Norse Orkney, and the Earl Who Became a Saint

Orkney was Norse for six centuries and did not pass to Scotland until 1468. That inheritance is visible inside the Neolithic monuments themselves. Norse visitors broke into Maeshowe and cut runic inscriptions on its walls, around thirty of them, which together make one of the largest single collections of runes outside Scandinavia. They are not solemn. They record that treasure was carried off from the mound, that a named woman was fair, and that the man cutting the letters considered himself the best rune carver in the western ocean.

The islands were Christianised during the Norse period, and their principal religious monument grew out of a killing inside the ruling family. Magnus Erlendsson, joint earl of Orkney, was killed on Egilsay in 1117 in a dispute with his cousin Hakon. Miracles were reported at his grave, he came to be venerated as a martyr, and his nephew Rognvald began the cathedral at Kirkwall that carries his name in 1137. It is built of local red and yellow sandstone and remains in use. Bones found inside one of its piers in the twentieth century include a skull with a wound consistent with the account of Magnus's death, which is as close to corroboration as a case of this kind usually gets.

The result is a small archipelago carrying two complete religious layers, five thousand years apart, within the same few square miles of low green islands.