In a valley in Hoy, between the Ward Hill and the precipitous ridge known as the Dwarfie Hammers, lies the celebrated Dwarfie Stone, most puzzling perhaps of all the antiquities of the Islands. This is a huge block of sandstone measuring about 28 feet in length, and varying in breadth from 11 to 14½ feet. Its height falls from 6½ feet at the southern to 2 feet at the northern end. On the west side of the stone is an entrance giving access to two couches or berths, the southern and larger of which has a stone pillow. When first mentioned in writing by Jo Ben in his Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum, in 1529, the Dwarfie Stone was as great a puzzle as it is to-day, and no suggested explanation of its origin or raison d’être appears to carry much probability.
Silver Ornaments, found in
Sandwick, Orkney
Important discoveries of antique jewelry, coins, and other articles of the precious metals have been made in Orkney from time to time. Perhaps the greatest find was that made at the Bay of Skaill, in the parish of Sandwick, in March 1858, which consisted of 16 lbs. weight of silver articles, including heavy mantle brooches, torques, bars of silver, and coins, some of the last being Cufic, of the Samanian and Abbasside Kalifs, dating from 887 to 945 A.D., and others Anglo-Saxon.
15. Architecture—(a) Ecclesiastical
The cathedral church of St Magnus at Kirkwall, founded by St Rognvald in 1137 in memory of his uncle, is, except that of Glasgow, the only mediaeval cathedral in Scotland that remains complete in all its parts, and, in the words of the Danish historian Worsae, it constitutes incontestably the finest monument of their dominion that the Scandinavians have left in Scotland.
St Magnus’ Cathedral