Taversoe Tuick Burial Cairn

Taversoe Tuick cairn was built on the island of Rousay in Orkney. Like the dozens of other contemporary monuments found all across the islands, it was built in the Neolithic Period, around 3300BC, at which time Orkney was home to the most advanced culture in Britain and perhaps Western Europe.

Orkney’s tombs typically have traits in common. They are built overlooking the sea, have a wide view over the surrounding land, but are built into the hillsides so as to be barely distinguishable from the surrounding landscape. They were not built to impress the living who looked up at them, as later Bronze Age tombs were designed. They were built for the eyes of the ancestors to gaze across the land where they once walked and now guarded and reinforced their descendants’ right to live and farm there.

The upper storey of the tomb

Each tomb is also unique, built to a design chosen perhaps intuitively by the community it was to serve. Taversoe Tuick was built on two levels, something found in only one other Orkney tomb. One crawls through the long and low entrance passage to a chamber containing four partitioned areas arranged in an arc, where the disarticulated bones of the deceased were laid. The upper storey is reached by a separate entrance at the back of the tomb and contained two chambers. 

The tomb, discovered and opened in the 19^th century, was found to contain cremated human bones, the complete skeleton of an adult, and flint and pottery artefacts. These were perhaps added during the Bronze Age, after the Neolithic Orkney culture had collapsed and its monuments ritually emptied, closed or destroyed.

The rear entrance to the upper storey.

Like many tombs, Taversoe Tuick was built with a view of the sea and its entrance passage aligns to the highest point on the small island of Gairsay to the south, which is marked with a tumulus of possibly Bronze Age date. The Orkney people were sailors, fisher-people and long-distance travellers and the sea was as important to their way of life as the land. It is logical that the ancestor-spirits contained in the tombs guarded the sea-ways as well as the land, and it is easy to imagine a web of guardianship linking between tombs and islands and landmarks the sailors used to guide them home, nourished by the generations of knowledge the people had laboriously acquired. And that web still survives today.

The Knowe of Yarsoe

The Knowe of Yarsoe is a stalled cairn on the island of Rousay in Orkney. Like the majority of the cairns in Orkney, it was built in the early Neolithic period and continued in use for over a thousand years. It stands on the edge of a steep slope which falls away sharply towards the sea, the focus for many Orkney tombs.

Unlike the chambered cairns such as Cuween on Mainland Orkney, the stalled cairns comprise a long, narrow chamber subdivided by stone slabs into sections, resembling cattle stalls, where the bones of the deceased were laid. It is believed the two cairn types represent two distinct but interconnected cultures living in Orkney during the Neolithic period.

This tomb contains four consecutive stalls, and perhaps represents a continuing ritual descent into the spirit world from the earthly world. The innermost stall is partly blocked by stone slabs.

The Knowe of Yarsoe contained the disarticulated remains of around 29 people, dating from 2900-1900BC. All were adults and many more skulls were found than other remains. Orkney tombs typically contained several hundred bodies, adults and children, and many were ritually sealed and/or emptied at the end of the Neolithic period, around 2500BC. The bodies in this tomb may be those associated with the closure rite after the rest of the community’s ancestors were removed elsewhere. 
The dates indicate that these weren’t the last people to die. They may have been especially powerful or revered people whose remains (or perhaps their skulls) had been curated in a tomb or in a house for several hundred years before being placed here, perhaps as guardians of the land or the tomb. Many tombs have legends of ghostly guardians who bring calamity on anyone who disturbs them. Some may have been added long after Orkney’s Neolithic culture had collapsed.

The entrance of the Knowe of Yarsoe faces southeast, along the line of the hillside, on the long axis of the tomb. This is typical of stalled cairns and a major difference to chambered tombs which generally face out to sea. The communities linked to these tombs may have had little affinity to the sea compared with the people who built the chambered cairns.

Red deer. Massimo Catarinella, Wikicommons

Many tombs are linked to specific animals or birds which were interred with the human bodies. These include sea eagles, dogs and otters. The Knowe of Yarsoe contained the remains of at least 34 red deer. Red deer remains are commonly found in stalled cairns but not in chambered cairns, another indication of a cultural divide. The deer was a revered animal, both for its gifts of meat, hide and antler and for its embodiment of the spirit of the wilds. The shedding and regrowth of antlers reflects the dying-and-rising spirit of the green and the deer remained a totem or spirit guide for shamans and ritual specialists throughout the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon periods. The horned God Cernunnos and the sage Merlin were both associated with deer.

