Skaill, Bay of Skaill

The Bay of Skaill takes its name from Old Norse, and its fertile, sheltered lands drew settlers for millennia, most famously the Neolithic villagers of Skara Brae. During the Viking Age and Late Norse period the ground behind the bay supported prosperous Norse farms whose wealth is still coming to light. In March 1858 a local Orkney boy, David Linklater, came upon scattered pieces of silver in a rabbit burrow in the dunes near St Peter's Kirk: the Skaill Hoard. In all, more than a hundred silver objects were recovered, weighing roughly eight kilograms. They included around nine brooches — among them massive Scandinavian ball-type "thistle" brooches — some fourteen neck-rings and twenty-seven arm-rings, ingots and chopped hack-silver, together with a handful of Anglo-Saxon coins and about twenty-one Arabic dirhams. The coins place its burial around AD 950–970, during the era of the Norse Earldom of Orkney. It remains the largest Viking-age silver hoard found in Scotland. The wider Skaill landscape was investigated between roughly 2003 and 2011 by the Birsay–Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project, directed by David Griffiths of the University of Oxford. Excavations on the sand mounds beside the bay — at the Castle of Snusgar and the neighbouring East Mound — brought to light a high-status Norse settlement, including a longhouse exceeding twenty-six metres in length with ancillary buildings, working areas and middens, its occupation spanning the tenth and eleventh centuries. Together, hoard and settlement mark Skaill as a wealthy hub of the Norse Northern Isles.

Today the pull of Skaill is its setting rather than upstanding Norse ruins. Visitors see the sweeping crescent of pale sand and the grass-covered dune-mounds that conceal the Norse settlement; the trenches at Snusgar and the East Mound were backfilled after excavation, so the buried longhouses are not on display, though the prominent green mound of the Castle of Snusgar rises clearly on the north side of the bay. Overlooking the shore stands seventeenth-century Skaill House, the laird's mansion, which has a small museum and a connection to Captain James Cook. At the southern end of the bay lies the celebrated Neolithic village of Skara Brae with its visitor centre, while the restored St Peter's Kirk stands above the shore near where the silver was found. The hoard itself is not here: its silver is held by the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Skaill lies in the parish of Sandwick on Orkney's West Mainland, roughly a 30-minute drive northwest of Kirkwall by the A965 and B9056. There is a car park at Skara Brae, from which the bay, the settlement mounds and Skaill House are within easy walking distance. Skara Brae is ticketed and managed by Historic Environment Scotland, with the privately owned Skaill House open alongside it on the same visit in season; the beach, dunes and settlement mounds themselves are freely accessible. St Peter's Kirk stands nearby. There is no dedicated visitor centre for the Norse hoard or settlement on site, so check current opening times and prices on the Historic Environment Scotland website before travelling.