Four days in Orkney: older than the pyramids, and never really Scottish

The red cathedral in Kirkwall, a day among the Neolithic village and the stone circles, the Norse and Pictish north west, and the Italian chapel on the way out.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Kirkwall
Places
10 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Orkney is not the Highlands and does not think of itself as Scottish. It was Norse territory for six hundred years and was handed over to Scotland in 1468 as security against a Danish princess's dowry, which was never paid. The place names are Norse, the accent is not Highland, and the mainland is over the water: people here say they are going to Scotland when they take the ferry south.

It is also one of the great archaeological landscapes on earth. Within a few square miles of the west mainland sit a Stone Age village with the furniture still in place, a chambered tomb that catches the midwinter sunset, and two stone circles, all of them built before Stonehenge was begun and before the first pyramid at Giza was cut. They are not fenced off in a theme park. They sit in working farmland with cattle in the next field.

Four days from a bed in Kirkwall covers the Neolithic heart, the Norse north west and the wartime south, with time left over for the light, which is the thing nobody expects. There are almost no trees, so the sky takes up most of the view and changes every ten minutes.

Highlights

  • A village of eight stone houses, lived in for six hundred years and buried by sand until a storm in 1850
  • A chambered tomb built to catch the midwinter sunset, with Viking graffiti cut into the walls
  • Twenty seven standing stones on a neck of land between two lochs
  • A tidal island of Norse longhouses that the sea cuts off for most of the day
  • A Catholic chapel that Italian prisoners of war made from scrap and corrugated iron

Where to stay

Kirkwall, three nights

Kirkwall is a working port of nine thousand people with a red sandstone cathedral in the middle of it and a narrow flagstoned street winding past the front door. The waterfront is industrial and the old town behind it is not, and the whole place takes fifteen minutes to walk across.

Stay here rather than Stromness if you want restaurants, shops and the shortest drives; stay in Stromness, twenty minutes west, if you want a stone built harbour town of narrow lanes and a better view. Either puts every site on the mainland within forty minutes.

Day by day

Day 1 in Kirkwall

St Magnus Cathedral, the town museum and the distillery

The cathedral is the reason Kirkwall exists in its present form. Earl Rognvald began it in 1137 in honour of his uncle Magnus, murdered on Egilsay by his cousin with an axe, and it took three hundred years to finish. It is built in alternating courses of red sandstone from Kirkwall and yellow from Eday, which gives the whole thing a striped, warm look that no other cathedral in Britain has, and the masons appear to have come from Durham. Both saints are still in the piers: bones with a split skull were found in a cavity in 1919.

It is a working church and belongs to the town rather than to any denomination, one of the odder legacies of Norse rule. Across the street, the town museum sits in a merchant's house of the sixteenth century and runs from the Stone Age to the wars in an hour.

Walk up the hill afterwards to the distillery, which has been making whisky here since 1798 and burns its own peat, cut from a moor that is heather rather than woodland and gives the smoke a different character from the west coast.

  1. 14:30

    St Magnus Cathedral

    Religious

    Begun in 1137, red and yellow sandstone in stripes, and owned by the burgh rather than the church. Free. Closed to visitors during services, and the upper level tours run in summer only.

  2. 15:45

    Orkney Museum

    Culture

    Across the street in a sixteenth century town house, and the best hour you can spend before going out to the sites. Free, and small enough not to exhaust anybody.

  3. 17:00

    Highland Park Distillery

    Other

    Working since 1798, on the hill above town, and one of the very few distilleries that still malts some of its own barley over peat. Book the tour ahead in summer.

With more time: Two ruined palaces stand next to the cathedral: the bishop's, where a Norwegian king died in 1263 after losing a battle in Ayrshire, and the earl's, built about 1600 by a man so disliked that he was executed in Edinburgh and his son with him. Both are small, roofless and worth twenty minutes.

Day 2 in Kirkwall

Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar and the tomb at Maeshowe

This is the day people come for, and it is all within six miles. Start at the coast, where eight stone houses sit half sunk in the ground and connected by covered passages, lived in from about 3100 BC for six hundred years and then buried under sand until a storm stripped the dunes in 1850. The stone dressers, beds and cupboards are still in position, because there was no wood on the island to make them from. It is the best preserved Neolithic settlement in northern Europe and it feels domestic rather than monumental.

