Skara Brae
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The village provided the earliest known record of the human flea in Europe.
- V. Gordon Childe first believed the village dated from around 500 BC; radiocarbon dating in 1972–73 showed it was some 2,500 years older.
- Photographs of the 1927 dig show four women at work who were long dismissed as tourists and only later identified as excavators.
- A twisted skein of heather from the 1972 excavations is one of very few examples of Neolithic rope known anywhere.
- Stone boxes set into the house floors had their joints sealed with clay to make them watertight, possibly to keep limpets for fish bait.
- Some grooved-ware pots found in the houses could hold up to 30 litres.
- A carved whalebone figurine known only from a 19th-century sketch was rediscovered in 2016 in the collections of Stromness Museum.
- In 1913 an unknown party armed with shovels spent two days digging at the site and carried off an unknown quantity of finds.
- Lumps of red ochre found in the village have been read as evidence that its people may have painted their bodies.
- People were living here at the time of Egypt's early mastaba tombs and Sumer's brick temples.
Why it is worth it
Skara Brae is a Neolithic village on the Bay of Skaill, on the west coast of Orkney's Mainland, and the most complete settlement of its age in Europe. People lived here from about 3180 BC for some six centuries. The village lay hidden under a grassy mound until the winter of 1850, when a great storm stripped the dunes and exposed the outlines of roofless stone houses. William Graham Watt of nearby Skaill House dug out four of them; the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe excavated the site properly from 1927, and radiocarbon dating in the 1970s finally fixed its age.
What makes Skara Brae extraordinary is that the furniture survives, because on a treeless island everything was made of stone. Ten structures and the passages linking them can be seen. Nearly every house repeats the same plan: a single room around a central hearth, a box bed on each side, and opposite the low entrance a stone dresser, the first thing anyone coming in would see. The houses were built into banks of midden for shelter and warmth, drains ran under several of them, and stone doors could be barred with a bolt of bone. One building, known as House 8, stands apart, with no beds, and is thought to have been a workshop.
The villagers kept cattle, sheep and pigs, grew barley and ate a lot of seafood. They left behind grooved-ware pottery, beads, bone tools, long pins of ivory and enigmatic carved stone balls. Around 2500 BC the settlement was abandoned, perhaps as the climate grew colder and wetter; a romantic story of a sudden flight from a sandstorm persists, but many archaeologists think it emptied gradually. Skara Brae is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, with the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness and Maeshowe, and is cared for by Historic Environment Scotland. Skaill House, a 17th-century mansion, stands nearby.
Getting there
Skara Brae is on the B9056, which branches off the A967 between Stromness and Birsay; Stromness is about 6 miles (10 km) to the south. Kirkwall Airport (KOI) is about 27 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Ring of Brodgar 8.3 km · stone-circle
- Maeshowe 10.6 km · tumulus
- Old Man of Hoy 18.8 km · stack
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement located along the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, Orkney. The site was discovered following a storm exposing the presence of stone structures within the coastal sand dunes. Today, ten structures and four passageways are visible, as well as the remains of stone furniture and fixtures.
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