Maeshowe – the mummies, the giant and the mound-dweller…

Thursday, March 27, 2025 (11:17 PM)

“Within thy valley dark,
Heath covered mounds may still be seen,
The warriors place of rest they mark.”

Old Lore Miscellany Vol III. (1910)

By Sigurd Towrie

James Farrer’s 19th century excavations in Maeshowe – and round about – sparked a bizarre claim on the pages of The Orcadian newspaper.

On Saturday, July 20, 1861, its readers were informed that:

“[T]wo female mummies had been discovered, and also the skeleton of a gentleman over ten feet long.”

The writer was obviously, and quite rightly, sceptical:

“No-one, so far as I have heard, has been favoured with a sight of the lady mummies, or the long gentleman.”

It will surprise no-one that neither Farrer nor George Petrie mentioned these sensational discoveries in their excavation reports. Had there been any truth to the claim finds like these would surely have eclipsed everything found during the excavation!

But although we can quite safely say there were no mummies or a giant, Farrer did briefly mention the tradition that Maeshowe once had an preternatural occupant:

“The country people state that the building was formerly inhabited by a person named Hogboy, possessing great strength. Haugbuie, in Norse, signifies ‘the ghost of the tomb’ and Haugr, ‘tumulus’.” [1]

The hogboy, or hogboon, of Orcadian folklore is actually a corruption of the Old Norse haug-búi, or haug-búinn, and Norwegian haugbonde, which roughly translates as mound-dweller or mound-farmer. [2]

Maeshowe’s hogboy was one of a number known throughout Orkney, reflecting a belief rooted in the traditions of the islands’ earliest Norse settlers.

They believed that after death a person’s spirit continued to live on, or near, the family farm. This applied particularly to the founder of the estate, over whose body a large haugr, or burial mound, was constructed. Ensconced within their resting place, these revered ancestors became affixed to their families, or farms, as guardians. [2]

Capricious and treated with an awed, if not fearful, respect, these watchers kept an eye on the properties that had once been theirs and resented the slightest liberties taken around their dwellings. Minor infractions, such as children playing nearby or livestock grazing on the mound, would cause great outbursts and woe betide anyone who attempted to enter the hogboon’s howe in the hope of finding treasure!

“Earl Harald commenced his voyage to the Orkneys during Yule-tide. He had four ships, and a hundred men. Two nights he lay under Grimsey. They landed in Hafnarvag, in Hrossey, and the thirteenth day of Yule-tide they walked to Fiörd. They spent the Yule-holiday at Orkahaug. There two of their men were seized with madness, which retarded their journey.”

The above Orkneyinga saga extract tells of a group of 12th century Norse warriors who sought shelter from a blizzard in Maeshowe. The strange, almost throwaway, inclusion of two going mad is not explained. Perhaps because the reason – mound-breaking repercussions – would have been obvious to the saga readers…

Unfortunately, none of the Maeshowe hogboy’s folkloric exploits have survived, but there is no doubt they were once renowned. Writing in 1931, J. T. Smith Leask lamented:

“Seventy years ago, there were many stories in the district regarding the ‘Hug Boy’, but they are now forgotten.”

I would venture that it was no co-incidence that Leask’s “many stories”, 70 years previously, fitted perfectly with the excavation of Maeshowe.

As we have seen, hogboons were believed to be fiercely protective of their mounds, tolerating no disturbance, however trivial. The lore surrounding the mound-dwellers, therefore, served as a deterrent to those reckless enough to consider intruding into their homes.

People like Farrer…

I suspect that his high-profile exploits in Orkney stirred unease in the parish and beyond. And with that came a resurgence in the longstanding beliefs that it was dangerous to interfere with burial mounds. Trespass would surely be followed by retribution.

Although Farrer paid these no heed, his fleeting reference to the hogboy does suggest that the local concerns made an impact – albeit one he probably dismissed as whimsical.

