Magnus 900 - Research Sources

This year marks the 900th Anniversary of the death of Earl Magnus of Orkney. The Orkney Archive and Orkney Room have many sources of information in connection with Earl Magnus, some of which I will share with you below:

In Magnus Saga the Life of St Magnus, Earl of Orkney 1075-1116 Palsson and Edwards sums up the story on the back page,
  "The Norwegian's held sway in the most northerly areas of present-day Scotland for 600 years, from the 9th century to 1469. And in this earldom of Orkney, Magnus Erlendsson (St Magnus of Orkney), was in every way a central figure.
   ...His father fought on the Norwegian side at the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. He himself ruled as Earl of Orkney with his cousin Haakon, following an early life of piracy and Viking expeditions and a time living at the court of King Malcolm III of Scotland.
     But this biography written in Icelandic in about 1250, is particularly concerned with the execution of Magnus which took place on the island on Egilsay in 1116 or 1117 and which led to his veneration in every part of the Scandinavian world, and to the building of the great cathedral in Kirkwall.
    ...St Magnus Day is still celebrated on the 16th April."

He is described as "a man of extraordinary distinction, tall, with a fine, intelligent look about him. He was a man of strict virtue, successful in war, wise, eloquent, generous and magnanimous, open-handed with money and sound with advice, and altogether the most popular of men." (p83 of Orkneyinga Saga The History of the Earls of Orkney Translated by Palsson and Edwards)

He offered himself as a martyr to Earl Hakon, when their joint rule fell apart, "'There's still one offer left for me to make', said Magnus, 'God knows that I'm more concerned with the welfare of your soul than with saving my life. For your own sake, have me mutilated in any way you choose, rather than take my life or else blind me and lock me in a dungeon'
I'll accept these terms', said Hakon, 'and make no further conditions'"
To the man told to kill him, Magnus said, "This is nothing to weep over, a deed like this can only bring fame to the man who carries it out. Show yourself a man of spirit and you can have my clothes according to the old laws and customs. ... Stand in front of me and strike me hard on the head, it's not fitting for a chieftain to be beheaded like a thief."
 (p87-8 of Orkneyinga Saga The History of the Earls of Orkney Translated by Palsson and Edwards)

Magnus was killed and his bones left on Egilsay.

Traditions grew up around the place where he was slain. Ernest Marwick has collected a few which can be see in D31/37/1 Folder entitled St Magnus - Traditions and Pictures containing press cuttings, notes, pamphlets, photographs and correspondence here in the Orkney Archive:

"There was a legend that when Magnus was slain on Egilsay his blood stained the daisies red, and that in the place a lovely thornless rose grew which flowered each Christmas morning. If a leaf was plucked while the dew was still on it, it would cure black death and leprosy"

"That one will always find an open flower growing there."

Egilsay Kirk drawn by Dryden in 1894



On the instructions of his mother, Thora, Magnus' bones were moved from Egilsay to Birsay and buried there. They were probably taken by boat from Egilsay to Evie.

Ernest Marwick collected traditions in St Magnus Folder reference D31/37/1 regarding resting-places of the body of St Magnus on the way from Evie to Birsay. From an interview with Mrs Matches of Brochlea, Birsay in 1972 he gained this story:

"There was a Mans Stone at Crowdue between eighty and a hundred years ago. Robert Harvey of Crowdue decided to break it up because it was near the old road, and something of an impediment to the traffic on the road. He was warned by auld Ibbie o Moosakelda to desist for it was a sacred stone. A splinter of it entered his hand between the thumb and forefinger and he died a week later of lockjaw."

In the John Mooney papers, reference D49/1/11, there is a bundle of correspondence and press cuttings received by him following the publication of "St Magnus, Earl of Orkney" in 1936. It includes a letter from J. Graham Callander, National Museums of Antiquities, Edinburgh regarding discoveries at Garth, Nether Brough; and mention of a symbol stone found at the Brough of Birsay, 22 May 1936.

"Magnus Saga" says: "The body of Earl Magnus was carried to Birsay and given burial at Christ Church, which Earl Thorfinn had built."



TK3036 Photo of Birsay Village

Then "Magnus' Saga" mentions the sanctification of St Magnus on St Lucy's Day, December 13th, over 20 years after his death by Bishop William and later still: 'After Earl Rognvald Kali, nephew of the Holy Earl Magnus, had come to power in Orkney and settled down, he had the ground-plan drawn up for St. Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall and hired builders for the work. The structure progressed rapidly and well; it is a remarkable building, on which great pains were bestowed, and later the holy relics of Earl Magnus were transferred to it. Many miracles continued to take place there. Nowadays it is the episcopal seat, the same that used to be at Christ Church in Birsay."

