Mousa Broch
Island of Mousa, Shetland
Mousa Broch gallery
Mousa Broch is the tallest and best‑preserved Iron Age tower in Scotland.
Brochs are a kind of Iron Age roundhouse found only in Scotland, and Mousa is the best-preserved of them all. Thought to have been constructed in about 300 BC, it stands 13m tall, a totem of Scottish prehistory.
It appears twice in Norse sagas. One story tells of an eloping couple who sheltered here after their shipwreck on the way to Iceland in AD 900, and another says the broch was ‘an unhandy place to get at’ during an attack.
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