Skellig Isles, Home of 6th-Century Monks

The Skellig Islands, when you first see them from the end of the Kerry Peninsula, look like an apparition. Isolated 8 1/2 miles off the coast, their craggy peaks angling precipitously out of the sea, they might be the background of a movie set or a bit of scenery from an escapist film.

But Skellig Michael and its sister island, Little Skellig, are real enough. And authentically Irish.

Not far from the top of Skellig Michael’s 700-foot summit, monks of the 6th Century fashioned a settlement of crude stone dwellings.

The settlement represented an outpost of Christianity, not unusual during the early Middle Ages when Islam posed a threat from the south and the Vikings were skirmishing from the north.

But the monastery, if secure in its isolation, was minuscule in area and extremely hazardous.

A maiming fall, perhaps death, was only a misplaced step away. Amazingly, it endured for six centuries, until the monks finally gave up their solitary life and went to the mainland. Just as amazingly, the bare dwellings--huts, nothing more--are still here.

Withstanding the cruel winters and time itself, they remain a mute testament to the craftsmanship of the monks, and perhaps to their faith as well.

Daily Crossings

Cahirciveen, Valentia Island, Portmagee--all serve as ports for the boats that make daily crossings from Kerry.

But fog, wind and rain often intervene, and even during clear weather the captains may elect to stay home, knowing that sea conditions will prevent their craft from coming close to Blind Man’s Cove, the main landing on Skellig Michael.

Little Skellig, privately owned and now a bird refuge, is off-limits; it’s almost impossible to land there anyway.

But if conditions are right, one can land on Skellig Michael and spend the day on the island.

A narrow road, built in the early 19th Century, takes visitors to the southern side and to the main access path leading to the monastery. It lies 600 steps up.

Before starting, one catches sight of the first of Skellig’s many mysteries: 14 steps carved out of rock, leading nowhere. They do not extend up to the road, nor do they reach down as far as the sea. They are simply there.

Along the path the large, flat stones put down by the monks are safe enough, except that they seem to have no end.

One can rest at Christ’s Saddle, a grassy plateau that spreads itself between Skellig’s two main peaks: 714-foot Needle’s Eye to the west and, slightly lower, Easter Peak, which contains the monastic site.

Huts Well Preserved

That site is shockingly small. Along terraced ground, it’s perhaps 330 feet long, 150 feet wide. Six beehive-shaped huts, remarkably well-preserved, take up much of the area.

Using only small, flat stone and no mortar, the monks constructed these rectangular enclosures, roughly 10 feet by 10 feet in floor space and about 10 feet high. They corbeled the stones so that they met at the top to form a small dome.

Some of the “cells,” as they are called, have windows; some do not.

The monks also built two boat-shaped oratories and, much later in the Middle Ages, a church that has fallen into ruin. There are also stone crosses (some of them resting elsewhere on the island), two wells and the more modern graves of two lighthouse children who died on Skellig Michael in 1868 and 1869.

What is left of the monastery tells us very little about these monks--who they were, how they lived and why their community was able to survive for six centuries.

Their lives were unremittingly harsh, that is certain. They occupied cramped shelters and subsisted on a diet of sea birds, eggs and fish--arable soil was precious and scarce.

The balm of a sunny summer day would have come as a rare blessing to these monks, who were accustomed to heavy black skies, cold winds and rain. Winters brought a ferocity all their own: Enormous sea swells batter the island, isolating it even more.

Penance for Pilgrims

Histories of Ireland do not shed much light on Skellig. We know that the monastery was attacked by Vikings in 812 and on several other occasions in that 9th Century.

Early in the 16th Century, long after the monks were gone, Skellig began to figure as a place where pilgrims could perform public penance.

They followed Stations of the Cross marked on the island, and if we can believe reports, climbed to the top of Needle’s Eye, inched out onto a narrow, overhanging rock and kissed a stone carving at its tip.

In time the pilgrimages took on colors much less somber. Many of the pilgrims were young men and women who, in preparing for marriage, went there ostensibly to fast and pray.

But once freed of mainland supervision, they turned to other amusements. The tradition grew, and soon Irish wits began to record the naughtiness--and the names of the naughty--in poems, humorous, highly defamatory and not always truthful.

“Skellig Lists” they were called--a nice opportunity to slander one’s neighbor. For more than 100 years they circulated throughout western Ireland.

The pilgrimages ended, and with them the frolics in the grass. Now, apart from tourists, Skellig’s only human population consists of the lighthouse men.

Today’s crews are equipped with electricity, central heating and telephones; helicopters ferry them to and from the mainland every two weeks.

Their predecessors did not fare as well. Occupying Skellig’s two lighthouses, both built in the 1820s, their lives were almost as isolated as the monks’ had been, and just as perilous.

Wives and children joined the men, but an early crewman lost both his sons and a nephew in falls from the heights. The lower light has been completely rebuilt; the upper one has long since been abandoned.

Ideal for Birds

Of all the residents of the Skelligs it is the winged, feathered creature that has best adapted to its environment.

The islands are a perfect bird sanctuary. More than 20,000 pairs of gannets cover virtually every square inch of accessible rock on Little Skellig. As the boat passes by, what looks like freshly fallen snow begins to quiver with life--gannets take off but quickly return to their ledges.

Skellig Michael offers a greater variety of species, but puffins dominate. With their black and white plumage, gray cheeks and strong bill that in summer turns bright red, yellow and blue, they are the most colorful of the island’s sea birds.

Kittiwakes claim title to being the noisiest; there’s no mistaking their shrill cries reverberating against the rocks above Blind Man’s Cove. Bird watchers will also find razorbills, guillemots, storm petrels and fulmars.

As the birds continue in their protected state, free from the excesses of tourism, one hopes the monastic dwellings will fare as well.

They’ve lasted for more than a thousand years, and perhaps they’ll remain too isolated and inaccessible to ever become an easy stop for tourists.

Visitors to Ireland go to Kerry, stare across at the towers of rock, wonder a bit abut what lies out there, then head back to the population centers.

So Skellig Michael remains a mystery, what with its six centuries of communal life and all the untold stories that lie hidden in that handful of stone huts.

Perhaps that is as it should be. There aren’t too many good mysteries left.

For further information, contact Irish Tourist Board, 757 3rd Ave., 19th Floor, New York 10017.