During Lockdown 2020 whilst digging a foundation for a garden shed an amazing archeological discovery was found. 26 human remains, at least 5 structures thought to be from the pictish era and a full van load of artifacts dating back to Bronze age,Iron age , pictish age and Norse medieval were discovered. This discovery adds to another archeological discovery that was made back in 1990 in the same area where 9 pictish structures , a 20m diameter Broch and 22 human remains were found.

The 2020 lockdown discovery highlighted the fact this settlement which we have called Skailway is larger than previously thought. There is an adjacent area of land that we suspect the settlement extends into. This adjacent area is the area we have surveyed and the results have confirmed archeological annomalies that now need to be further investigated. These scan results and interpretation can be viewed below.

ORCA an archaeological company from Orkney have been assisting with the geophys scans and we are now happy to confirm they have come back to us with a budget figure for the ground truthing . This document can also be viewed below and contains the budget figure.

The hope is we can raise enough money to assertain if the anomalies are indeed archeology and to assertain the size of the settlement. Our view is this settlement is the long lost Viking capital of Shetland refered to in the Carta Marina map as Skalvogh.

Please visit our facebook page Skailway for much more details

Here you can see some of the amazing artifacts that have been found on this site so far to , please visit Skailway facebook page for many more pictures

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Map of the 1990 (orange area) and 2020 (dark blue area)investigations and the adjacent field (light blue area) where the geophys scans have been undertaken

Historical pictures of the 1990 excavation

Pictures of the geophys scan results from the adjacent field

ORCA quotation and description of works below