More traditions collected by Ernest Marwick in the St Magnus Folder D31/37/1:

"Sigurd Tandrisson was the name of a farmer who lived at Dale in Shetland. He became so mad and violent that he had to be sewn up in a cow-hide. He was brought like that to the shrine of St Magnus, and there he got back his wits and full health, and went away quite whole."

and from Mrs Matches again:

Birsay to Kirkwall

"The procession went by the Strathyre stane. They crossed through Greeny, and there was a resting-place between the Mill of Housby and the Loch of Sabiston."

St Magnus Stone

"This broken earth-fast stone marks, according to local tradition, the first resting place of the procession, when the relics of St Magnus were brought from Birsay to Kirkwall. It is in a field below the house called Strathyre in Birsay."

[Caption to photograph above, written by Ernest Marwick, D31/37/1]

Blessing the Stones
"My old teacher, Miss Stanger of Wrangleha, who was a very careful body about her facts, often said that there was an old Birsay tradition that the stones that were set up to show the places where the body of St Magnus rested had oil poured over them and they were blessed. After that everybody looked on them as sacred and nobody would touch them."

From William Sabiston, Swartabreck, Birsay in 1968, "MANSEWAL (MANSE = MAGNUS; WAL = WELL) along public road not far from Mill Cottage on road to Wattle. Said to be a traditional resting place for the bearers of the remains St Magnus on the road to Kirkwall."

Ink drawing of St Magnus Cathedral by Alexander McGibbon from Magazine, "The Builder" Oct 7, 1893 (Orkney Room 726.6 Y)

Sources used in this blog:
Orkneyinga Saga The History of the Earls of Orkney Translated from the Icelandic and introduced by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards, pub 1978. Orkney Room reference 839 ORK

Magnus' Saga - The Life of St Magnus, Earl of Orkney 1075-116 Translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards, published by the Kirk Session of St Magnus Cathedral in 1996, 0952816407. Orkney Room reference: 839 ORK

Ernest Walker Marwick Archive Collection - reference D31/37/1 Folder Entitled St. Magnus - Traditions and Pictures containing press cuttings, notes, pamphlets, photographs and correspondence.

John Mooney Archive Collection - reference D49/1/11 Bundle of correspondence and press cuttings received by John Mooney following publication of St Magnus, Earl of Orkney in 1936

Papers regarding St Magnus Cathedral containing pages from The Builder, 7 Oct 1893, p261-264. Orkney Room reference: 726.6 Y

Update: Since I first wrote this blog post, a new pilgrimage route called the St Magnus Way has been created. The St Magnus Way is a 55 mile pilgrimage route through Mainland Orkney, inspired by the life and death of Magnus, Orkney’s patron saint. For more information click here.

If you are visiting the Orkney Archive and the Orkney Room and would like to see some books or archives  just ask a member of staff in the Archive Searchroom who will help you find them. 

Magazine of the Month - Northern Scotland

Our wonderful local studies section The Orkney Room is full to bursting of published information about Orkney. So much so, that we have been forced (forced, I tell you!) to keep some of its intended contents through the back. But all you have to do is ask our friendly Archive Searchroom staff for any of these titles and we will graciously retrieve them for you.




One of these periodicals is Northern Scotland, The Journal of the Centre for Scottish Studies. It was first published in December 1972 by the Aberdeen University Press.

And often contained articles and Orkney book reviews. In the very first issue the very first article is, "The Church in Orkney and Shetland and its relations with Norway and Scotland in the Middle Ages" by R G Cant. And the Orkney books reviewed were Orkney Natural History Society's "Stromness: late 19th century photographs" and "The Orkney Croft".

Volume 12 includes articles: "Shetland and the Greenland whaling industry, 1780-1872" by Richard J Smith and  "The development of the fishery districts of Scotland" by J R Coull

Volume 18 includes articles: "Stone Circles: perceptions from inside and outside the ring" by Elizabeth Curtis

Over the years, the cover colour changed, but not the quality of content. And now..

Volume 7 of New Series includes this article: "The Orkney Islands and the European Economic Community in the 1970s" by Mike MacDonald

Now it is published by Edinburgh University Press and the new series is at it's 7th volume. The description inside the current volume we have for 2016 says, "established in 1972, Northern Scotland is a fully peer-reviewed publication with contributors, reviewers and referees drawn from a wide range of experts across the world. While it carries material of a mainly historical nature, from the earliest times to the modern era, it is a cross-disciplinary publication, which also addresses cultural, economic, political and geographical themes relating to the Highlands and Islands and the North-east of Scotland."

