"An Iron Age tower and village standing where Orkney meets the sea, layered with fourteen centuries of human life"
Broch of Gurness
Evie, Orkney Islands, United Kingdom
The Broch of Gurness rises from a rocky promontory on Orkney's northwest coast, overlooking the turbulent waters of Eynhallow Sound. Built between 500 and 200 BC, the massive stone tower once stood ten metres tall at the centre of a fortified village where an entire community lived, worked, and sheltered. Three concentric ditches cut from bedrock, a ring of small stone houses, and a subterranean cistern speak to the intensity of life sustained here through the long Orkney winters. Iron Age builders gave way to Pictish settlers who carved their symbols into stone, and then to Norse arrivals who buried their dead in this already ancient mound.
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Quick Facts
Location
Evie, Orkney Islands, United Kingdom
Tradition
Site Type
Coordinates
59.1240, -3.0817
Last Updated
Feb 5, 2026
The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village on the northwest coast of Mainland Orkney, built between 500 and 200 BC. It is the best-preserved broch village in Scotland, with a central tower, surrounding settlement, and three defensive ditches. The site was occupied for over fourteen centuries through Iron Age, Pictish, and Norse periods before being lost beneath a grassy mound until its accidental discovery in 1929.
Origin Story
The broch began as a massive circular stone tower built on a rocky promontory overlooking Eynhallow Sound. The community that raised it cut three concentric ditches from the bedrock, built stone ramparts, and added an entrance causeway on the eastern side. A village of small stone houses grew around the tower, enclosed within the defensive rings. The builders left no written account of their reasons for choosing this place, but the promontory commands views across the sound and sits within sight of other brochs lining either shore, suggesting a network of Iron Age communities connected by water.
The tower was engineered with double-skinned walls more than four metres thick, stone-floored galleries running between the inner and outer skins, and an interior space of about ten metres diameter. At the centre, a subterranean stone cistern with steps leading down into it served a purpose that remains debated. Two hearths warmed the space. Upright sandstone flags divided the interior into rooms.
The settlement endured through centuries of change. The broch tower began to deteriorate while still inhabited. The cistern was filled, the interior redesigned. Eventually, sometime after 100 AD, the tower was abandoned and its ditches filled. Pictish communities arrived and built anew from the broch's own stones, leaving behind carved symbols and an ogham-inscribed bone knife handle. Around AD 850, a Norse woman was buried in a stone-lined grave on the mound, accompanied by two oval bronze brooches and iron tools. Isotopic analysis of her bones suggests she spent her childhood on the east coast of Ireland or in southeast England, a stranger laid to rest in an ancient place far from her origins.
Key Figures
Robert Rendall
Discoverer
James Smith Richardson
First Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland
The Norse Woman
9th-century burial
Spiritual Lineage
No continuous cultural or spiritual tradition connects the present day to the Iron Age, Pictish, or Norse communities who occupied the site. The significance of Gurness is understood through archaeological investigation. The site has been managed by the state since 1932, when ownership was transferred into state care during ongoing excavations. Historic Environment Scotland now maintains the monument and visitor centre.
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