A TALE OF EARLS AND SAINTS
Orkney has a long and prestigious spiritual history. From its ancient stone circles and Neolithic monuments, to the religious revival that took hold in the West Mainland in the early 1980s, these islands have long been a place of ceremony and spiritual contemplation.
While the ancient religions and beliefs can only be speculated on from archaeological finds, the history of Christian Orkney is a little better known. Among the earliest Christian visitors were monks of Irish origin, known as The Papar (meaning “father”) who gave this name to the islands of Papa Westray and Papa Stronsay.
The second of these two islands has evidence of a monastic complex dating back to the 7th or 8th century, and today is home to the Golgotha Monastery, founded in 1999.
Officially, Orknweyecsotrnavye’srtbedaptotisct h&riscthiaunrictyh during the time oof fesacrlostliagnudrdc, oundgerer gpaatinonosf death. share services over the
According to summer Orkneyinga - 11.30am saga, every Olaf Trygvesson met with Sigurd in the year
Sunday. See local notices for 995, at Osmudwall, now Kirk Hope in South
details or contact Martin Walls, and ordered that he and all his
(677265) or Iain (677357) subjects be baptised or “killed on the spot.” Although the Orkney Earl consented, the saga
come and share the journey goes into detail of many unchristian acts on his part, leaving the reader to speculate that he may have held his Pagan beliefs a little longer.
Christianity was more firmly established by the time Orkney saw its first saint.
Executed on the island of Egilsay, under orders from his cousin Haakon, Orkney’s St Magnus was first buried on the spot he had died.
Later, Magnus’ mother had his body moved to Birsay, then Orkney’s capital, before his nephew, Earl Rognvald, promised a cathedral in Kirkwall in memory of his uncle “the Holy Earl.”
This huge cathedral, built using red and yellow sandstone, still dominates the Kirkwall
55 85 45 5 skyline, and, now known as the Light in the North, became a place of great pilgrimage.
It has been named among the 100 Best Cathedrals in Europe by historian Simon Jenkins, who rates it alongside Westminster Abbey, York Minster and Cologne Cathedral.
During restoration work in 1917, a hidden cavity was discovered, containing a box that held bones and a skull. The skull had a wound that is consistent with the axe blow, described in the saga’s, which killed St Magnus.
The bones were recorded, photographed, and then returned to their resting place.
They lie there still.