STONE AGE AND IRON AGE RELICS

People have lived in Whalsay for at least 4,000 years. Traces of former settlement range from hilltop burial cairns and prehistoric field boundaries to nationally important monuments such as the two spectacular Neolithic houses of Yoxie and the Beenie Hoose at Petticarth's Field excavated by Charles Calder and Whalsay-born John Stewart in the 1950s. These croft houses evolved over 100s of years. The flourishing community built its own burial place overlooking the fields.

There are indications that Whalsay once had three brochs, dating from just before the time of Christ. Whalsay was clearly strategically important. The brochs are now in ruins. An even earlier Iron Age fortification is the blockhouse on a holm in the Loch of Huxter. Other archaeological remains include burnt mounds, foundations of prehistoric dykes buried under peat, and traces of Bronze Age houses at the Loch of Sandwick

STUMPS OF ANCIENT MOUNTAINS

The rocks of Whalsay are schist and gneiss, formed at high temperature and pressure beneath mountains which were eroded away hundreds of millions of years ago. In places you can see large fragments of the original rocks - known as xenoliths - mixed up with the formerly-fluid mass of granitic gneiss. On the north-east coast are outcrops of crystalline limestone and contorted calcium silicate bands.