The significance of the landscape

Salt Knowe

The Salt Knowe - does the mound hold another chambered cairn?

Looking towards the Salt Knowe from the interior of the Ring o' Brodgar

Salt Knowe, viewed from the ring. Is the mound's position in relation to the hill, Cringlafiold, significant?

Towering above the low fields flanking the shore of the Stenness loch, the huge man-made mound known as the Salt Knowe is at the end of a track to the south-west of the Brodgar ring.

Thought to date from between 2500BC to 1500 BC, the mound is perhaps the most striking landscape feature in the area.

Measuring 40 metres (131 feet) by 33 metres (108 feet) and about six metres high (19.6 feet), the mound's position by the salt-water loch is undoubtedly the origin of its name.

The sheer size of Salt Knowe, matched only by Maeshowe, has led to the suggestion that it may house a Neolithic chambered cairn.

However, a Bronze Age burial cist, which is still visible, was found cut into the flattened top of the knowe. The 2.6 metre long cist was divided into two parts by a stone partition.

Whether this cist was the sole reason for constructing the mound, or whether it does contain an earlier funerary structure remains to be seen.

Records show that nine silver arm-rings were found when the mound was "investigated" at some point before 1700. Exactly where these were found was not documented, but it is possible they came from the cist on the top of the mound.

These arm-rings dated from the the 9th and 10th centuries AD - well into Orkney's "Viking period".