SIMON TREASURE wrote: > actually it was the other way round. it was almost certainly a > headland 1000 years ago, not cut off by the sea at any time. As the > capital of viking orkney it seems logical that they would establish a > site that they could access from the land without the problems we > have today. Well, I don't know about that, Simon. The Brough was certainly attached to the land at some time, but, as far as I can gather, not during the period of Pictish and Norse occupation. In Anna Ritchie's "Historic Scotland" booklet on the Brough, she writes: "It is impossible to judge the date at which the Brough became detached from the Point of Buckquoy, but geologists and archaeologists agree that it took place long before the known settlement of the island in the seventh century AD. Nor can it be estimated how accessible the Brough has been by boat, though attempting to land must always have been hazardous. The modern causeway makes it possible to cross on foot without getting one's feet wet, but without the causeway wet feet would be inevitable, and to that extent life on the island inconvenient." Doesn't the place-name evidence also suggest that the Brough was an island in Viking times? According to a certain Charles Tait in his Guidebook: "The Vikings called the whole area of Birsay and Harray 'Byrgisherad' (ON Byrgisey, island of the enclosure or rampart and Herad, district)." So, no, I think the Brough was an island 1000 years ago, and if the sea level was indeed one or two metres higher during the Viking period, it may have been cut off by the sea (or perhaps made more secure by the sea) for longer periods than we see now. Incidentally, you say that the Brough was once the capital of Viking Orkney. I think that's debatable. To quote Anna Ritchie again: "In many ways the site of the modern village at the head of the Bay of Birsay has a stronger claim to have been the seat of the early Norse earls [than does the Brough], just as it was for later earls in the sixteenth century, when the sumptuous palace, whose gaunt walls still dominate the bay, was built. Alongside the palace, the present parish church is known to stand on the site of an earlier cruciform church, traditionally known as Christ's Kirk, which was demolished in the eighteenth century. There is also archaeological and historical evidence for an episcopal palace here in the sixteenth century. Recent excavations alongside the mouth of the burn have uncovered the foundations of a substantial tenth-century Norse hall, together with later buildings, which may well have been the seat of the first earls of Orkney." She also points out that, "Despite its sophisticated design, the church on the Brough is very small to have been an important minster, and, by tradition, its dedication is to St Peter rather than to Christ. Thorfinn's Christchurch was built in the mid eleventh century, whereas most architectural historians date the Brough church to the early twelfth century." Neither does it seem to me that any of the Norse buildings that have been found on the Brough look grand enough to have been the residence of Earl Thorfinn the Mighty, but I'm no expert on these matters. Clearly there were important Norse settlements both on the Brough and around the Point of Buckquoy, but maybe the main seat of power was a little further round the Birsay Bay. Norman Tulloch