highland Park Different

“One of the questions I get a lot when traveling around the U.S. and talking to bartenders is: ‘What makes Highland Park different?’ Normally when we talk to customers in the on- or off-premise trade, we focus on what makes Highland Park stand out. That’s where our peat comes in.

If you ever see pictures of Orkney, there is always one thing you’ll never see: trees. On Orkney, where the wind comes in off of the Atlantic Ocean, there are no trees. The trees cannot survive because of the high winds. As a result, the peat we have doesn’t contain any wood, which makes it rather unique compared to the peat you find in other parts of Scotland where trees are prevalent. The peat we have here is very different, and contains things like heather, flowers, grass and a little bit of seaweed that grows up from the ocean and into the peat bog we’re using.”

Orkney Single Malt with a Viking Soul

“On Orkney, about one in every three people living there can trace their bloodlines straight back to the Vikings. So there is a lot of Viking history there. There are probably more Viking monuments on the island that anywhere else in the world. It is a part of life on the island. The Vikings came up there around 850 AD, they settled down, and they actually never left. 

We decided some years back to draw more attention to that history. We created a series of whiskies referencing the Norse gods. We created Fire and Ice, which talked about Norse mythology. We also changed the bottle design to be a bit more Viking-inspired. Now this isn’t something we do because we think it is good marketing. This is something we do because it gives back a bit to the people of Orkney, and it tells the story of that history and heritage as well.”