Ring of Brodgar

The Ring of Brodgar stands on a narrow neck of land in the middle of Mainland, the largest of the Orkney islands, with the Loch of Stenness on one side and the Loch of Harray on the other. Water on both hands and a wide sky overhead make the setting as much a part of the monument as the stones themselves. It is a true circle 104 metres across, the third largest stone ring in the British Isles, and unlike most such circles it is set inside a great rock-cut ditch — up to 3 metres deep and 9 metres wide, carved straight out of the sandstone bedrock and probably dug in sections by separate gangs of workers.

The ring originally held up to 60 stones; 27 were still standing at the end of the 20th century, silhouetted against the lochs, the tallest on the south and west side. The date of construction has resisted precise measurement, but it is generally placed between about 2500 and 2000 BC, making Brodgar the last of the great Neolithic monuments in this landscape. The interior has never been excavated. Several stones carry much later graffiti: Norse visitors cut runes into them, including the name Bjorn and a small cross.

Brodgar is best understood together with its neighbours. Within a couple of square miles stand the Standing Stones of Stenness, the chambered tomb of Maeshowe and a scatter of cairns, mounds and single stones, and between the two stone circles the excavations at the Ness of Brodgar have revealed a complex of large Neolithic buildings and the footings of a massive wall that may have cut this ritual ground off from everyday life. Together with the village of Skara Brae these sites form the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1999. Antiquarian tradition called Brodgar the Temple of the Sun and Stenness the Temple of the Moon — romantic names, not ancient ones.

Getting there

The ring lies about 10 km north-east of Stromness on Mainland, Orkney. Kirkwall Airport (KOI) is about 19 km away. Stromness is linked to Scrabster on the Scottish mainland by the NorthLink ferry. The site is open ground; parts of the path are sometimes rested to let the grass recover.