The Earl's Bu, Orphir - feasting, farming & commerce at the heart of the Orkney Norse Earldom

This volume brings together for the first time major findings from the Earl’s Bu at Orphir, a flagship site in Orkney best known for its distinctive Late Norse Round Church and adjacent archaeological site. Made famous in the pages of the Orkneyinga Saga, which so clearly describe the extensive highstatus feasting activities that took place here, excavators in the 1930s suggested the wall footings at the Bu were the remains of a Drinking Hall. 

However, for the first time rich archaeological evidence recovered from more recent excavation of a Norse horizontal mill found adjacent to the site, provides support for this claim. The mill is the first of its date and type to have been investigated within Scotland, but it is the associated artefactual and ecofactual material excavated from it and presented here, which greatly enhance our understanding of the nature and significance of the Bu. As well as the debris from feasting by the Earls and their retinue, earlier material from the layers beneath the mill attest to very different events associated with the midwinter thorrablót feasts of the Late Viking period.

In addition to this, the identification of the extent of the Late Norse estate that expanded in a halo to the north of the Bu, demonstrates that the surrounding farm lands provided the Earls with high quality locally-grown meat and crops from a network of smaller farms, complementing imported supplies from elsewhere in Orkney. In addition, rare evidence for trade in the bullion economy and weights from the east beyond the Baltic Sea, as well as gold working on the site, and the importation of steatite vessels from Shetland and Norway, indicate the high status and international connections of the Norse Earls in the heart of the Northern Earldom.

• Authorship: Coleen Batey with Rachel C. Barrowman and Ingrid Mainland.