Thursday 6th July 2000
Welcome to the second ‘internet diary’ on the archaeological excavation of the medieval chapel of St Nicholas' on Papa Stronsay, one of the smallest and remotest of the Orkney Islands. Each day from now to the end of July we will be bringing you news of the discoveries we have made as they happen. Today’s entry provides you with the background to the project. For more details you can look up the pages from last year’s excavation diary.
St Nicholas’ Chapel is a small medieval church which probably dates from the 11th century, starting life as a simple, single-celled rectangular stone church. In the 12th century a chancel was added, resulting in a more complex design comprising a nave, with two side altars, and a chancel containing the main altar. The chapel was abandoned following the Reformation of the 16th century, but was reused as an agricultural building until around 1790 when it was partially demolished to provide building stone for a barn. At the time our excavations began, in 1998, there was nothing to see of the church except for a few bumps in the turf.
An archaeological discovery in the 18th century
and a few historical clues mark out St Nicholas’ as a site of particular
significance.
Probably towards the end of the 18th century a
cross-slab is report to have been ‘dug up near the site of the old chapel of
St Nicholas’. Although now
unfortunately lost, a drawing of the slab shows it to have been inscribed with
the words D(OMI)NE D(EI), and the slab – probably a grave-marker –
can be dated to the 8th century on stylistic grounds.
This is a date much earlier than that of the medieval chapel and hints at
an earlier church on the site, one belonging to the period of the first
introduction of Christianity to Orkney when the islands formed part of the
Kingdom of the Picts, an enigmatic Dark Age people who inhabited much of what
was later to become Scotland. Could
archaeological excavation reveal the remains of this earlier church? This was a tantalising possibility that drew us to the site.
Another historical clue drew us to the little island of
Papa Stronsay, or Papay as it is known locally, and that was its name.
Papay means ‘Priests’ Island’.
The name was given to the island by the Viking invaders who settled
Orkney from the 8th century onwards.
The Vikings must have given this name to the island because they
encountered a community of priests – monks, most likely – on Papa Stronsay.
Was the site of St Nicholas’ chapel originally a monastic church of the
Picts? Again, excavation might
provide the answer.
A final historical clue was found in a passage from the
Orkneyinga Saga, the saga of the Norse Earls of Orkney.
The passage describes a murder that took place, around AD 1045, when the
descendents of Earl Sigurd the Stout were competing for control of the Earldom
of Orkney. The murder took place on Papa Stronsay. Earl Rognvald had
gone there to fetch malt for the Christmas ale.
While he was on the island, drinking around the fire, his uncle and arch
rival Earl Thorfinn arrived with his men and surprised Rognvald.
Rognvald tried to escape, disguised as a priest, but was recognised,
hunted down and slain on the beach by Thorfinn’s men (it was the barking of
his lapdog that gave him away).
But why had Rognvald decided to disguise himself as a priest? Was it because a monastic community had survived on the island all through the turbulent centuries that had seen the takeover and settlement of once Pictish Orkney by the Vikings? Yet again, could excavation on the site of St Nicholas’ Chapel help us with an answer to the question of the possible survival and continuity of Christianity through the period of Viking conquest, even though the first Vikings on Orkney were pagans?
These fascinating archaeological and historical questions
are what have drawn us to excavate the site of
St Nicholas’ Chapel, but there is another – more pressing – reason
to excavate the site, and that is coastal erosion.
The remains of St Nicholas’ Chapel lie only a couple of metres from the coast. Already, part of the churchyard has been claimed by the sea and the remains of stone structures protrude precariously from the coastal cliff in graphic testimony to archaeological evidence lost to the ravages of the waves. One big storm and much of St Nicholas’ Chapel, with all its secrets, could be lost forever. The threat of coastal erosion has added urgency to our investigations.
The excavations at St Nicholas’ Chapel have been carried
out for two seasons, July 1998 and July 1999.
This year is our third season of work.
Already, however, the discoveries made have more than met our hopes and
expectations.
An 8th-century Pictish
church?
Underneath the 11th/12th-century church we have found the remains of an earlier building. The style of the architecture – curved rather than rectilinear walls – suggests a building of the Pictish period, perhaps 8th-century in date. But none of the domestic debris – animal bones, sea shells and broken pottery – that are normally found in Pictish houses are present. So the building is unlikely to be a house. Could it instead be an early church, the predecessor of the 11th/12th-century chapel we have uncovered?
