Brough of Birsay

A tidal island off the north coast of the Orkney mainland, the Brough of Birsay was intensively settled from the 7th to the 13th centuries AD. The physical remains comprise a 9th-century Viking-Age settlement and 12th-century monastery, together with traces of an earlier Pictish settlement of the 7th and 8th centuries. The buildings and artefacts discovered make the brough one of the most important, and attractive, monuments in Scotland.

Excavations showed that the island was occupied in the late 7th century by Picts, Scotland’s oldest indigenous people. Today the most tangible sign of their presence is the replica of symbol stone inside the graveyard. (the original is in the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh).

Traces of Pictish buildings were also discovered beneath the later Viking houses. However, the only feature visible today is a well on the east side of the churchyard. Evidence for metalworking was found nearby. The high-quality objects included brooches and rings, bone combs and dress pins.

Vikings from Norway settled on the brough in the early 9th century. The remains of their houses and barns can still be seen. The settlement developed over the next three centuries, and the process of building and rebuilding has left a complicated maze of walls, one on top of the other, in the area between the later churchyard and the sea. Individual rooms of 10th-century houses are recognisable, together with an 11th-century sauna and part of a house with under-floor heating. Nearby are remains of a smithy.

The final phase saw the building of a small monastery. This consisted of a church in Romanesque style, with stone benches down the side walls of the nave and alcoves for altars on either side of the entrance into the chancel. A small cloister housing the domestic buildings was built on its north side.

The monastery may have been established by Thorfinn ‘the Mighty’, Earl of Orkney, whom the Orkneyinga Saga relates ‘had his permanent residence at Birsay’ in the mid-11th century. (His residence was probably in Birsay, on Mainland Orkney.) The body of Thorfinn’s grandson, St Magnus, was held at Birsay following his murder in 1117. The island monastery was possibly short-lived, for Birsay was eclipsed later that same century when St Magnus’s relics were removed to Kirkwall and placed in the new St Magnus’s Cathedral.

References:

• Historic Scotland

Address

B9056, Orkney, United Kingdom

Details

Founded: 7th century AD
Category: Prehistoric and archaeological sites in United Kingdom