On this island stands the best preserved of a series of odd ruins that can be seen
throughout the north of Scotland. They are brochs, fortified
dry-stone homesteads shaped like thimbles.
The Mousa broch stands 43 ft high, with 20-ft-thick walls. A long narrow passage,
along which men and small livestock would have been able to worm their way, goes
through the wall, leading to an interior courtyard 33 ft in diameter. A study of
the soil in the courtyard of the Mousa broch confirms the fact that this construction
would have served as a shelter for pastoral peoples. But opinions differ as to who
built the brochs. It has been suggested that they were built by the descendants of
the builders of Skara Brae, a Stone Age village in the Orkney Islands, or by Scots
and Picts fleeing from Roman domination. There is another theory that they were
built many hundreds of years later by Norsemen, to serve as forts.