A remarkable find from eastern Europe
It is more than just the absence of domestic debris that makes us think we may have uncovered a Pictish church. One find from within the building is of special significance. It is a small piece of green porphyry, a polished stoned which displays pale green crystals against a dark green groundmass. The stone comes from Greece and was widely used in Roman Imperial times to decorate baths, temples and other prestigious buildings. So what is it doing in a Pictish building on a tiny remote island of northern Scotland? Only ten other finds of green porphyry have been made in Scotland. All but one of these have been found in an ecclesiastical context, and most at sites that are pre-Norse foundations. It is thought that the porphyry was used to decorate altars, reliquaries and such-like. So, insignificant though the find may at first seem – just a fragment of stone that an inexperienced excavator may easily overlook – it is another, crucial, piece of evidence suggesting that the building underlying St Nicholas’ Chapel is an earlier church on the same site.
The possible earlier church is by no means all we have found in the first two seasons of excavation. Towards the end of our excavations last year we uncovered further curvilinear buildings on the periphery of the 11th/12th century chapel but clearly earlier than it in date. This time the buildings did produce midden material – animal bones, shells and broken pottery – suggesting domestic dwellings. But are these buildings just part of an ordinary Iron Age settlement which pre-dated the Norse church or are they – a much more exciting possibility – the cells of a Pictish monastery, where the monks lived who worshipped in the putative Pictish church underlying the later medieval one?
Excavation of domestic structures outside the church
And there is yet more evidence of an earlier stratum of
Christianity pre-dating the medieval church, for around this later church we
have found not one set of churchyard walls but two. One set of walls seems to belong with the later church but
the other is earlier. Could these
be the walls surrounding the churchyard of the Pictish church?
The past two seasons of excavation on Papa Stronsay have raised many questions. This year we hope to solve some of them. Follow our ‘internet diary’ and see if we succeed!
As we have shown, the historical and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that in early and later medieval times Papa Stronsay was home to a Christian community of special importance, quite possibly a monastic community. It is particularly appropriate, therefore, that this island should once again be home to a monastic community. In 1999 the island was bought by monks of the order of the Transalpine Redemptorists. Continuity from the past played a part in the choice of the island for their monastery.. Its remoteness, solitude, beauty and (sometimes) harshness set it aside as a place specially chosen for contemplation and worship. When today’s monks kneel in worship in the ancient chapel of St Nicholas, it as if time has evaporated.
In the years to come a new monastery is to be built on Papa Stronsay, with cells for forty or more monks, a guest house and a new chapel. The monks have designated the whole island a monastery, something which again may have echoes of the past, because this may have been the case in medieval times also.
The excavation is being run jointly by the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Birmingham and Edinburgh-based Headland Archaeology Ltd. The team comprises seven professional archaeologists and ten student trainees from the University of Birmingham. Accommodation is in a house and hostel on Stronsay, and each day the team makes the short sea crossing to Papa Stronsay in a fishing boat.
Supervisors
Simon Buteux (Birmingham University)
Lucie Dingwall (Birmingham University)
Stuart Halliday (Headland Archaeology)
Prof. John Hunter (Birmingham University)
Dr. Chris Lowe (Headland Archaeology)
Ingrid Shearer (Headland Archaeology)
Dan Slater (Birmingham University)
Student trainees
Michelle Collins, Katherine Hamer, Ruth Leak, Julie McEwen, Michelle Morris, Sam Rowlands, Brett Smith, Sarah Weatherall, Tracy Weston and Gemma Wicks
We are grateful to the following organisations for funding
the excavations at St Nicholas’ Chapel:
The Arts and Humanities Research Board
Historic Scotland
The Hunter Trust
Orkney Islands Council
The Russell Trust
The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
The University of Birmingham
This web site is sponsored by Islands Network Services.
In addition to our sponsors, we wish to thank the following
individuals who have made the excavation possible: Sally Foster (Inspector of
Ancient Monuments, Historic Scotland), John Friel, Julie Gibson (Orkney Islands
Archaeologist), Jane Lowe (for feeding us splendidly), James (12) and Mattie (9)
Lowe (for running the sweet shop and helping on the excavations), Paul Miller
(for ferrying us to and from Papa Stronsay), Charlie Smith, and Bob Wilcox
(Islands Network Services).
Particular thanks are due to Father Michael Mary and the monks of the Transalpine Redemptorists for their hospitality, their interest in our work, and for allowing us to disturb the tranquility of their monastery.