Jarlshof

A severe storm in the 1890s stripped sand and turf from a headland at Sumburgh and exposed stone walls; excavation eventually revealed one of the most complete settlement sequences in Europe, running from Bronze Age houses through an Iron Age broch and wheelhouses, a Norse longhouse settlement of the ninth to fourteenth centuries, a medieval farm and a sixteenth-century laird's house, all built one on top of and beside another on the same few hectares. The name is not ancient: Walter Scott invented it for his novel The Pirate in 1822, having seen the laird's house, and it stuck to the whole site once the older layers were found. The wheelhouses, circular buildings with radial stone piers, are the best preserved anywhere. Sumburgh Head with its puffin colony is a short distance away.

What you actually see

• The stacked periods - Bronze Age to sixteenth century on one site.
• The wheelhouses - Iron Age circular buildings with radial stone piers.
• The Norse longhouses - a settlement of the ninth to fourteenth centuries.
• The laird's house - the sixteenth-century ruin that gave the site its invented name.

When to go

April to October for full opening; winter access is limited. Shetland weather is severe and the site is completely exposed on a headland. Puffins at nearby Sumburgh Head are present from April to early August.

Honest expectations

The layering makes the site genuinely confusing without the audio guide, since periods sit side by side with no obvious separation. It is fully exposed to wind with no shelter. Aircraft use the runway immediately alongside, and the road crosses it.

Nearby

Sumburgh Head lighthouse and its puffins are close; Lerwick lies forty minutes north.