Damsay is an islet in the

Orkney Orkney (), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but locals now consider it outdated. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, ...

archipelago in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. It is approximately in extent and rises to only above sea level. It is situated in the Bay of Firth north of the

Orkney Mainland The Mainland, also known as Pomona, is the main island of Orkney, Scotland. Both of Orkney's burghs, Kirkwall and Stromness, lie on the island, which is also the heart of Orkney's ferry and air connections. Seventy-five per cent of Orkney's popu ...

near Finstown. Nearby is the smaller islet of Holm of Grimbister.

History

It is now uninhabited, but at one time a Norse hall stood there, and it was the scene of the killing of Earl

Erlend Haraldsson Erlend Haraldsson (c.1124 – 21 December 1154) was joint Earl of Orkney from 1151 to 1154. The son of Earl Harald Haakonsson,Thomson (2008) p. 89 he ruled with Harald Maddadsson and Rögnvald Kali Kolsson.Thomson (2008) p. 101 This was a tur ...

by Earls

Rögnvald Kali Kolsson Rögnvald Kali Kolsson (; ), also known as Saint Ronald of Orkney (c. 1100 – 1158), was a Norwegian earl of Orkney who came to be regarded as a Christian saint. Two of the Orkney Islands are named after Rögnvald, namely North Ronaldsay and ...

and

Harald Maddadsson Harald Maddadsson (Old Norse: ''Haraldr Maddaðarson'', Gaelic: ''Aralt mac Mataid'') (c. 1134 – 1206) was Earl of Orkney and Mormaer of Caithness from 1139 until 1206. He was the son of Matad, Mormaer of Atholl, and Margaret, daughter ...

in 1154. Erlend celebrated after returning to the islet for Christmas and retired to his ship the worse for drink on the night of 21 December. Despite being warned of an attack by

Sweyn Asleifsson Sweyn Asleifsson or Sveinn Ásleifarson ( 1115 – 1171) was a 12th-century Viking who appears in the '' Orkneyinga Saga''. Early career Sweyn was born in Caithness in the early twelfth century, to Olaf Hrolfsson and his wife Åsleik. According t ...

and the presence of a full moon his men were taken by surprise by the attack by his co-rulers and Erlend was killed.Haswell-Smith (2004) p. 360 Later a small

nunnery A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican Comm ...

was built on the islet leading to a legend that no frogs or toads (or possibly rats and mice) could live there. It is also said that unmarried woman who became pregnant would go there to pray at an abandoned shrine to St Mary. Jo Ben's 1529 ''Descriptions of Orkney'' says of Damsay:

Here there are no hills, and it is the most pleasant of all, and is called Tempe. The church in this island is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, to which many pregnant women make visits in style. No frogs, toads, or other noxious terrestrial animals whatever are ever found here. The women here are sterile, and if they do become pregnant never bring forth with life. It is related that sometimes the haughty he shoresare carried away for the space of one hour, but truly afterwards restored. The distance of this island from
Kirkwall Kirkwall (, , or ; ) is the largest town in Orkney, an archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland. First mentioned in the ''Orkneyinga saga'', it is today the location of the headquarters of the Orkney Islands Council and a transport hub wi ...
is two miles.

Archaeology

Archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones has discovered a number of submerged structures off Damsay, which appear to be of

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

origin. She said: "We have certainly got a lot of stonework. There are some quite interesting things. You can see voids or entrances... The really interesting thing about this bay is the stories relating to things under the sea and sea-level change. Our ancestors were dealing with similar problems to ourselves and we'd like to see how they coped with it." She described a feature like a "stone table" made up of "a large slab about a metre and a half long and it's sitting up on four pillars or walls" and said that the "quality and condition of some of the stonework is remarkable. Nothing like this has ever been found on the seabed around the UK." A fieldwork report published in 2010 stated that "local ethno-archaeological information suggests the presence at one time of a causeway to the west, across a stretch of shallow water and existing skerries" that connected Damsay to the mainland.Bates ''et al'' (2010) p. 1

Footnotes

References

* Bates, R.; Bates, M.; Dawson, S.; Nayling, Nigel; & Wickham-Jones, C. R. ''The Rising Tide Report on Fieldwork June 2010''. University of St Andrews. * * Muir, Tom (2005) ''Orkney in the Sagas''. Kirkwall. ''The Orcadian''. * Omand, Donald (ed.) (2003) ''The Orkney Book''. Edinburgh. Birlinn. {{Orkney Islands Uninhabited islands of Orkney