Brough of Deerness
The Brough of Deerness is located on Mainland , the main island of the Orkney , on the northeast side of the Deerness Peninsula. Similar to the much larger Brough of Birsay , it is a tidal island , but it is only inaccessible when the sea is rough. The Brough is a coastal promontory that can now be reached at about beach level through modern path expansion.
description
On the 80 × 30 m measuring brough are the remains of a settlement and a chapel. A geological survey confirmed that the former land connection broke long before the Brough was settled by Picts who erected the buildings, the remains of which were found between the later Viking settlement.
There is a wall on the brough that separates the seaside from the landside area. The approximately 4.0 × 5.0 meter remains of the chapel within the enclosure are accompanied by the foundations of approximately 30 mostly rectangular buildings. The settlement could have been a monastery, but there is much to be said for a secular structure. An older stone and wood version of the church dates from the Viking Age . A coin from Eadgar the Peacemaker (King from 959 to 975 AD) dates this chapel, which is one of the earliest evidence of Christianity in the North Atlantic during the Viking Age. The subsequent stone chapel on the brough was contemporary with the nearby church at Skaill. Skaill is the only berth on the otherwise steep coast.
Lore
The Viking Thorkel Amundason had a farm in nearby Skaill in the 11th century. He was an ally of Jarl Thorfinn Sigurdsson (Thorfinn the Mighty) and involved in the murder of Jarl Einar Sigurdsson (1020 AD), which is said to have taken place on Deerness. The remains of the farm and those of an earlier Pictish settlement have been excavated. In the nearby church, which the theologian George Low described in 1774 in "A Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Shetland" as the most important on the Orkney, there is a hogback (tombstone of the Vikings) made of red sandstone , which was found in the cemetery and is dated around AD 1100.
Nearby
The approximately 40.0 m long and 25 m wide collapsed sea cave "The Gloup" is located on the east coast of the Deerness peninsula, in the parish of St. Andrews.
See also
literature
- Anna Ritchie: Prehistoric Orkney . Historic Scotland, London et al. 1995, ISBN 0-7134-7593-5 .
Web links
Coordinates: 58 ° 57 '50.8 " N , 2 ° 42' 17.8" W.