Walking with Norsemen on Orkney’s St Magnus Way

Viking history infuses this pilgrimage trail taking in a wild coast and ancient dwellings and ending at the UK’s most northerly cathedral, in Kirkwall

I thought it would be easier to get the seals to sing to me. My great granny Mhairi used to sing to them in Stromness – and they’d call back with plaintive moans that sounded so much like the gales that have long darkened winters on islands like this one. This evening, though, the seals are silent and it’s the waves that are calling as the sun sets over the Atlantic and the Brough of Birsay.

From that sloping tidal island, Thorfinn the Mighty – most feared of Norse raiders – ruled and slashed his way across the north with a brutality that earned him the name Raven-Feeder (after the birds that fed on the corpses of his enemies). The St Magnus Way is not inspired by such bloodlust. Rather, it’s dedicated to the Raven-Feeder’s decidedly less violent grandson, Earl Magnus Erlendsson, who accepted being murdered so the people of Orkney could have peace.