Orkney is a prehistoric phenomenon, where Neolithic remains continue to surface

CULTURE UNLOCKEDWith more Neolithic remains revealed earlier this year, as well as Viking graffiti and a stone circle older than Stonehenge, the Orkney islands are a prehistoric wonder



Maeshowe burial chamber (Photo: Getty)

By Robin McKelvie

May 25, 2021 6:00 pm(Updated 7:56 pm)

I made my way through the dark tunnel, venturing ever deeper. As I emerged into Maeshowe’s chamber, I could see I’d been beaten to it. Graffiti – 30 runes, to be precise – was brazenly emblazoned across the walls. The work was that of recent tomb raiders – Vikings who stormed down the tunnel a mere millennium ago.

I’d come for the winter solstice, when a shaft of light splinters the tunnel, illuminating prehistory. It’s a startling phenomenon, but not alone in an archipelago alive with sites predating Stonehenge, including the Ness of Brodgar, a site archaeologist and historian Neil Oliver has hailed as the “world’s most spectacular Neolithic dig” and “the most significant archaeological discovery of my lifetime”.

I was on Orkney – more specifically the “Heart of Neolithic Orkney”, a Unesco World Heritage Site encompassing a collage of compelling sites and monuments. Orkney may be renowned in the UK for its seafood, whisky, birdlife and 20th-century military legacies, but its prehistory is globally significant. Nora, a volunteer archaeologist I met in the tunnel at Maeshowe, explained: “There is literally nowhere else in Europe with such a density of complex prehistoric sites. And it’s all within a joyously compact area.”

It is indeed compact and joyous. I followed the trail back to the beginning – historically speaking – and the ruins of the village of Skara Brae. Scotland’s answer to Pompeii is, of course, much older than anything the Romans built. The visitor centre sets the scene, but it was only when I eased seawards and signs highlighted the comparative age of historical upstarts – including the Egyptian Pyramids and Stonehenge – that Orkney’s significance started to hit home.

Soon I was peering not through museum glass, but directly into the lives of people who lived there more than 5,000 years ago in what is now Europe’s most complete Neolithic village. Skara Brae had been lost to the sands before a violent storm in 1850 whipped them back up again, bringing the village back from the dead.

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