Drive inland to the stone circle on the strip of land between two lochs. Twenty seven stones of an original sixty stand in a ring a hundred metres across, inside a ditch cut into bedrock, on a site that has never been fully excavated. It is open, free, and best in a wind with nobody else there.

Finish at the great chambered tomb, entered by a low passage eleven metres long that faces the midwinter sunset. Norse crusaders broke in about 1150 and carved runes on the walls, which are the largest collection of runic inscriptions outside Scandinavia and read mostly as you would expect from bored young men with knives. Tours are timed, small and booked out weeks ahead.

  1. 09:30

    Skara Brae

    Historic

    Eight Stone Age houses with their furniture still standing, from about 3100 BC. Visitor centre, cafe and a reconstructed house you can walk into. Ninety minutes, and go early or after four.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch at the visitor centre or in Stromness

    Eat

    The cafe at the Stone Age village is decent, and the harbour town twenty minutes south has better options if the day is not tight.

  3. 13:15

    Ring of Brodgar

    Historic

    Twenty seven stones in a hundred metre ring between two lochs, free and always open. Half an hour to walk round it, and there is a car park across the road.

  4. 15:00

    Maeshowe

    Historic

    The finest chambered tomb in north western Europe, with Viking runes inside. Booked timed tours only, from a visitor centre a mile away with a shuttle bus. Book weeks ahead.

With more time: Two more sites sit within a few hundred metres of the big circle: an older ring of four surviving stones by the loch shore, and the excavated temple complex on the causeway between them that has been rewriting the archaeology of the whole islands since 2003. The dig is open to visitors for a few weeks each summer and covered over for the rest of the year.

Day 3 in Kirkwall

The Brough of Birsay, the earl's palace and an Iron Age broch

The north west corner is the Norse end of the island and the emptiest part of it. Check the tide before you leave: the causeway to the tidal island is walkable for only a couple of hours around low water, and people are cut off on it every summer. On the far side are the foundations of a Pictish settlement of the seventh century and a Norse village on top of it, a small church, and a lighthouse of 1925 on cliffs full of nesting seabirds in early summer.

Back on shore, the shell of a palace stands in the village: built in the late sixteenth century by Robert Stewart, the first Stewart earl of Orkney, an illegitimate son of James V who ran the islands as a private racket and whose son was beheaded for it.

Then east along the coast to a broch, one of the round drystone towers built here in the Iron Age, with an entire village of small stone houses packed around its base and a ditch and rampart round the lot. It sits on a headland looking across to Rousay, and it is usually deserted.

  1. 09:30

    Brough of Birsay

    Nature

    A tidal island of Pictish and Norse remains, reachable on foot across a concrete causeway for two hours either side of low tide. Check the times before you drive out; the walk round takes an hour.

  2. 12:15

    Earl's Palace

    Historic

    The roofless shell of the earl's palace of about 1570 in the village by the shore. Free, unstaffed, twenty minutes, and there are good cafes nearby for lunch.

  3. 13:15

    Lunch in Birsay or Dounby

    Eat

    There is a cafe by the shore and a couple of options inland. The north west has no petrol station, so fill up in Kirkwall or Stromness.

  4. 14:30

    Broch of Gurness

    Historic

    An Iron Age tower with a whole village around its foot, settled from about 500 BC. Small visitor centre, a car park at the end of a farm track, and hardly anybody there.

With more time: Two working survivals nearby fill an extra hour: a nineteenth century farmhouse kept with its central hearth and no chimney, the smoke leaving through a hole in the roof, and a water mill that still grinds Orkney bere, a six row barley grown here since the Norse arrived.

Day 4 in Kirkwall

The Italian Chapel and the barriers, then the boat

The road south to the ferries crosses four causeways built between the islands after a German submarine got into the anchorage in October 1939 and sank a battleship at her moorings with the loss of more than eight hundred men. Churchill ordered the eastern approaches sealed, and the concrete blocks are still there with the rusting hulks of the older blockships alongside them.

The barriers were built by Italian prisoners of war, and on the first small island they left a chapel. Two Nissen huts joined end to end, a facade of concrete moulded to look like stone, a rood screen of scrap iron, and an interior painted by a man called Chiocchetti to look like brick, tile and carved plaster. None of it is what it appears to be and the effect is extraordinary.