Cernunnos on the Gundestrup Cauldron, 1^st Century BC. 

Rousay is rugged with steep hillsides and heather moorland, ideal habitat for red deer, which were probably introduced to the islands by people at a very early point in Orkney’s history. Rousay is poor quality land and unsuitable for cultivation, and this offers the idea that the stalled cairns were linked to the earliest hunter-gatherer communities of Orkney, who especially revered the deer, whereas the Neolithic farmers who settled in later times and have proven Middle Eastern ancestry lived on the better quality land more suited to agriculture, built the chambered cairns and the various ritual monuments including the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, and brought Orkney into the forefront of British culture.

The Tomb of the Otters

The Tomb of the Otters is one of the most recently discovered Neolithic cairns in Orkney. It was built on the south coast of the island of South Ronaldsay, a short distance from the Tomb of the Eagles.

Like many of Orkney’s tombs, the Tomb of the Otters is a relatively inconspicuous grassy mound which could easily be a natural feature, as it was supposed to be until chance digging revealed the truth. The tombs were typically blended into the landscape but at the same time offered wide views across the land. They were built for eyes within the tomb, not for the living outside it.

Excavation found it to be a chambered cairn, containing six small chambers leading off from the main chamber. Those at the western end were added after the main construction and another small chamber was inserted under the main entrance passage. The tomb contained over two thousand disarticulated human bones, which had been placed in the tomb over a period of several hundred years.

Some of the bones date to 3300BC, the date of first construction of many Orkney tombs, and genetic analysis shows the dead were settler-farmers whose recent ancestry lay in the Middle East, the birthplace of agriculture. The presence of so many bones is unusual: in many cases, the tombs were emptied at the end of the Neolithic period, around 2500BC, in an elaborate, Orkney-wide destruction and closure of ritual sites.

The coast near the tomb.

 The tombs are believed to each link to one community or village, and many are associated with specific animals or birds which may have been community totems. This tomb is uniquely associated with otters.

The tomb was, uniquely, carved out of the bedrock and is set partly into the ground. This makes it unusually wet inside and the bones were periodically covered with silt, perhaps caused when water levels rose. This was perhaps a deliberate attempt to emulate the otters’ natural habitat.

The skeletons and spraint of otters were found in large amounts inside the tomb, suggesting otters routinely entered it. The skeleton of a four-year-old child was found with a small stone which had been worked to resemble an otter’s head. Perhaps this was a favourite toy, or perhaps a spiritual emblem to help guide this child to the next world.

Many of the ‘totems’ have well-known links to the spiritual world and many are carrion-eaters. The otter almost exclusively eats fish, but has been known to eat carrion. It is possible the otters encouraged in this tomb devoured the flesh of the dead and were considered spirit guides for these people. Their habitat of both land and sea gives them a greater liminal status.

The chambers are roofed with slabs of stone from the beach which are heavily water-worn, creating another deliberate link to the sea.

The majority of Orkney tombs face out to sea, but the entrance passage of this tomb faces north, inland. It is possible this entrance is a later feature after the tomb was extended, perhaps to keep it damp and suitable for otters. The original entrance may have been to the west, where it would face a large lake, plausibly the freshwater home of the otters in question.

  

English Otter. Alexander Leisser, Wikicommons.

The Tomb of the Eagles

The Tomb of the Eagles is a Neolithic chambered cairn in Isbister in South Ronaldsay, the southern-most island of Orkney. Unlike most tombs in Orkney, which were either emptied prior to their closure in ancient times or have been destroyed thanks to time, treasure-hunters or clumsy antiquarians, the Tomb of the Eagles survived intact until its careful excavation in the late 20^th century, through which our knowledge of Neolithic Orkney has surged.