Magazine of the Month - Living Orkney

In our local studies section known as The Orkney Room, we keep a number of periodicals.

The Orkney Room

The magazine and journal section is shown on the picture above on the left hand side under the clock. It is ordered by subject using an adapted version of the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

Comfy chairs

One of the magazines available to see is Living Orkney, "the magazine about Orkney life" and Magazine of the Year 2016. We have the complete set from Dec 2005 up to the most recent issue, currently January 2017. It is bound in batches of 6 and filed under number 050 Y.

Examples of Living Orkney

And now, thanks to our wonderful Archive Volunteers, we have an index to every featured article in every copy of Living Orkney. So if you are looking for an article that you know was published in this magazine, we should be able to find it for you, and make a copy. For example by searching for "archive" I was able to find this article below from Issue 12, November 2006, p33-35 with some familiar faces...ahem...sorry...

Literary Leching / Posthumous Perving.

Orkney Archive Reference D23/29/6

Dusty: (sliding magazine onto table) Isn't he lovely?

Archiver: Ooooh! Lovely! Who's that?

Dusty: J. Storer Clouston. He was very good looking don't you think?

Archiver: Yes, handsome. Indeed...

Dusty: So handsome.

Archiver: Yep.

Dusty: A brilliant writer too of course.

Archiver: Oh yeah. Definitely.

Dusty: Nice cheek bones...

Archiver: Yeah...

Quick Poptastic Quiz

Which of these 80s popstrels has penned two of the tomes in our beloved Orkney Room?

Is it a) Nik Kershaw?

Is it b), Alison Moyet?

Is it c), Julian Cope?

Is it d), Clare Grogan?

Is it e), Chris Rea?

Or is it f), Sinitta?


The first person to guess shall receive an Orkney library and archive coaster and large paperclip set. Try to contain yourselves.

(Clue: It is his or her birthday today...)

Our Socks Are Wet!

Uggghhh!!! What a wet, miserable and yet horribly airless and sweaty day it is in Kirkwall!! Uggghhhhh!!!!

Let's look at nice drawings of St Magnus Cathedral by Henry Dryden:

These lovely images can be found in the Orkney Room in a large, bound edition.

The Darling Buds

It was tough to decide what to commemorate today. Should it be St Patrick's day? The birthday of the incomparable Clare Grogan? The feast day of St Gertrude of Nevelles?

All the customers and staff have been talking about Spring today; how it is FINALLY here after a particularly cold winter and how lovely it is to see snowdrops, crocuses and the leaves of tulips and daffodils popping up all over Orkney.

F. Marian McNeill's Green Dumplings recipe is to be made only at this time of year. Make dumplings following your usual recipe, then add a touch of spring:

"Pick the green buds of hawthorn, the succulent tips of nettles, grass, and other green things - remember that in this condition nothing is poisonous. Include dandelions, leaves, daisy stems, shoots of young corn, and turnip tops, or anything that tastes sweet and harmless. Wash and chop finely and work into the dough until it is green through and through. Form into balls - small ones (one inch across) for soups, and larger for stews and meats. They go with almost anything, and play the part of a salad in wholsomeness."

I hasten to add a disclaimer to the 'nothing is poisonous' bit and the idea of dumplings being a substitute for salad is clearly absurd but this recipe is very appealing otherwise.

Recipe from 'Recipes From Scotland' by F. Marian McNeill

Great smelly balls of fire...

We have just received a book; The Pseudo-Meteoric Events of The British Isles, from its author, James D. Robinson.

A couple of years ago, Mr Robinson got in touch asking if we knew anything about a supposed meteor falling in Copinsay in the 1670s. After much trawling of the archives, we eventually found a passage in James Wallace's Description of The Orkney Isles which was published in 1693:

"...some few years hence, some fishermen, fishing half a league from land, over against Copinsha, in a fair day, there fell down from the air a stone about the size of a football, which fell in the midst of the boat, and sprang a leak in it, to the great hazard of the lives of the men who were in it, which could be no other but some substance generated in the clouds. The stone was like condensed or petrified clay..."

