02/09/2026
⛪ There is a cathedral in Orkney that does not belong to any church. It belongs to the town.
St Magnus Cathedral stands in the middle of Kirkwall, and the first thing that hits you is the colour. It is built in alternating bands of deep red sandstone from the Head of Holland just north of the town and pale yellow stone believed to have come from Eday, so the whole building is striped, and in low northern light it genuinely glows.
It was begun in 1137, when Orkney was Norwegian and not Scottish at all. Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson raised it in honour of his uncle, Magnus Erlendsson, who had been killed on the island of Egilsay around 1116 in a quarrel over the earldom and whom the islanders very quickly regarded as a saint.
Then comes the part that makes it unique in Britain. 🏴 Orkney passed from Norway to the Scottish Crown in 1468. A great cathedral suddenly sitting inside a new kingdom could have been handed to almost anyone. Instead, in 1486, James III granted it by charter to the provost, the bailies, the dean of guild, the treasurer, the council and the community of Kirkwall. He gave it to the townspeople. They have held it ever since, and Orkney Islands Council holds it today as the burgh's successor. Not the church. Not the Crown. The town.
And in 1919, during restoration work, a wooden box was found hidden inside one of the great piers of the choir. Inside were human bones, and the skull carried a wound consistent with a heavy blade struck to the head. The Orkneyinga Saga says Magnus was killed by exactly such a blow, delivered by a cook named Lifolf who wept while he did it. I want to be careful here, because consistent is not the same as proven and no honest person claims otherwise. But bones were also found in the opposite pier in 1848, and those are traditionally held to be Rognvald himself, the man who built the place.
If that is right, the founder and the saint have been standing inside their own walls, holding up their own roof, for eight hundred years.
Orkney folk will tell you it is theirs, and for once that is not sentiment. It is a matter of legal record.
