SKAILL FARMSTEAD
An ongoing project on the island of Rousay is a University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute investigation into a farmstead at Skaill — a site that was occupied from the Norse period until its abandonment in the 19th century.
Like other excavations in 2020, the COVID pandemic halted progress — but while fieldwork was paused, the project team has been focusing on artefact assessment, and sharing information about the site online.
This includes a series of short talks about the excavations, placenames and results so far, which can be viewed on the Institute’s Youtube page (https://bit.ly/3rjui1d), and a digital resources pack for Rousay Egilsay and Wyre, which had been reproduced on the Rousay Remembered website (https://bit.ly/3jiudbg).
A team of UHI students, Rousay residents and volunteers, led by Dr Ingrid Mainland, Dr Jen Harland, Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon and Dan Lee from the UHI Archaeology Institute, were last on site in July, 2019, to continue the project and investigate this farm and settlement mound, which may have been inhabited for over 1,000 years.
The present farm at Skaill dates to the 18th-19th centuries, and was part of the Rousay clearances during the mid-19th century; however, the name Skaill suggests the site was home to a Norse hall or drinking hall, and was a high-status site.
Westness is mentioned in Orkneyinga Saga as the home of Sigurd, a powerful chieftain, so it is likely that a Norse settlement is located somewhere at Skaill.
Earlier structures were found below the present farm in 2018, and, in 2019, the team explored more of the Norse and possible Viking phases of the site, with spectacular results.
Perhaps the most exciting find in 2019 involved the discovery of a large Norse hall. The hall probably dated to the 10th to 12th centuries AD, and was discovered below the more recent farmstead.
The team investigated the later stages of the farm complex and its middens (waste heaps), with a sequence of overlying buildings dating from the last few hundred years.
There was a particular focus on past diet, farming and fishing practises. It is below these later structures that the substantial walls of the Norse drinking hall were discovered.
The walls extending from below the extensive settlement mound were confirmed as a large Norse building, with substantial one-metre-wide stone walls, 5.5 metres apart, and internal features such as stone benches along either side. The building appears to be in excess of 13 metres long. The hall is orientated down the slope towards the sea. Finds have included steatite (soapstone from Shetland), pottery and a bone spindle whorl, typically found at Norse settlement sites. A fragment of a Norse bone comb was also found.
Although only partly uncovered at this stage, the Skaill hall has parallels with other Norse halls excavated in Orkney and elsewhere in Scotland, providing tantalising evidence for the earliest phases of habitation at the site.
It also provided another piece of the 5,000-year jigsaw along this archaeology-rich stretch of coast at Westness on Rousay — the “Egypt of the North.”
Project co-director Dan Lee explains: “As the Skaill place name suggests, we now have the hall.
“You never know, but perhaps Earl Sigurd himself sat on one of the stone benches inside the hall, and drank a flagon of ale!”
The project is funded by the Orkney Islands Council Archaeology Fund and the Rousay, Egilsay and Wyre Development Trust.
Many thanks to landowners Russell and Kathryn Marwick.
If you would like to study archaeology with the University of the Highlands Archaeology Institute, email studyarchaeology@uhi.ac.uk to learn more about the options available, including distance-learning courses.