Sule Skerry
Sule Skerry is one of the most remote and desolate islands in the British Isles, a low-lying skerry of ancient Lewisian gneiss sitting approximately 60 kilometres west-northwest of Orkney in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is among the most isolated inhabited — or more accurately, intermittently visited — pieces of land in the United Kingdom, rising only a few metres above sea level and covering just 37 acres. The island is perhaps best known today as the site of an unmanned lighthouse, but its fame stretches far deeper into history and folklore. Its very remoteness gives it an otherworldly quality that has captured the imaginations of sailors, naturalists, ornithologists, and folklorists for centuries.
The island is of enormous ecological significance and is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest as well as a Special Protection Area under European wildlife legislation. Sule Skerry supports one of the largest Atlantic puffin colonies in the world, with estimates of breeding pairs running into the tens of thousands. It also hosts significant populations of other seabirds including storm petrels, razorbills, guillemots, and great skuas. For ornithologists and wildlife researchers, it represents one of the most important seabird breeding stations in northern Europe, and research expeditions have visited it to monitor and ring birds for many decades. The sheer density of nesting birds during summer months transforms the island into a cacophonous, teeming spectacle utterly at odds with its bleak wintertime solitude.
In terms of geology, Sule Skerry is composed of Lewisian gneiss, some of the oldest rock on Earth at roughly three billion years old. The island itself is almost completely flat, barely heaving above the surrounding ocean, and its surface is a rough mosaic of bare rock, thin soil, and dense peat in places. There are no trees, no cliffs of dramatic height, and no shelter from the wind. Visiting in person — for those rare individuals who do — means confronting a landscape stripped down to essentials: rock, sea, sky, and birds. The sound is overwhelming: the calling and crying of thousands of seabirds, the crash of Atlantic swells against the skerry's edges, and a near-constant roar of wind. The smell of guano is pervasive across much of the surface during breeding season. It is a place that demands full sensory attention.
The lighthouse on Sule Skerry was completed and first lit in 1895, an engineering achievement of considerable difficulty given the island's exposure and the logistical challenges of working so far offshore in the North Atlantic. It was constructed by the Northern Lighthouse Board and served for many decades as a manned station, with keepers enduring extended tours of duty in extraordinary isolation. The lighthouse was automated in 1982, relieving the last resident keepers of one of the most demanding postings in British lighthouse history. The white tower remains operational today, warning ships away from the hazardous shallows and rocks of this part of the ocean, and its beam is visible for miles across the dark Atlantic.
Sule Skerry is also deeply embedded in the folklore and balladry of Scotland and Orkney. It lends its name to one of the most haunting and celebrated of all Scottish ballads, "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry," a song that tells of a seal-man, or selkie, who visits a human woman, fathers a child, and prophesies a tragic end. The ballad was collected in the nineteenth century and has been recorded by many folk artists over the decades, giving Sule Skerry a cultural resonance far beyond its physical insignificance. The selkie mythology itself reflects the deep imaginative relationship between Orcadian and Shetlandic peoples and the seals that haunt these waters in abundance — grey seals are indeed common around the skerry and haul out on its rocks.
Historically, Sule Skerry has been known to Norse seafarers, Orcadian fishermen, and later to the Royal Navy. During the Second World War, it played a minor strategic role as part of the monitoring and navigation infrastructure of the northern approaches. Its position on major shipping lanes between Britain and Iceland and the open Atlantic meant it was a navigational reference point of some importance. Before the lighthouse era, it represented a genuine hazard to shipping in these waters, and wrecks in the vicinity attest to how unforgiving the skerry could be in poor visibility or stormy conditions.
Visiting Sule Skerry is genuinely difficult and is not a casual tourist proposition. There is no regular passenger service to the island, and access is essentially restricted to those participating in scientific surveys, ringers with appropriate permits from the relevant wildlife authorities, or those with private charter arrangements. The Northern Lighthouse Board retains operational responsibility for the lighthouse. The nearest mainland ports from which any approach might be organised are in Orkney — principally Stromness — but even from there the sea crossing of around 60 kilometres in Atlantic conditions requires a substantial and capable vessel. The seas around Sule Skerry are frequently rough and can be dangerous; weather windows suitable for landing are limited, and the island offers no shelter or accommodation whatsoever for visitors. Anyone contemplating a visit must be prepared for the possibility of being unable to land even after completing the voyage.
The best time to visit, from both a wildlife and a logistical perspective, is late spring to midsummer, roughly May through July, when the puffin colony is active, storm petrels are present, and daylight is abundant at these high latitudes. In winter, Sule Skerry is thoroughly inhospitable — battered by Atlantic storms, shrouded in spray, and offering little but a bleak testament to the power of the northern ocean. The island sits at nearly 59 degrees north, placing it on roughly the same latitude as the southern tip of Greenland, and the climate is accordingly maritime and severe. Even in summer, warm clothing and waterproofs are essential, and the ground underfoot is treacherous in places, riddled with puffin burrows that can give way without warning.
Few places in the United Kingdom combine such extraordinary natural wealth with such profound remoteness and such a rich thread of legend. Sule Skerry is a place that rewards curiosity from afar — through the folklore it has inspired, the wildlife studies it has enabled, and the sheer improbability of its existence as a speck of primordial rock supporting millions of years of geological history and thousands of years of human imagination in the middle of the cold Atlantic. For those who have managed the rare privilege of landing, accounts consistently describe it as one of the most affecting and unforgettable experiences the British Isles can offer.