The tomb was built around 3150BC, and comprises a stone-built and grass-covered mound which covers a central chamber accessed by a low passage, three metres long, through which visitors have to crawl on their hands and knees. The main chamber contained bodies which were largely intact, perhaps after their excarnation (devouring by carrion-eaters) but before they were deposited with the rest of the ‘ancestors’. It seems the process of death was a long-drawn-out affair in Neolithic Orkney. Side chambers contained unarticulated bones, largely sorted into groups of skulls and other bones. The tomb contained at least 340 people, including men, women, children and babies.

Around 2500BC, the time when bronze started to filter into Britain, the social structure in Orkney collapsed. The tombs which had been used for nearly a thousand years, along with other ritual buildings such as at the Ness of Brodgar, were carefully dismantled or sealed and never used again. The passage of the Isbister cairn was blocked from the inside and the entire tomb was filled with rubble, soil and ancient human bones, perhaps those kept as relics in houses. It was never entered again, although many Bronze Age burial cists nearby indicate the remembered sanctity of the site.

Skulls and round-bottomed Unstan Ware pottery deposited in a side chamber.

Each of the dozens of tombs in Orkney was likely linked to an individual settlement or community, and each seems to have been close-knit and independent. Studies of the skeletons show a high incidence of genetic abnormalities which suggests a large degree of in-breeding. Other Orkney tombs show a different range of abnormalities.

Many are linked to specific and often unique animals or birds which may have totemic links. The Isbister cairn is uniquely associated with sea eagles, which were once common on the high cliffs of the area. Like many of the potential ‘totems’, sea eagles are carrion-eaters and were plausibly used to devour the bodies of the deceased before their interment in the tomb.

Like many Orkney tombs, Isbister opens out across the sea, but the unusual thirty-metre sheer drop is reminiscent of the soaring spirit of the sea eagle.

 A foundation deposit sealed under the flagstone floor comprised bones of humans and sea eagles, dating to 3150BC, and eagle talons were placed with many of the bodies. One had fifteen talons which perhaps formed a necklace. Perhaps eagle-catching was a test of status for the people of Isbister. Scaling the precipitous and sea-lashed cliffs to reach their nesting sites would certainly have tested the physical and mental strength of anybody.

Nearly a thousand years after the tomb was sealed, in 1500BC, a cist grave was inserted in the mound, and this also contained sea eagle bones along with the human remains. Orkney’s status and way of life had changed immensely since the beginning of the Bronze Age, but it seems the people of Isbister had not forgotten their ancient heritage.

White-tailed sea eagle. Jacob Spinks, Wikicommons.

Maes Howe Passage Grave

Maes Howe in Orkney is one of the most elaborate and finely built passage graves known. It was built in the late Neolithic Period, around 2700BC, on a wide, grassy plain a short distance from and in view of the other famous monuments of Neolithic Orkney including the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar and the Ness of Brodgar. 

The mound is seven metres high and 35 metres wide – exceptionally large for an Orkney grave – and comprises a passage seven metres long which has to be followed at a crouch to reach a large inner chamber, built of corbelled stone with a phenomenal degree of craftsmanship. The five-metre high ceiling makes it the highest and most impressive Neolithic structure still standing. Three smaller chambers which can only be entered by crawling through their tiny entrances were built on each side. Provision was made to seal each chamber and also seal the main passage from the inside.

 Ward Hill on the island of Hoy 

Unlike other Orkney tombs, with the possible exception of the now-ruined Pierowall on the island of Westray, Maes Howe is aligned to the midwinter sunset which shines down the passage to illuminate the inner chamber. This may explain the unusual height of the passage. Most Orkney tombs have to be entered on one’s belly. The sun from Maes Howe at midwinter sets over Ward Hill on the island of Hoy, the highest point on Orkney, which no doubt explains its location. A standing stone a few hundred metres from Maes Howe also marks the same alignment. This is reminiscent of the much older Newgrange passage grave in Ireland, and there are known links between the two areas in the Neolithic period.

The Barnhouse standing stone and Maes Howe

When Maes Howe was opened by Norse warriors, and later by Victorian antiquaries, no human remains or other relics were recorded. Perhaps they were long destroyed, or perhaps it was never truly a tomb. Its elaborate design and its alignment mark it as separate from other tombs. Its enclosure by a wide and deep ditch, dug as the mound was built and with no causeway across it, is also unique for a passage grave but typical for henge monuments in Orkney and across Britain. It may have been designed as a ‘spirit house’ but in a different way, perhaps absorbing the spirit of the sun to fertilise the womb of the earth.

