The Brough of Birsay, Orkney. Investigations 1954–2014 (Morris 2021) is the third, and final, volume of the Birsay Bay Project and the culmination of sixty years of investigations that took place on the site and in the archives. As with Volume 2, much effort has gone into researching the archives in order to provide as comprehensive an account as possible of investigations undertaken by previous excavators, whose work had hitherto not been published. It completes a trilogy of studies of the Brough itself, alongside Cecil Curle’s and John Hunter’s earlier monographs (Curle 1982; Hunter 1986).

This is therefore an appropriate moment to consider in this paper the historiography of this important site, located on a tidal island at the north-western extremity of the Mainland of Orkney (Figure 16.1), and yet the power centre of the Viking Earldom of Orkney. For a discussion of the significance of the site, and reference to more recent work in Birsay more generally and analyses by scholars such as Sarah Jane Gibbon and Barbara Crawford, the reader is referred to chapter 25 of Morris 2021. At the present time, it is now one of Historic Environment Scotland’s key monuments and visitor attractions on the islands.

Here, sheer cliffs up to 45m high face the full force of the Atlantic storms from the west, while the ground then slopes down to cliffs 4–5m high on the eastern face and towards the ‘Peerie Brough’ (‘Little Brough’: Marwick 1970: 12). The name ‘Brough’ comes from the Old Norse borg (i.e. fortress or fortified place), possibly referring to the naturally defensive qualities of an island difficult to access. Birsay as a name is a contraction of an early form ‘Byrgisey’ which Lindsay MacGregor has redefined as ‘the island (-ey) with a narrow neck of land (-býrgi)’ (Morris 1989:21).

19th- and early 20th-century investigations

Although there was a well-attested tradition of pilgrimage at this site in Birsay, the Brough buildings were clearly in a parlous state from the end of the 18th century (George Low in OSA 1795: 324; NSA 1845: 98).