A good map is a great help to visitors to Orkney. VisitOrkney produces a useful one, which also includes Shetland.

The Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 series covers Orkney in three sheets, and is recommended for all serious explorers.

Skara Brae

The 5,000 year-old Neolithic village of Skara Brae was buried under sand dunes at the Bay of Skaill, in the West Mainland, until 1850, when it was revealed by a big storm. The houses are so intact that it is easy to imagine their inhabitants going about their lives. The site was occupied sequentially from about 3100BC to about 2600BC, and consists of at least six houses, all joined together by a “street” and buried in a mound of midden except for the freestanding “workshop”.

The houses are well constructed with drains, (perhaps) damp-proof courses, stone dressers, beds, cupboards and tanks. There are even cells with drains which might be toilets. All are quite similar in design and vary from about 6m x 6m to 4m x 4m. The roofs may have been supported by whalebone or driftwood couples and covered with hides and turf, perhaps with straw thatch, all held down with heather or straw ropes.

Hut 8 appears to have been the workshop, with evidence of stone working, and pottery making. “Grooved Ware” pottery was found along with many bone and stone tools as well as jewellery items made from bone and shells.

The people were stock farmers and reared cattle, sheep, some pigs and deer and fished in the nearby sea, which would have been prolific with Cod, Haddock, Saithe and many species of shellfish at that time. They also grew Bere Barley.

Due to the small amount of flint in Orkney, chert was used to make cutting tools. Bone was much used, but wood was not well preserved, though presumably it would also have been extensively used.

Although no evidence of textile making was found, many tools which might have been used in working leather were found, suggesting that the people may have been quite well dressed, perhaps using skins and furs rather than wool.

Skara Brae is contemporary with the other Orkney Neolithic monuments, but is so far the only well-preserved village to have been found and which can be visited, apart from the houses at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray and the settlement at Barnhouse in Stenness. The fact that it is so impressively designed and built suggests that its inhabitants were well settled in Orkney and not newcomers.