Stones of Stenness Circle and Henge

The name

People

• C

  Captain W. Mackay

  Landowner who began destroying the stones in December 1814, smashing the Odin Stone before being stopped

• 

  Walter Scott

  Visited the site in 1814

Cultural influences

• Neolithic Orkney - pottery from the site links the monument to the settlements of Skara Brae and the chambered cairn of Maeshowe, and the central 'hearth' setting parallels one found at the adjacent Barnhouse Settlement.

• Henge tradition of the British Isles - excavation showed the site to be a true henge monument with ditch and bank, possibly the oldest in the British Isles.

Connections

• 

  Ring of Brodgar

  Sister Neolithic monument about 1.2 km to the north-west across the isthmus; part of the same World Heritage Site

• 

  Maeshowe

  Chambered cairn about 1.2 km to the east; pottery links the two; part of the same World Heritage Site

• 

  Barnhouse Settlement

  Adjacent Neolithic settlement on the Loch of Harray; the circle's entrance causeway faces towards it and its 'hearth' parallels the one at Stenness

• S

  Skara Brae

  Neolithic village linked to Stenness by shared pottery; part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site

• 

  Watch Stone

  5.6 m monolith standing outside the circle to the north-west, towards the Ring of Brodgar

Discovery & excavation

In culture

• A picture of the Stones of Stenness appears on the cover of Van Morrison's album The Philosopher's Stone.

• The Odin Stone is depicted on Julian Cope's album Discover Odin.

• The stones are the setting for Loreena McKennitt's song 'Standing Stones' from her album Parallel Dreams, whose lyrics describe star-crossed lovers meeting at the Odin Stone.

• Odin Stone is also the name of a darkwave band formed in 2021 with members in the USA and Portugal.

What to look for

• The four surviving thin slab stones - up to about 5 m high with sharply angled tops - remnants of an original ellipse of up to 12 stones about 32 m across.

• The rock-cut ditch (up to 2 m deep, 7 m wide) and surrounding earth bank with its single entrance causeway on the north side, facing towards the Barnhouse Settlement.

• The square central stone setting - the 'hearth' - where cremated bone, charcoal and pottery were found.

• The Watch Stone, 5.6 m high, standing outside the circle to the north-west towards the Ring of Brodgar.

Standing there

• The surviving stones rise on a promontory between the sea loch Loch of Stenness and the freshwater Loch of Harray, where a stream joins the two — so you stand on a narrow neck of land almost surrounded by water, under big Orkney sky with the Ring of Brodgar and Maeshowe in view across the lochs.
• Four great stones survive, up to about 5 metres high — thin angled slabs of flagstone only around 30 cm thick with sharply sloping tops — so close up they read as tall, blade-like uprights, much taller than a person, weathered grey and standing stark against loch and sky.
• This may be the oldest henge in the British Isles, with work begun by around 3100 BC, and at its centre archaeologists found a square stone hearth setting with cremated bone, charcoal and pottery — so the heart of the circle was a place of fire, burning and deposited remains.
• In the Neolithic the circle sat inside a deep rock-cut ditch and earth bank entered by a single causeway facing the nearby Barnhouse settlement, so arriving meant crossing the bank and entering an enclosed ritual arena — gatherings here involved feasting and fire, with animal bone left in the ditch and a hearth blazing at the centre.
• Reaching the stones once meant crossing the stream between the lochs on a stepping-stone causeway — so the sounds of moving water and the crossing itself were part of the approach, a threshold of water passed before entering the standing stones.