While the prevalence of hogboy beliefs associated with Maeshowe is without question, how might we account for the reported discovery of a giant and a pair of mummies in Stenness?

Was it simply made up?

Yes and no.

Nobody saw, or could see, these extraordinary remains because they did not exist. Instead, the newspaper’s fantastical claim, like Maeshowe’s hogboy, owed more to centuries-old Stenness tradition than fact.

But what that highlights, yet again, is that Maeshowe’s opening had brought old tales, beliefs and fears bubbling back to the surface.

The ‘long gentleman’…

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Genesis 6:4.

Maeshowe’s alleged giant was not unique. Far from it. Rifle through early Orkney accounts and puzzling reports of enormous skeletons and burials crop up with surprising regularity.

In Papa Stronsay, for instance, there is a Neolithic long horned cairn that is known today as the Earl’s Knowe [3]. It was dug into in 1792, revealing what was considered to be a series of graves:

“[O]ne of which graves, evidently defined by two stones, one at the head, the other at the feet, is eight feet and a half long.”

Within this supposed grave:

“Many human bones of an ordinary size were found, and, moreover, fragments of a human skull, and of a lower jawbone, with the case of teeth, which were perfectly found, and fragments of thigh bones; these were all of an enormous size and afforded a convincing proof that the body buried there had required a grave of the dimensions above specified.” [4]

But the size of the Earl’s Knowe giant was nothing compared to the behemoth recorded 92 years previously.

Rev John Brand Brand had been sent to Orkney, by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in 1700, to investigate “the state of religion and morals in these parts”.

Regarding Sanday, he wrote:

“[A] Chappel called the Great Chappel of Clet, wherein there is a Grave 19 foot long, which, when opened some years ago, there was nothing found in it save the piece of a Back-bone of a Man, greater than the Back-bone of any Horse.

“This, the Minister of the place declared unto me, who saw the Grave opened, and measured it from the Head to the Foot stone thereof, who also for some time had the Bone in his Custody.

“The vulgar tradition is that there was a Giant there, who was of so tall a stature that he could have stood upon the ground and put the Copstone upon the Chappel, which no Man now living by far could do.” [5]

Brand’s account mirrors that of the Kirkwall minister Rev James Wallace, written about 12 years earlier and published in 1693:

“At the Chappel of Clet in Sanda [sic] is a Grave to be seen, wherein they say a Giant was buried, and indeed the stone that is laid upon the Grave will be above twelve foot long, so that if the Body has been proportionable to the Grave, it has been exceeding monstruous.” [6]

Interestingly, it seems the Sanday giant’s grave had grown considerably in the years between the two accounts!

Back in Stenness, it is a document written at least 260 years before that is undoubtedly behind the 1861 Maeshowe giant report.

Jo Ben’s Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum is a Latin “tour” of Orkney, usually said to date from 1529. Given its contents, however, it is more likely to be later, probably between 1586 and 1607. [7]

In the entry for Stenness, we are told that:

“[O]n a hill near a lake, in a sepulchre, the bones of a man were found, which were indeed joined together, and were 14 feet long … and a coin was found there under the head of that dead man; and I indeed saw the sepulchre.”

Over the centuries – and perhaps even more so following its 1861 excavation – Jo Ben’s giant became firmly attached to Maeshowe, despite the fact he was clearly referring to one of the mounds surrounding the Ring of Brodgar.

Why not Maeshowe?

Firstly, because it is not really near the Loch of Harray – at least not close enough to use it descriptively. But more tellingly, when we look at the original Latin text, Ben immediately followed his giant account with:

“In the same place, near a lake, are lofty and broad stones, about a spear’s length in height, enclosing a circuit of about half a mile.” [My emphasis]

This specifically refers to the Ring of Brodgar, which is definitely not “in the same place” as Maeshowe.

Plan of Unstan Chambered Cairn — The layout of the Unstan cairn. (Stewart. 1885)

We know that before Farrer dug into the Brodgar mounds in 1854 and 1861, someone had beaten him to Plumcake Mound.

