Mousa Broch

The best-preserved broch in Scotland still rises thirteen metres above the shore of the uninhabited isle of Mousa — built around 100 BC and now over two millennia old. It was already ancient when the Norse sagas were written: in 1153 Earl Harald Maddadson's mother Margaret was kidnapped here by her lover Erlend the Young, who held the broch against the earl's siege. On summer nights storm petrels return to nest in its dry-stone walls and you can hear them churring inside the tower long after dark.