The idea was audacious: build a place to worship god on an island 12 kilometres out to sea — far from the cloying demands of civilisation. And so, in the sixth century a few monks loaded their boats (made from animal skins stretched across wooden frames and sealed with tar) with supplies and crossed to this pyramid of rock among the clouds.
The monks embraced the ethereal and the earthly in their construction of the monastery (reputedly founded by St Finian) comprising their six indestructible beehive cells, Church of St Michael, two oratories, two wells, and graveyard, over the centuries. Small in scale but vast in scope, the monastery, perched on the edge of a cliff, and the island were abandoned in the late 12th century.
The monks’ diet consisted of a few vegetables grown in small plots and was supplemented by the nutritious flesh of seabirds, and fish they would catch from the bottom of the steps they built in to the steep island walls. The island takes its name from these cliffs, sceilig, a steep incline. Three sets of steps rise dramatically from the sea to near the summit, painstakingly and expertly built, they are still intact.
The higher of its two peaks rises 218 metres above the sea and is separated from the other by a col known as Christ’s Saddle. The Skelligs are the most westerly remnant of an ancient mountain chain running from the Iveragh Peninsula, their two peaks not dissimilar from our two highest peaks of Carrauntoohil and Beenkeeragh.
The island was a place of pilgrimage too which only the hardiest could achieve especially as the final station involved squeezing through an aperture in the rock called the Needle’s Eye and ascending part of the cliff face to kiss a cross inscribed in the rock.
The difficulty of this was expressed by poet Paddy Bushe: “Could I pull myself through/ Draw the world inside out and discover/ The light beyond … Some old saint’s arm giving its reliquary the slip, punching the air with delight.”
The monks lived a life of hardship, and of worship, but also an idyllic one. This was shattered on occasion with attacks by Viking raiders. In 823 they abducted the abbot Etgal who died of hunger in their captivity. They returned again on a plundering raid in 838. Who knows what manuscripts or art works they may have taken. Do these yet reside in a Copenhagen vault?
Landing on Skellig Michael today is on a fairly sheltered cove on the eastern side at Blind Man’s Cove. Even still, it may be necessary to alight from the ferry on an upward swell of the sea. Consider the nerves of the lighthousekeepers of old who sometimes in bad weather had to be hoisted up on a cable hanging from a crane high above. The winds were so strong on occasion as to dislodge the parapet stones from the walls of the lighthouse. Nowadays, the lighthouse on the island is automated, but for years it was occupied. These were the only people to live on the island. An older lighthouse was built in the 1820s before the current position was deemed preferable.
The birdlife is extraordinary and the birds’ antics must have provided endless entertainment for the monks: the secretive storm petrel; the graceful fulmar, the nerveless kittiwake; the glorious gannet; and the irrefutable puffin, to reference the leading players.
So, go to Skellig Michael: take the hour-long crossing from the sheltered village of Portmagee, perhaps on rough seas, alight, walk the winding path, and climb its 600 steps to the top. Dare yourself to believe that this place is real. It is not. It is an illusion. What was inspiring to the monks for over 600 years may be lost in the mists of time but to the 21st century visitor, transcendence is more than possible.
This isn’t just one of the greatest islands in Ireland but one of the greatest in the world. An impossible dream. It was granted World Heritage Site status in 1996, but superlatives will not work here. Just silence and awe.
: The season ends at the end of this month. skelligislands.com
: , Thomas H Mason, Mercier, 1967; , Paddy Bushe ed, Dedalus