The interior of Maes Howe, showing the much older standing stones. Islandhopper, Wikicommons.

An earlier structure once stood on the site of the mound, also aligned to the midwinter sunset. This is suggested to have been a house but the importance of its location means it would have been far more than an ordinary dwelling. Four large standing stones were placed in the corners of the inner chamber, offering no structural purpose, and these were likely incorporated from an earlier monument or stone circle, perhaps around the ‘house’ itself, as a memorial or to seed its spiritual essence. Similar stones were used to form the entrance passage. Stone settings at the Stones of Stenness and an elaborate building at the nearby Barnhouse village are aligned to Maes Howe. These both predate the mound so were linking to this earlier structure.

Some of the runic inscriptions. Islandhopper, Wikicommons.

Maes Howe was entered by Norse warriors around 1100AD and it was named as ‘Orkahaugr’ in the 13^th century Orkneyinga Saga. Legend says warriors were forced to spend the night in the chamber during a storm and two of them went insane after their ordeal. The spirits of the mound were obviously still potent.

Another Norse legacy is the largest collection of runic inscriptions outside Scandinavia. These mainly comprise men carving their names and making lewd comments about women. Some make reference to a recent discovery of hidden treasure. Elaborate gold and bronze grave goods are associated with a much later time period, so presuming the inscription is not a treasure-hunter’s joke, it may refer to ancient relics such as carved stones, as were found at Newgrange and Pierowall, whose spiritual importance was still recognised. We will probably never know.

The decorated stones once found in the now-ruined Pierowall monument.

Cuween Chambered Tomb

This is a tomb near Kirkwall on the north coast of Mainland Orkney, built by Neolithic farmers around 3000BC.

Dozens of tombs were built around Orkney and each was probably linked to a small community who farmed the immediate area. There was a small Neolithic settlement at the foot of Cuween Hill. Unlike the chambered tombs of southern Britain such as Belas Knap and Wayland's Smithy, Orkney’s tombs were often in use for a thousand or more years and may contain several hundred bodies.

Cuween comprises five dark, damp chambers leading out from a central chamber. This is reached by a long, low passage entered at a crawl. Some of the chambers are level with the central chamber; others are raised; others have a flagstone divider. The arrangement seems entirely organic with no overall grand design. This is the case with many of the tombs, which each have a unique layout. Perhaps the builders worked entirely through intuition or with the help of spirit guides who, while in a trance state, ‘drew’ the tomb into this world.

Cuween was excavated a century ago and was found to contain the bones of eight people and 24 dog skulls. The small number of human bones suggests the tomb was periodically cleared of bones, or perhaps emptied at the end of its use-life. The presence of dogs is unique, although other tombs contained animal bones such as red deer, otters or sea eagles, and may indicate a community totem or spirit guide. Dogs are commonly seen as guardians of the underworld or as guides for the dead. The dogs were collie-sized and resembled a grey wolf.

The view from the cairn across the farmland and the sea

Cuween probably derives from ‘kewing’, meaning cattle pasture. Due to the short growing season at this northern latitude, cattle have always formed the basis of Orkney’s agriculture. In more recent folklore it was known as the Fairy Knowe.

The tomb was cut out of the bedrock and roofed with flagstones then covered with earth. From a distance it blends into the hillside in this respect resembles the southern tombs. Its purpose was to form a bond with the land, and its influence spread over the farmland below it.

Most of the Orkney tombs face out to sea. The sea was a provider and nurturer as much as the land, and it makes sense for the guardian influence of the ancestors to extend across the water. It may also reflect the journey of the souls of the deceased.

Like many of the tombs, Cuween had been carefully sealed up. This generally seems to have happened around 2500BC, when Orkney’s Neolithic culture dramatically ended. The tombs gradually became the haunt of fairies and ghosts, left undisturbed for fear of violent repercussions from angry ghosts.