Cists on top of South Knowe and Salt Knowe have also been opened by persons unknown. Because these were not mentioned in the brief excavation reports, it seems likely they also pre-dated the 19th century explorations.

So, is there anything we can say about the giant burials and the alleged bones-of-unusual-size?

In both the North Isles examples above it was the scale of the perceived graves that led to the notions that their occupants were equally large.

At the Earl’s Knowe, for example, it seems that one of the large, orthostat-defined side compartments of an Orkney-Cromarty stalled cairn – like those within Midhowe and Unstan – was interpreted as a massive grave for a single person – the “grave stones” at the top and bottom actually being two of the orthostatic dividers projecting from the inner wall.

The dancing giants of Brodgar. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

On top of that, Orkney has a multitude of giant tales and placenames.

The Ring of Brodgar itself was said to be the petrified remains of a group of giants, caught dancing by the rays of the rising sun. Their fiddler, who suffered the same fate, is now the Comet Stone…

What better place for a gargantuan burial than around the dancing giants.

Needless to say, none of the recorded giant bones survived and it is perhaps telling that reports of such skeletal material dried up in the 19th century.

We will leave this section with a quick return to Sanday and another Jo Ben encounter with gigantic remains:

“As I was once passing through the island, and fatigued, I betook myself to a church called Holy-cross, where I saw in a cemetery a number of human heads, above a thousand, greater than any three heads of people now living. I drew some teeth out of the gums, which were larger than filberts [hazelnuts].”

…and the mummies

“In the neighbourhood of Garmiston [sic], in the parish of Stenness, in the side of a peat moss, are several heaps of earth, said to be the graves of those who fell in a skirmish, at what is called the battle of Summerdale, or Bigswell.”

Old Statistical Account of Scotland. (1793)

Although the notion of giant burials stemmed from misinterpretation, probably peppered with a healthy dash of folklore, it does seem likely that the Maeshowe mummy claims were rooted in fact.

But, once again, this had nothing to do with the chambered cairn.

For their origin, we need to look to the area known as Summerdale, about two miles south-east of Maeshowe, on the north face of Ward Hill.

Lying on the southern side of the valley running between the parishes of Stenness, Firth and Orphir, it was at Summerdale that multiple bodies were reportedly found in the 18th century.

Such was the number that they were believed to relate to the Battle of Summerdale in 1529.

Although history, and local tradition, treats this confrontation as a battle, it was more likely to have been a brief, bloody, skirmish that followed a rebellion in Orkney. A force from Caithness, acting on Scottish royal authority, was sent north to quash the uprising and decisively defeated. [8]

Writing in June 1773, the Stromness church minister Rev George Low was sure the haphazard nature of the Summerdale corpses was evidence of a battle:

“[At a] place called Summerdale, where there is an account of a battle having been fought between the Counts of Caithness and Orkney; [where] the bodies (many of which are found to this day) are thrown down without order or distinction into pitts (sic), without coffin, and few of them with a shroud.”

But among these remains was at least one apparent “mummy”:

“Last year [1772], a corpse was found in this place, wrapt in a cloth, which, by the action of the moss water, was preserved as if in a tan pit…” [9]

In another letter, this time written in November 1775, Low stated:

“I have … heard of bodies found in our mosses rolled up in their own leather, i.e. their skins and flesh so preserved by a natural tanning that one could observe the very fibres of the muscles…”

The widely-held belief that the mounds and barrows in the valley were the graves of Summerdale’s battle-fallen was questioned by the Shapinsay minister Rev George Barry in 1805:

“As … we enter the united parishes of Firth and Stennis, where the first object that strikes the attention is a plain between two hills, covered with a number of little hillocks or artificial tumuli, at only a small distance from one another.