From there it is fifteen minutes to the ferry at St Margaret's Hope, or twenty five back to the airport.

  1. 10:00

    Italian Chapel

    Religious

    Built 1943 to 1945 out of two army huts and whatever the prisoners could scavenge, and still consecrated. Small admission, half an hour, and mass is said on the first Sunday of the month.

  2. 11:00

    The blockships and the barriers

    Note

    Pull in at any of the four causeways on the way south. The rusted hulls in the water were sunk deliberately to close the channels before the concrete arrived.

With more time: With half a day more, take the passenger ferry over to Hoy for the wartime museum in the old pumping station at Lyness, which tells the story of the anchorage and the seventy four interned German warships that were scuttled here in 1919, more than fifty of which went down.

Before you go

Getting there

Three ferries from the mainland carry cars. Scrabster to Stromness takes ninety minutes and runs below the sea stack on Hoy, which is the crossing to take if you have a choice. Gills Bay to St Margaret's Hope is an hour and cheaper. From Aberdeen there is an overnight sailing several nights a week that reaches Kirkwall around eleven at night.

Flights go from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Aberdeen to an airport five miles from Kirkwall, and take about an hour. Hiring a car on arrival costs more than bringing one, and both need booking well ahead in summer.

Getting around

A car, effectively. Buses cross the mainland from Stromness to Kirkwall and south over the barriers roughly hourly, which covers a fair number of the sights, but the timetable is built around schools and shops and there are long gaps in the afternoon.

Distances are small: nothing on the mainland is more than forty minutes from Kirkwall. Roads are wide, empty and straight, and the main hazards are farm traffic and the wind pushing at the side of the car.

What to book

Book the tomb tour weeks ahead. Entry is by timed guided tour only, numbers are small and it sells out for the whole summer. Book the ferry with a car at the same time, and a bed in Kirkwall or Stromness before either.

Everything else is walk in. Check the tide tables before setting out for the tidal island in the north west, because the causeway is under the sea for most of the day.

Cruise ships

Kirkwall takes a great many cruise calls, and a ship can put four thousand people ashore for a day. They go round the same circuit at the same times, so the cathedral, the Stone Age village and the big stone circle are crowded from about ten until three on those days.

The schedule is published, and the way to use it is simple: go to whatever they are not going to that morning, and take the famous sites early or after four. Kirkwall in the evening, when the ship has sailed, is a different town.

Weather, light and food

It is wetter than the mainland Highlands but less so than the west coast, and it is always windy: that is why there are no trees. In midsummer there is light in the sky at midnight and the sun barely sets. In December there are about six hours of daylight and the ferries can be cancelled for days at a time.

The food is much better than the population suggests. Orkney beef and lamb, scallops and crab, cheese, oatcakes and beer brewed on the islands, and two whisky distilleries within a couple of miles of Kirkwall.

The thing that stays with people is not any single site but how ordinary they all are here. A five thousand year old tomb in a field of sheep, a Norse village under a lighthouse, a chapel made of two huts, all of it still in use or still in the way of the plough.

Take the crossing that passes the Old Man of Hoy, and stand outside on deck for it.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Orkney worth four days?
Yes, and it is the minimum that makes the journey worthwhile. Two days would cover the Neolithic sites in a rush. Four gives you those, the Norse north west, the wartime south and an evening in Kirkwall after the cruise ship has gone.
How do I get there, and how far ahead should I book?
Ferry from Scrabster, Gills Bay or Aberdeen, or a flight from four Scottish cities. For July and August, book the car ferry, the bed and the tomb tour by about March. The tomb is the thing that sells out first.
Do I need a car?
Almost. Buses reach Stromness, the stones and the chapel, and a few of the sights are walkable from each other, but the north west and the tidal island are hard work without one. Cycling works in good weather and is brutal against the wind.
When should I go?
May to August for the light and the seabirds, with June the best month. September and October are quieter with better prices and rougher crossings. Winter is dark and beautiful and half the sites are shut.
Is it the same as Shetland?
No. Orkney is low, green and farmed, and its story is Neolithic first and Norse second. Shetland is higher, rockier, further north and more Norse than Scottish in feel. They are six hours apart by ferry.
Can I change it?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: add a day for Hoy, swap the north west for the smaller islands, add a night, move whatever you like.