The Ring of Brodgar

The Ring of Brodgar in Orkney is one of the largest stone circles in Britain. It sits on a narrow peninsula between the two vast Lochs of Harray and Stenness, a balance point between land, sea and air. The waters, usually turbulent with the wind and reflecting the grey, scudding clouds which race from the nearby sea, eventually touch the hills which frame this panoramic scene, and reinforce the impression that this peninsula is the centre of Orkney’s landscape. It has been described as a natural amphitheatre, and it is easy to imagine dozens of people on the hilltops, looking down at this stone circle and watching rites whose effects would ripple out to touch them all.

The Ring is flanked by the nearby The Stones of Stenness to the south, possibly the oldest stone circle in Britain, and the Ring of Bookan to the north, a possible henge now all but destroyed. Its two entrances focus on these sites.

It has been suggested that the layout of the three monuments reflect the three stars of Orion’s Belt. It is a convincing match, and may explain why the Ring of Brodgar is slightly off-centre on the sloping hillside, but my feeling is too much effort is made to link sacred sites to the stars. Most seem to me to be orientated to and blended with the surrounding landscape, which enhances the idea that they reflect a spiritual microcosm of the land where rites could be conducted to influence that land.

The Brodgar stones originate from various sites across Orkney, creating the evocative image of a blending of communities and their spirits into a single monument in the heart of the land. The circle is 104m in diameter and comprised sixty stones, of which thirty six remain, surrounded by a six-metre wide ditch. It was built around 2500BC, shortly before the collapse of Orkney’s highly advanced Neolithic culture. It was perhaps a last attempt to save it, or a lasting memorial to its existence.

The Comet Stone, an outlier of the Ring of Brodgar. Two other broken stones lie nearby. Legend says the stone was a piper, turned to stone along with the dancing giants.

Like many stone circles, legend states the Ring of Brodgar was formed when a group of dancing giants were turned to stone after failing to notice the approaching sunrise. I wonder if these stories reflect their former use for shamanic or ritual dances.

The two stone circles were known to locals as the Temples of the Sun and the Moon, and betrothed couples once prayed inside them to Woden to seal their relationship. This is likely a relic of Orkney’s Nordic heritage, and continued almost to living memory.

The Ring of Brodgar was built to guide the Orkney people’s lives. People have long memories. Five thousand years later, that spirit still survives.

The Stones of Stenness

The Stones of Stenness. The curiously sloping stones result from the natural fracture lines in the rock. The popular idea that they recreate the sloping peaks of Hoy in the distance, I feel is coincidence.

This stone circle in Orkney, built around 3100BC, is possibly the oldest in Britain. It is at the heart of a vast and complex ritual site on the Brodgar peninsula which would eventually comprise two stone circles, a series of earthen mounds and some of the most elaborate stone buildings of Neolithic Europe.

The circle once comprised twelve stones, of which four remain, the tallest nearly six metres in height. They were erected inside a circular ditch and bank which has now almost entirely vanished. The ditch was once two metres deep and seven metres wide, a vast construction effort considering it was cut through bedrock using only stone and antler tools.

The site is on a low-lying peninsula between the two huge lochs of mainland Orkney, the Lochs of Stenness and Harray. Beyond the lochs, hills rise in the distance and the dramatic peaks of the island of Hoy lie to the south.

The entrance faces due north, across the Loch of Harray and towards the distant hills. An interesting observation is that the surrounding hills and valleys from this point are almost symmetrical. This apparent balance may be the reason for the circle’s location.

The circle was used for feasting and hearth stones still survive in the centre. Pottery and animal bones have been excavated. Perhaps it was a gathering place, a microcosm of land surrounded by water, reflecting every island in Orkney and also perhaps the world in general and the spiritual world. A world surrounded by water which must be crossed to reach the spiritual world is a recurring theme in myths worldwide. That the stones seem to have been brought from various places in Orkney supports this notion.

The circle also contained other stone features. These were once presumed to be altar stones for human sacrifice and re-erected as such, and now their original arrangement is long lost. Other wooden features also stood on the site, perhaps much older than the stone circle itself. It is a common occurrence across Britain for wooden structures, perhaps temples or ‘spirit-houses’, to be later memorialised in stone.

