Norse Orkney: Viking Sites, Sagas & St Magnus Cathedral

For six centuries Orkney was Norse. The earls who ruled here from the 9th to the 13th century paid tribute to Bergen and Trondheim, not London or Edinburgh, and the islands' bones are still Scandinavian — in the place names, the dialect, the saint, the cathedral, and a chambered tomb scratched all over with the runic graffiti of returning crusaders. Here's where to walk in their footsteps, and the stories that make those stones worth the trip.

Six Hundred Years of Norse Rule — A Timeline

The Earldom of Orkney was one of medieval Europe's stranger creations: a Norse polity holding territory off the British coast, owing allegiance to Norway but ruled by a hereditary line of earls who behaved more or less as kings of their own islands. The earldom rose, peaked, fragmented, and finally fell to a Scottish king who never set foot in his new possession.

The earls who matter for visiting are these:

• Sigurd I 'the Mighty' Eysteinsson (c.875–c.892) — first true Earl, brother of Rögnvald of Møre. Conquered northern Scotland; died of an infected tooth from the severed head of a defeated chieftain that he had tied to his saddle. The saga writers were not subtle.
• Sigurd II 'the Stout' Hlodvirsson (991–1014) — fell at Clontarf carrying his mother's enchanted raven banner, which the saga claimed brought victory to its army but death to its bearer.
• Thorfinn II 'the Mighty' Sigurdsson (c.1025–c.1064) — the high-water mark. Pilgrimaged to Rome, founded Christ Church at Birsay (Orkney's first cathedral, where Magnus would later lie before his transfer to Kirkwall).
• St Magnus Erlendsson (co-earl 1106–1117) — murdered by his cousin Earl Hákon on Egilsay; canonised; the cathedral and the cult are both his.
• St Rögnvald Kali Kolsson (1136–1158) — Magnus's nephew, builder of the cathedral, leader of the 1151–1153 crusade. Murdered, canonised 1192.
• Harald Maddadsson (1138–1206) — the longest reign. His men sheltered in Maeshowe in a January 1153 storm and broke the seal on a chambered tomb that had been closed for nearly four thousand years.

The Norse Sites You Can Actually Walk Today

When Was St Magnus Cathedral Built? The 1137 Foundation

St Magnus Cathedral is the oldest cathedral in Scotland still in continuous use, and the only Norse-era cathedral in the British Isles. Construction began in 1137, twenty years after the murder it commemorates.

• The murder, 16 April 1117. Magnus Erlendsson, joint Earl with his cousin Hákon, was lured to a peace meeting on the small island of Egilsay. Hákon's reluctant cook, Lifolf, was forced to deliver the killing axe-blow to the head — the cause of death later confirmed when the saint's relics were rediscovered in 1919, hidden inside a south-choir pillar.
• The vow, c.1136. Magnus's nephew Rögnvald Kali Kolsson, advised by his shrewd father Kol of Agder, promised to build "a stone minster at Kirkwall more magnificent than any in Orkney" if the islands' farmers helped him secure the earldom. They did. He kept the vow.
• Construction, 1137 onwards. Master mason Kol oversaw the work; the design echoes Durham Cathedral so precisely that several of the same masons are thought to have worked at both. The chequerboard façade uses red Kirkwall sandstone and yellow Eday sandstone in alternating courses — the only major building in Britain to do so.
• Eight nave bays. Late-Romanesque transitioning to early Gothic. Eastern extensions vaulted by the late 12th century; pointed-arch additions to the lower west front in the late 14th.
• 1560 Reformation. Survived "relatively unscathed" — most Scottish cathedrals were not so lucky. Bishop James Law personally intervened in 1614 to prevent demolition.
• 1908 spire and 1913–1930 restoration. The copper-clad spire visible today is George Mackie Watson's; the major Thoms Bequest restoration finished the look.

Pop in on a Sunday afternoon for the free organ recital and you'll hear the building the way Rögnvald's masons intended it to sound.

Jerusalem-farers at Maeshowe — The Runes of 1153

Half an hour west of Kirkwall, a low grass mound covers a 5,000-year-old chambered tomb. The Neolithic builders of Maeshowe could not have imagined who would eventually open it and what they would carve on its walls.

In January 1153, Earl Harald Maddadsson's men sheltered overnight in the mound while a storm passed; the saga records that two of them went mad inside. Later that same year, men of Earl Rögnvald's fifteen-ship fleet — returning from a two-year crusade to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — broke in through the roof and carved nearly thirty inscriptions onto the slabs.