“Though this has evidently been a field of battle, as the style of the monuments refers to a remote period, it cannot contain the graves of the Earl of Caithness and his troops, who fell at the battle of Bigswell or Summerdale, in the sixteenth century.”

But although Low documented only one bog-body, Barry’s text implies there were more (although it seems only their garments were remarkably preserved):

“To this day the field of battle, though there is nothing in its appearance relative to this event, is well known; and, in the adjacent marsh, through which, it is alleged, the earl’s troops were pursued, previously to the action, dead bodies have very lately been found, with their clothes in a wonderful state of preservation, occasioned, no doubt, by the antiseptic nature of the earth in which they had lain.” [10]

Summerdale on the 1881 OS Map. Note the cluster of grave marked.
(Extract courtesy of the National Library of Scotland)

In December 1814, Alexander Peterkin, the Sheriff Substitute for Orkney, was called into action following the destruction of the Odin Stone and the damage inflicted on the Stones of Stenness. In 1822, he published the results of his fruitless investigation into the Summerdale bodies:

“There is now no vestige of a monument of the Earl of Caithness at the place alluded to; nor have I been able to learn who found the dead bodies and clothing mentioned by Dr Barry, or when these were found.” [11]

This is very strange, because the so-called Summerdale graves were surveyed in 1880, and appear in the 1881 OS map (above). Their presence, and appearance, were also noted by numerous later writers.

Peterkin, however, was relying on Jo Ben’s 16th century account of the battle, in particular:

“The invaders were all overthrown and slaughtered, so that not one escaped. The Earl’s sepulchre is still to be seen in that place…”

Was he looking for some grand monument or memorial, fit for an earl, that never existed? His lack of dates, however, is not surprising because those in Low’s 1773 correspondence remained unpublished until 1879.

But I suspect that the main reason for Peterkin’s lack of information was that he did not listen to the people of Stenness. His disdain for folk tales is obvious from his criticism of Barry’s use of James Wallace’s 1693 A Description of the Isles of Orkney as a reference:

“Wallace is no authority for anything, and his credulity renders his book a record merely of childish legends.”

Given such an attitude, and, as we will see, his opinions on Orcadians, it is highly unlikely that Stenness folk would have shared anything with him. Which probably explains his inability to uncover information on the finders.

Along the same lines, when Rev William Malcolm compiled his Stenness entry for the New Statistical Account of Scotland in 1845, he toned down the Summerdale bodies before ending with the frustratingly familiar 19th century “turned to dust” trope:

“Numbers of [the Summerdale fallen’s] bones, and part of their clothing have been dug up, which was black when first got, but soon fell into dust.” [12]

Based on the vagueness of Peterkin and Malcolm’s accounts, one might reasonably doubt whether memories of the Summerdale bodies persisted until 1861. The key here, though, is that the sheriff of Orkney, and perhaps the kirk minister, were averse to mixing with the so-called “peasantry” and “vulgar” – both terms Peterkin himself used to describe the people of the parish after the Odin Stone’s destruction. [11]

Even if they had, your typical Orcadian “peasant” probably avoided reinforcing his self-styled superior’s preconceived notions of ignorance by discussing such tales – not to mention risking possible repercussions from the church and court for disturbing remains.

Thus, we find ourselves in much the same predicament as Peterkin.

What the bog-preserved bodies represented is impossible to interpret given the sparse and ambiguous details available. Were they truly post-medieval war casualties, as believed in the late 18th century, or might, as implied by Barry, some of them belong to a much earlier era?

“The south side of the valley appears steeper (and is today no longer publicly accessible from the pass), but evidence to suggest that a route existed along this side of the valley in the Bronze Age (or earlier) may be confirmed by small clusters of barrows close to the line of the modern road near Bigswell (again at around the 50m contour line).

These are situated above the probably wet valley bottom but below the steep hill slopes to the south-west; making this an ideal location for movement. They are also orientated directly on the Brodgar Peninsula.” [13]

We now know the Summerdale area, if not the entire valley, to be replete with presumed Bronze Age burials – undoubtedly more than has been recorded.