The Stones retained their importance long after the Neolithic period ended. Burial mounds were arranged around the stones and the surrounding area into the Bronze Age, and into the 19^th century local couples would pray to Odin – perhaps a throwback to Orkney’s Nordic heritage – inside the stones, now locally known as the Temple of the Moon, for a successful marriage. And today, they form part of a World Heritage Site which attracts visitors from across the world.

Eynhallow vanishing island

Eynhallow is a small island in Orkney, a short way from the larger island of Rousay. With treacherous tides and currents seething through the narrow straits, access is difficult even in calm seas.

An ancient church, later converted into houses, indicates the presence of a Christian monastic settlement. In the 1850s, the houses were evacuated and torn down. The island has been uninhabited ever since.

The name, from the Norse Eyin Helga, means ‘Holy Island’, and the island holds a special place in Orkney lore. Among other traditions, it was believed cats could not survive on the island. They would die of convulsions within a day.

Eynhallow was a home of the Finfolk, a strange and feared people who could control storms, shapeshift as seals and whales, had phenomenal sailing skills, and also routinely abducted local people.

Thanks to the Finfolk’s enchantment, Eynhallow routinely appeared and disappeared into the sea as its inhabitants wished. It was one of two ‘vanishing islands’ in Orkney, the other being Hether Blether. The latter’s enchantment has never been broken and is said to still rise from the mists occasionally.

Eynhallow’s enchantment was broken by a farmer. His wife had been abducted by a Finman and when the island rose from the sea, he rowed towards it, never taking his eyes off it else the enchantment would break and the island vanish, and in revenge he sowed salt around the island, destroying its magical power. He didn’t get his wife back but the island has remained in place ever since.

The Finfolk have been linked to shamanic people of Finland and Norway such as the Saami people, a short distance away by sea.

Orkney was home to a powerful Neolithic culture which abruptly came to an end around 2500BC, with the deliberate and ritual abandonment of the hitherto important sites. Orkney then became a backwater throughout the Bronze Age and Iron Age, with little impact on national culture.

Perhaps the Finfolk were the survivors of a powerful shamanic tradition which still survives in Scandinavia, settled on an inaccessible island and feared by the newer inhabitants for their magical powers. Over time, history turned into legend.

The Dwarfie Stane

Situated on the island of Hoy in Orkney, the Dwarfie Stane is believed to be a tomb dating to the third millennium BC.

Orkney is one of the most important Neolithic locations in Britain, and perhaps the world. It’s increasingly believed to have been the heart of British culture during the third and fourth millennia BC. Tombs, stone circles, villages and huge ritual buildings are linked in a vast and complex web, a mere glimpse of the complexity of the culture archaeologists are only beginning to discover.

Hoy

Hoy is an island characterised by lofty peaks, sheer cliffs and swathes of bleak heather moorland, one of the wildest islands in Orkney. There was little habitation in the Neolithic or any other period compared to the other islands. Scraping a living from this unforgiving island would have been near impossible.

The Dwarfie Stane is unique on Orkney and in Britain. It comprises a single huge block of stone, carved out to form an entrance and two side chambers, each about a metre wide. It was broken open long ago and no burials or anything else are known. As such there is nothing to confirm it was even a tomb.

The interior of the Dwarfie Stane.

Legend tells that the Stane, or stone in local dialect, was the home of a (dwarfish) giant and his wife. A third giant imprisoned them inside to make himself master of Hoy, but the imprisoned giant smashed his way through the roof. This explains the now-repaired hole in the roof, probably made by ancient tomb-robbers.

The tomb is situated on a flat stretch of moor between the hills, and it faces the dramatic and sweeping slopes of Hoy’s highest peaks. It’s hard to believe this wasn’t intentional. Most of Orkney’s tombs face out to sea; perhaps the purpose of the Dwarfie Stane’s orientation was to absorb the powerful spirit of Hoy.

The Orkney people’s spiritual beliefs have been barely examined, but there is no doubt their complexity equals the complexity of their material world. The tomb has intriguing similarities to tombs in the Mediterranean, where the first farmers in Britain are believed to have arrived from. Perhaps time will tell us more about this enigmatic construction.

The view from inside the Stane.