It is the largest collection of runic inscriptions anywhere outside Scandinavia, and unlike formal monumental runes, these are graffiti — Norse warriors writing what was on their minds:

• "Jórsalafarar brutu Orkhaug" — "Jerusalem-farers broke Orkahaugr." The crusader inscription that seals the date.
• "Lif the earl's cook carved these runes."
• "These runes were carved by the man most skilled in runes west of the ocean — with the axe that killed Gaukr Trandilsson in the south of Iceland." Probably Thorhallr Asgrímsson, captain of one of Rögnvald's ships, name-checking a saga murder back home.
• "To the north-west is a great treasure hidden. Happy is he that might find it. Hakon alone bore treasure from this mound." The Norse equivalent of "Hakon was here, and he found gold."
• "Ingibjörg the fair widow… many a woman has gone stooping in here, however haughty she was." The bawdy one. Twelfth-century men were thirteenth-century men.

You can only see the runes on a Historic Environment Scotland guided tour — book ahead, particularly in summer. The tour also includes the only documented case in Britain of Norse warriors graffiting a Neolithic monument with first-person travel writing.

The Orkneyinga Saga — Stories You Can Map to Real Places

The Orkneyinga Saga ("Saga of the Earls") was compiled by an anonymous Icelandic writer around 1200, drawing on older oral material. It is unreliable as history and unbeatable as story. Five episodes have direct visitor anchors:

• Sigurd the Stout's raven banner at Clontarf, 1014. Woven by his Irish mother with a curse — victory to whoever it followed, death to whoever bore it. Every standard-bearer fell. Sigurd carried it himself when no one else would, and was killed.
• Magnus's murder on Egilsay, 1117. The round-tower church on Egilsay was built at the murder site; a modern stone cairn marks the spot in the field beside it. Reached by foot ferry from Tingwall, a 25-minute crossing.
• Maeshowe storm-shelter, January 1153. The episode that produced the runes above.
• Battle of Tarbat Ness, c.1035. Thorfinn the Mighty defeats Karl Hundason and secures the earldom across the Pentland Firth — the Orcadian high-water mark.
• Rögnvald's 1151–53 crusade. Fifteen keels laid in Norway, Jerusalem reached, the Mediterranean raided on the way home, and immortalised in the saga's final chapters. Stanley Cursiter's painting Sails in St Magnus hangs in the cathedral itself — if you spot it, you've completed the loop.

The Enduring Norse Influence on Modern Orkney

Norse rule formally ended in 1472, but the islands never quite stopped being Scandinavian:

• Place names. More than 90% of Orkney farm names are Old Norse — -by (settlement), -ness (headland), -quoy (cattle enclosure), -bister (homestead), -skaill (hall).
• Dialect. Orcadian Scots retains hundreds of Old Norse words, particularly for weather, fishing, sea conditions, and farm life.
• The Ba'. The Christmas-Day and New-Year-Day mass football contest in Kirkwall — Uppies versus Doonies — is widely thought to descend from a Norse street brawl.
• Folklore. The supernatural beings of Orkney sea-lore — selkies, trows and finfolk — have direct Scandinavian and Norse-era roots, however much they've been overlaid with later Scots influence.
• The 17th May. Orkney still flies the Norwegian flag on Norway's Constitution Day. The cathedral bells ring for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Vikings come to Orkney?

The earliest documented Norse presence dates to the late 8th century, but real political control begins around AD 875 with Sigurd I 'the Mighty', traditionally regarded as the first Earl of Orkney. Norse rule ended in 1468–1472 when Orkney was pledged to Scotland and then formally annexed.

When was St Magnus Cathedral built?

Construction began in 1137 under Earl Rögnvald Kali Kolsson, twenty years after the murder of his uncle Magnus on Egilsay in 1117. The cathedral has been in continuous use since the 12th century — the oldest cathedral in Scotland still active.

What are the Maeshowe runes?

Nearly thirty Norse runic inscriptions carved into the walls of the Neolithic Maeshowe chambered tomb, mostly in 1153 by men of Earl Rögnvald's crusader fleet returning from Jerusalem. It is the largest collection of runic graffiti anywhere outside Scandinavia. You can see them on a Historic Environment Scotland guided tour.

Where was Earl Magnus murdered?

On the small island of Egilsay, on 16 April 1117. The 12th-century round-tower church of St Magnus was built at or very near the murder site; a modern stone cairn marks the spot in the adjoining field. Egilsay is reached by Orkney Ferries from Tingwall.

Where can I see Viking artefacts in Orkney?

The Orkney Museum in Kirkwall (free entry) holds the largest single collection of Viking-age and Norse-period artefacts on the islands. The Orkneyinga Saga Centre in Orphir, the cathedral itself, and the Earl's and Bishop's Palaces all add context. Walking tours that link these sites are available — a guided historic Kirkwall walk hits most of them in three hours.

If you're planning a Norse-themed visit, the West Mainland gives you Birsay, Maeshowe and the cathedral within twenty minutes' drive of each other. Stay in Kirkwall, Stromness or the West Mainland and you can do the entire earldom in three days, on foot.