What is the Ness of Brodgar?
The Ness of Brodgar is a strip of land, in Orkney’s West Mainland, that separates the Harray and Stenness lochs. Its name derives from the Old Norse nes – headland; brúar – bridge and garðr – farm, and translates roughly as the “headland of the bridge farm”.
The isthmus acts as a bridge between the north-western corners of the Mainland and its centre – a role it has probably fulfilled for millennia.
Lying at the centre of a massive natural “cauldron” ringed by hills, the Ness of Brodgar runs north-west to south-east and is therefore naturally (and roughly) aligned to the midwinter rising sun and midsummer sunset. There is no better place to view both.
All these factors may explain why we have such a concentration of prehistoric monuments around the peninsula.
Within a half a mile north-west of the Ness complex is Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, Watchstone and Barnhouse settlement to the south-east. Bronze Age burial mounds cluster around the Ring of Brodgar, which is contained in an area bounded by the Dyke of Sean, a (suspected) prehistoric earthwork.
Further afield are Bookan, Maeshowe, Unstan and a possible Iron Age structure outside the Standing Stones Hotel. And just as the Stones of Stenness marks the south-eastern access to the peninsula, the north-western end is watched over by the monument known as the Ring of Bookan.