One of the Summerdale graves, excavated in 1960, contained a cist, with cremated remains, that had been followed by an inhumation. This confirmed a prehistoric origin for at least one of the 10-12 documented mounds. [14]

Across the valley, on the Hill of Lyradale, two well-preserved skeletons were found in May 1882. Again, details are few, but these individuals were discovered, one metre deep in a bank of peat. Their bones were“black and pliant” and the pair had been laid out beside each other.

Although the Stonehall Neolithic settlement lies at the hill’s northern end, it is impossible to say whether these burials were prehistoric. But at the time they were also connected to the Battle of Summerdale. [15]

How Summerdale’s mummified remains relate to the prehistoric burials – if at all – remains unclear. We have no idea of their number, gender or even the nature of their wonderfully preserved clothes to give an idea of their age. That said, I strongly suspect the clothing must have been post-medieval otherwise they would surely have elicited comment.

It is not impossible that local tradition was correct and the burials (or some of them) were indeed linked to the 16th century skirmish but, again, it is frustrating that, given the apparent state of preservation, no mention was made of wounds or injuries.

Although a handful of bog bodies have been documented elsewhere in Orkney, they have shown that there could be several reasons for their final resting places. Murder? Accident? Or simply because burial in consecrated ground was forbidden. For the latter, Summerdale’s position on the parish boundary is perhaps significant – a liminal place between places…

“In the year 1795 a number of dead bodies were dug up in a marsh through which the invading Caithness troops had retreated.”

R. Menzies Fergusson. Rambles in the Far North. (1884)

“Barry states, that dead bodies had been found at the end of the last century in a marsh, through which the vanquished had fled, with the clothes still entire owing to the antiseptic nature of the soil.”

John Tudor. The Orkneys and Shetland. (1883)

The Summerdale bog burials went on to become regulars in 19th century publications, two of which are reproduced above. Although those both post-date Maeshowe’s excavation, it seems plausible, if not highly likely, that it was tales of the bog-bodies – regardless of how they got there – that lay behind the newspaper’s Maeshowe mummies claim, some 60 years later.

Notes

[1] Farrer, J. (1862) Notice of runic inscriptions discovered during recent excavations in the Orkneys. Private circulation.
[2] Marwick, E. (1975) The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland. Batsford Ltd, London.
[3] Now more commonly seen as the Earl’s Knoll – the English word knoll replacing knowe.
[4] Anderson, Rev John. (1795). In Old Statistical Account Volume XV (1795). Stronsay and Eday, County of Orkney
[5] Brand, J. (1701) A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland Firth and Caithness.
[6] Wallace, J. (1693) A Description of the Isles of Orkney.
[7] Irvine, J.M. (2012) Jo: Ben Revisited. New Orkney Antiquarian Journal, 6, pp.48-58.
[8] The Summerdale confrontation is commonly said to be the last battle fought on Orkney soil. The Battle of Papdale, however, occurred in 1557 and saw battleships sent north by the English Queen Mary to lay waste to Kirkwall. The victorious army of 3,000 Orcadians eventually drove the invaders back into the sea.
[9] Low, G. (1879) Tour through the islands of Orkney and Schetland in 1774. (Ed. Joseph Anderson) Kirkwall
[10] Barry, G. (1805) The History of the Orkney Islands.
[11] Peterkin, A. (1822) Notes on Orkney and Zetland: Illustrative of the History, Antiquities, Scenery and Customs of those Islands.
[12] Malcolm, W. (1845) Parish of Firth and Stenness. In The New Statistical Account of Scotland.
[13] The Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site Setting Project. A report by Atkins Heritage, commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland. (2008)
[14] Ashmore, P.J. (1975) Excavations at Summersdale, Orkney by F.G. Wainwright in July 1960. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Vol. 105, pp. 41-42).
[15] The Orcadian, May 20, 1882.