A Visit To Mousa Broch

This month, as a dedicated broch lover, I realised one of my ambitions. I had the opportunity to visit Mousa Broch on Shetland, the best-preserved example of these wonderful, Scottish, Iron Age structures.

I suppose being Chairperson of the Caithness Broch Project you might consider such a visit to be a rite of passage, but it’s been on my “bucket list” for years now regardless of the illustrious position I’m currently privileged to occupy.

And once again, just like my recent visit to the Crannog Centre (see earlier blog), it proved to me the powerful attraction of heritage tourism. You have to be dedicated to get to Shetland and determined to go further and make your way to Mousa. Among your travel choices are 14 hours overnight on a ferry from Aberdeen or expensive, direct flights from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Inverness. Some trans-Atlantic flights are cheaper. But such journeys are exactly what most of the 60 folk had made who I joined on board the tiny ferry boat to sail from the village of Sandwick to Mousa.

Everyone was going to see the broch and the trip I went on was one of several that take place every day between May and September. Just think how many visitors will be attracted to make the much easier road trip to Caithness to see the broch we’re going to build.

Mousa’s remoteness and the fact that, at most, only eleven families lived there and it’s been uninhabited since 1853, are the main reasons the broch has been able to withstand the ravages of time much better than other brochs. Elsewhere many of them were plundered for their stones which were used to build other dwellings including during the notorious Highland Clearances.

Mousa means “Mossy Island” in Old Norse and its broch is mentioned in two historical documents. Egil’s Saga relates how, in AD 900, an eloping couple from Norway found themselves shipwrecked in Shetland, and sought refuge in ‘Morseyarborg’.

The Orkneyinga Saga recounts how, in AD 1153, a certain Erlend abducted Margaret, the mother of Earl Harald and took her to Morseyarborg ‘where everything had been made ready’. Earl Harald besieged the broch but found it ‘an unhandy place to get at’ for attack.

Today Mousa is an RSPB Nature Reserve with important breeding colonies of seals and seabirds including the tiny Storm Petrel. Hundreds of them have made their home within the broch walls and if you’re quiet when visiting, you can hear them but the best time to see them is at night when they return to the broch after a day feeding out at sea.

But enough of the natural history I hear you say, what about the broch itself. Well it’s thought to have been built about 300 BC. It’s 13m tall and its 5m thick walls contain chambers and cupboards created in its double skin of stone. It appears to have had five internal platforms accessed by a staircase between the walls culminating at the top with a panoramic view of Mousa Sound. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.

I’ll never forget my visit to Mousa and the fascination visitors from all over the world had with brochs. Our project team can’t wait to see these visitors come to Caithness to find out more about these wonderful structures.