Skellig Michael
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- In 823 Vikings raided the island and carried off its abbot, Eitgal, who died of hunger in captivity; a second attack followed in 838.
- Separate from the main monastery, a tiny hermitage clings to ledges near the South Peak, reached through a chimney-like cleft known as the Needle's Eye.
- The monastic community is thought never to have exceeded about twelve monks and an abbot at any one time.
- Some 600 stone steps laid by the monks climb from the sea to the monastery perched around 180 metres up.
- Six corbelled beehive cells survive on the monastery terrace, one of them partly collapsed.
- The rock's highest point, the South Peak, rises 218 metres straight out of the Atlantic.
- The island was dedicated to Saint Michael by at least 1044, giving it the second half of its name.
- "Skellig" comes from the Old Irish sceillec, a small steep rock, though an Old Norse origin has also been suggested.
- Two lighthouses had been built on the island by 1826, long after the last monks had left the rock.
- Neighbouring Little Skellig hosts more than 35,000 breeding pairs of gannets, the largest colony in Ireland and one of the biggest in the world.
Why it is worth it
Around the 6th century, a small group of monks chose the more punishing of Ireland's two available forms of isolation. Egypt had deserts to retreat into; Ireland didn't, so ascetics who wanted the same kind of hardship looked instead for the most inaccessible ground they could find, and a jagged rock rising out of the Atlantic 12 kilometers off the Kerry coast qualified. What they built there — a cluster of drystone beehive huts, two oratories, a small church, terraced gardens, and stone crosses, all fitted together without mortar on a slope with almost no flat ground to spare — has survived storms and salt spray for well over a thousand years largely intact.
Life on the rock ran on deliberate scarcity: seabirds and whatever could be coaxed out of two tiny cultivated patches were about it for food, and the physical difficulty of simply staying there was treated as part of the point, a form of prayer as much as survival. The community held on for centuries — the death of one monk, Suibhni of Scelig, is recorded as far back as the 8th century — before a colder, stormier climate and shifts within the Irish Church pushed the last residents off the island by around the 13th century, relocating to Ballinskelligs on the mainland.
The island went from obscure pilgrimage site to global backdrop almost overnight when it was used, in 2014 and 2015, as the filming location for Ahch-To, Luke Skywalker's hideaway in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. It's an odd second act for a place UNESCO had already listed as a World Heritage Site back in 1996, for reasons that had nothing to do with film — the monastery's near-total survival, essentially untouched by later rebuilding, is what actually earned it that status.
Good to know
Boat landings only run roughly from mid-May to the end of September, and even within that season only about two-thirds of scheduled sailings actually manage to land, since the crossing and the landing both depend on the Atlantic cooperating. Daily visitor numbers are capped, currently around 180 people.
Getting there
80 km from Tralee. Kerry Airport (KIR) is about 83 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Skellig Michael, also called Great Skellig, is a twin-pinnacled crag 11.6 kilometres (7.2 mi) west of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland. The island is named after the archangel Michael; while "Skellig" is derived from the Irish language word sceilig, meaning a splinter of stone. Its twin island, Little Skellig, is smaller and inaccessible. The two islands were formed c. 374–360 million years ago during a period of mountain formation, along with the local MacGillycuddy's Reeks mountain range. Rising water levels later separated them from the mainland.
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