A landscape of belief: Orkney’s medieval churches
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 07/02/2017

Over two hundred churches were founded in Orkney in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This paper will explore the various functions of these churches by considering them in their landscape contexts as a means of overcoming the lack of contemporary written sources relating to them.
The churches can be grouped according to three different landscape settings: proprietary churches located in close proximity to central places within settlement units (townships); isolated churches located some distance from known settlements; and churches (possibly monastic) separated from settlement foci but not isolated. In addition to identifying different types of church, some sense of chronology and religious development within the Orkney Earldom will be presented, mapping the transition from the forced conversion of the islands by Olaf Tryggvasson in 995 to the creation of an urban diocesan centre, part of the newly created archdiocese of Nidaros, in 1152/3.

Author - Dr. Gibbon, Sarah Jane, University of the Highlands and Islands, Kirkwall, United Kingdom (Presenting author)