This event sounds quite alarming until you read the terrifying entry for Widecombe in the moor. Here, the congregation of St Pancreas Church noticed the skies darkening so quickly and so completely, they could no longer read their hymn books. Suddenly, ball lightning entered the church through a window bringing with it a pungent smell described as 'brimstone.' The lightning proceeded to move about the church igniting hair, flesh and clothing and causing much distress. Lime and sand were torn from the walls and the pulpit was ripped asunder. One woman was so badly injured that she required an amputation and more than a few of the congregation died either after the event or during. Sir Richard Reynolds had "his scull rent into three pieces and his brains thrown entire backwards into the next seat behind him."

If you too enjoy reading about horrifying destruction caused by inexplicable natural phenomena, then this book shall be available to view once it has been suitably catalogued. Is there a Dewey decimal number for gory weather?

Year of Orkney Dialect

2010, according to the Orkney Heritage Society, is to be the year of Orkney Dialect. This celebration of local voices kicked off with a poetry reading at the Lynnfield hotel and continues with an Orkney Dialect Poetry Competition.

Entry forms for the competition can be picked up in the archive and you can read about it here. Whilst in the archive, prospective poets may want to gain inspiration from the many books of Orkney literature and Orcadian dictionaries in the Orkney Room or listen to recordings of poets such as Robert Rendall reading their dialect poems. You can also read the various writings we hold that discuss the use of dialect.

Robert Rendall himself believed that the 'kailyard' could be escaped if dialect was used in a contemporary and non-sentimental manner. He was also wary of 'Lallans', a 'synthetic Scots' blend of various types of words; archaic, contemporary, lowlands, North East which he regarded as a type of Scottish Esperanto i.e. self-concious and unnatural. He felt that the magic of dialect derived from its localness.

Another great Orcadian poet, Edwin Muir, thought that to make their mark and to become 'complete' as authors then Scottish poets had to write their work in English.

The use of dialect is still going strong, however, see Morag MacInnes' 2008 poetry sequence on Orcadian sailor Isobel Gunn, 'Alias Isobel', for example.

There will also be a related exhibit of relevant documents in the archive from the start of next week.

Information taken from:
An Island Shore, selected writings of Robert Rendall edited by Neil Dickson
Edwin Muir - Poet, Critic and Novelist by Marjory McCulloch
D27/2/7 - Robert Rendall papers - 'Notes on the Use of Dialect.'

We got some new saga books for the Orkney room as well as 'Island Doctor' and look what a cute little bookmark fell out of one!

Island Bleeeuurrghhhh

The Orkney Room is not just a collection of fusty old reference books. We also collect any works of fiction written by Orcadians (such as Demo by Alison Miller), written by non-Orcadians who are based in Orkney (such as Bunker Man by Duncan McLean), or books that simply mention Orkney (like The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields).

The Orkney Room is a home for any book with an Orkney connection. As you can see from the book on the left, we really mean any book. Behold below some sample text from Island Doctor set on the fictional Orkney island of Norsay:

'Let me get this straight,' she said at last, 'I thought I heard you say you'd like us to meet in London-'

'You're not deaf surely?' he interrupted. 'Of course I said it but it was only to satisfy your feminine curiosity. I've withdrawn it now.'

I wonder how the story ends...?

18th July 2009 - The Chapel at the Edge of the World

Today we had author Kirsten McKenzie reading from her novel ‘The Chapel at the Edge of the World.’ The book is Kirsten’s debut novel and is a fictional tale based around the real-life building of the Italian Chapel on Lambsholm by prisoners of war during World War two.

The reading took place in the Orkney Room so there was a quite intimate and cosy atmosphere. Kirsten answered questions about the novel after her reading.

Much of the factual research for the book was done over a year ago using material from the Orkney Archive. Kirsten visited us twice and we sent photocopies from the Ernest Walker Marwick collection. We assumed that she was researching for a university paper or factual book and had no idea that she was an author of fiction.

22nd April 2009 Sun sun sun sun sun sun !

Not many customers this morning as the weather is so glorious. To celebrate this sunny day, we are selecting summery books from the collection in the Orkney Room and putting them on display. Choices include Margaret Tait’s ‘The Grassy Stories’ and ‘The Sun’s Net’, a collection of stories by George Mackay Brown.

The Orkney Room contains books about Orkney, written in Orkney and/or written by Orcadians; both fiction and non-fiction. It also includes books on Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland. So really, it is a sort of Northern Isles room with a bit of Caithness and Canada thrown in.

My one enquiry today has been from a member of staff wondering what the names of the main roads in Burray village are. We got out some Council road plans but none were labelled. They must surely have official names? We found a reference to Blinkbonny road in a document but that was all.

I may have to refer to the County Road Committee minutes…