📌 Ancient settlement in Sumburgh, Shetland Mainland
★★★★★
Jarlshof is a plane journey or long ferry ride away from almost everywhere else in Scotland, yet even it alone is worth the trip to the Shetland Isles. Here at Sumburgh Head lies an amazing sequence of preserved historic settlements like almost nowhere else in Europe. People have found Jarlshof (meaning “earl’s house” – a name coined by Sir Walter Scott) an ideal place to settle for over 4,000 years from Neolithic times up to the present day: sometimes next to the abandoned homes of their predecessors, sometimes on top. Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, brochs and souterrains, Pictish, Norse, Medieval and even later – they’re all here. Centuries of storms preserved each layer before uncovering them again in the 1890s, and the huge site you can explore today is the result of further excavation over the last century or so. Skara Brae on Orkney has the edge as a Neolithic site alone, but it’s the sheer breadth of periods represented at Jarlshof that makes it unique.
🌍 Location
📌 Off the A970 at Sumburgh Hotel, Sumburgh, Shetland Mainland
🧭 O.S. Grid Reference: HU 398095
🛰️ GPS coordinates: 59.868837,-1.289999
🚌 Bus stops on A970 | 🚢 Grutness ferry terminal (0.5 mi) if coming from Fair Isle! | ✈️ Sumburgh Airport (1 mi)
🚗 Car park
📝 Key info
⌚ Daily, 29 April to September 2024; Monday to Saturday, 1-28 April; Tuesday to Saturday, October to March
🎫 £7.50 adult / £4.50 child / free for Historic Environment Scotland members
