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Skellig Michael

Orthodox Christians are familiar with the rocky monasteries of Meteora, built in astonishingly inacessible locations atop natural stome pillars.

Less well-known but no less impressive is the place of ascetic struggle founded by Saint Finian on the rocky island of Skellig Michael, off Ireland's stormy coast.

Skellig Michael (from Sceilig Mhichíl in the Irish language, meaning Michael's rock), also known as Great Skellig, is a steep rocky island about 15 kilometres west of the coast of County Kerry, Ireland. It is the larger of the two Skellig Islands. For 600 years the island was an important center of monastic life for Irish Christian monks.

Since the extreme remoteness of Skellig Michael has until recently discouraged visitors, the site is exceptionally well preserved. The very spartan conditions inside the monastery illustrate the ascetic lifestyle practiced by early Irish Christians. The monks lived in stone beehive-shaped huts (clochans), perched above nearly vertical cliff walls.

The small cluster of six beehive-shaped huts, two oratories and small terraces are located 714 feet above sea level, after a steep climb of 600 stone steps. Facing southward and sheltered from the winds, the site was favored by hermits and monks wanting to live far remote from normal life. While the slate rock huts appear to be round from the outside, their insides are rectangular with walls curving inward to form a corbelled roof and there are shelves and sleeping platforms built into the walls. Terraces around the huts and oratories were used to grow vegetables, which along with fish from the ocean and bird's eggs were the main food supply of the monks. There are three wells on the islet, whose area is only 44 acres. At a rocky crag higher up on the south peak of Skellig, called the 'Needle's Eye', is another oratory, which is no longer accessible.

Tradition associates the founding of the monastery with St. Fionan, the Kerry saint. The first known historical reference to the island comes from the end of the 5th century when the King of Munster, pursued by the King of Cashel, fled to Skellig.

The earliest undisputed reference to viking raids on Skellig Michael is in the Annals of Inisfallen, where under the year 824 it is stated: "Scelec was plundered by the heathens and Etgal (the abbot) was carried off into captivity, and he died of hunger on their hands."The annals do not tell why Etgal was taken away, but the reason is easy to guess. The Vikings believed that every monastery possessed either valuable objects of gold and silver or important men, like the abbot, who could either be held for ransom or enslaved.

Two mentions of Viking raids appear in the War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill , the first in an entry of 821�823 about Etgal, the second (which is undated) after the Etgal entry and before another dated 850:

There came a fleet from Luimnech in the south of Erinn, they plundered Skellig Michael, and Inishfallen and Disert Donnain and Cluain Mor, and they killed Rudgaile, son of Selbach, the anchorite. It was he whom the angel set loose twice, and the foreigners bound him twice each time.

The monks of Skellig Michael had reason to be anxious, for the approaches to their monastery were not easily defended. The monastery itself could be reached by flights of steps on three sides of the island, on slopes that, apart from steepness, offered no obstacle to armed men. But the hermitage on the South Peak was a different matter. The only access, on the southwest face, was by a single obscure and easily defended passage, the Needle's Eye. This was an insurmountable barrier, where Viking intruders trying to hoist themselves up could easily have been knocked down one by one by a single defender, whom the intruders could not even see. If by chance a hell-bent Viking managed to survive the Needle's Eye, he would still have had to pass three more places from which a monk throwing stones could send him into a headlong plunge.

The hermitage was a secure refuge for short periods of time if the monks had sufficient warning. When the ocean was whipped by storms and clouds darkened the skies, the monks felt secure from Viking attack. A poem in the margin of a ninth-century Irish manuscript expresses this feeling with striking beauty. It might well have been written on Skellig Michael.

The wind is rough tonight tossing the white combed ocean. I need not dread fierce Vikings crossing the Irish Sea.

Is acher ingaith innocht fufuasan fairggae findfolt ni agor reimm mora minn dondlaechraid lainn ua lothlind.

On a clear, calm day, however, the monks could not feel safe, for then maritime attack was a continual threat. To have time to hide their ecclesiastical treasures and flee to safety, the monks needed warning. The hermit on the South Peak was in an excellent position to spot danger and alert the monastery, for from the top he had a 360-degree view of the ocean. No Viking fleet could approach the island unobserved.

The monks endured, however, and in 993 AD, the viking Olav Trygvasson, who later became the king of Norway and introduced Christianity to that country, was baptized by a hermit on Skellig Michael. The site was finally abandoned in the 13th century and many of the monks moved to the monastery of Ballinskelligs on the mainland.

More: The Occupancy and Abandonment of the Island

Starting in the 1500s, Skellig Michael became a popular destination for annual pilgrimages, but had no permanent residents. In the 19th century two lighthouses were built and the Great Skellig was again inhabited, this time by a changing rota of lighthouse keepers.