The Stone of Odin Vow

Stone of Odin (former site), Stenness, Orkney, Scotland

A holed standing stone destroyed in 1814 — couples who clasped hands through the hole were bound for life. Breaking the bond cursed both.

The Stone of Odin stood on the isthmus between the Lochs of Stenness and Harray in West Mainland Orkney, the centrepiece of one of the densest prehistoric ritual landscapes in Europe — within sight of the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar, and Maeshowe. It was a single tall standing stone with a circular hole carved through it at chest height, large enough for a hand and forearm. It was perhaps four thousand years old. It was destroyed by a tenant farmer in December 1814. The folklore had not been a quiet matter. By the late eighteenth century, the Stone of Odin was the most important folk-legal site in Orkney for the making and breaking of betrothals. A couple who clasped hands through the hole, in front of witnesses, with the words 'I make my Odin's vow', were married in the eyes of the parish — even if no formal ceremony followed for years. The custom is recorded in print by Walter Scott, who passed through Orkney in 1814 a few months before the stone fell. The other side of the vow was its undoing. A couple who repudiated each other had to do so through the stone too: standing one on each side, joining hands through the hole, and then walking apart through the two opposite doors of the kirk of Stenness without looking back. The unmade vow was not free. The folklore was strong that both parties to a broken Odin-vow would be marked: one would die early, the other would be barren. There are several recorded cases through the eighteenth century. The stone's destroyer, the tenant farmer Captain W. Mackay, was harassed for the rest of his life by Orkney visitors and his own neighbours, and is said to have lost three children in three years. The site of the stone is marked. The hole is gone.