Maeshowe is one of the most famous burial chambers in Europe and its green mound surrounded by a bank and ditch is part of the landscape of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Guided tours start from Historic Scotland’s ticket office in Tormiston Mill at Stenness.  Across the road you enter the cairn through a passage so low you bend almost double.  Inside the massive central chamber with its cells to the sides, there is much to admire in the stonework of the corbelled roof.  It was built around 2700BC with huge 30-tonne flagstones.

Here in the heart of the tomb you can have the almost mystical experience of witnessing the midwinter sun emerge from the Hoy Hills and as the dying sun sets, it strikes the nearby Barnhouse Stone, light floods down the tomb’s passageway and hits the back wall.  You can witness this phenomenon for three weeks either side of the winter solstice on December 21, the shortest day, on cloud-free days.  The turning of the light to longer days was an important date in the calendar of Orkney, where winters are so dark and summers so light.  Images of the winter light at Maeshowe can be witnessed through webcams from late November to early February.

Maeshowe, which was known as Orkahaugr, or ‘mound of the Orks’ by the Vikings, was broken into by Norsemen in the 12th century through the roof. Its raiders left boastful messages of heroic exploits and conquests in runes carved in the walls of the main chamber, which are now considered examples of the finest runic writing in the UK.  They had time for a spot of art too and carved a dragon, serpent and walrus.

Maeshowe is open all year and there are evening tours during the summer.