Skellig Michael, the monastery suspended over the Atlantic

About twelve kilometres off the coast of County Kerry, in south-west Ireland, two sandstone rocks rise from the Atlantic like sharp teeth. The larger, Skellig Michael, in Irish Sceilg Mhichíl, soars more than two hundred metres. On its terraces, battered by wind and waves, a community of monks lived for centuries in one of the most extreme hermitages of Christendom, leaving dry-stone buildings that have survived to our day in remarkable condition.

The monks at the end of the world

The founding date of the monastery is not precisely known. Tradition attributes it to a Saint Fionán, but archaeological evidence and the first mentions in the Irish annals point to a period between the sixth and eighth centuries. The choice of so remote a place answered the ideal of Irish monasticism of withdrawing to the edges of the known world, in a form of voluntary exile for the love of God.

The dedication to the archangel Michael, which gives the island its present name, appears to be later, attested around the tenth or eleventh century. It belongs to the spread of the cult of Michael on heights and sea headlands, which had its model in the Gargano. For this very reason, in the twentieth century Skellig Michael was placed at the start of the legendary Saint Michael's line, a modern construction with no historical foundation.

Beehive cells and steps in the rock

The monastery stands on a terrace about one hundred and eighty metres above sea level, reached by stone stairways cut into the rock, with more than six hundred steps in all. The complex includes six beehive cells, called clocháin in Irish, two oratories shaped like upturned boats, crosses and carved slabs, a small cemetery and the remains of a medieval church. The cells are built without mortar, of corbelled stones, and are still watertight.

On another part of the island, towards the summit called South Peak, lies an even more isolated hermitage, built on very narrow terraces overlooking the void. Its approach is so dangerous that it is not open to visitors. The monks grew small gardens on gathered soil and lived on fish, eggs and seabirds, in an isolation broken only by the arrival of boats in the months of fair weather.

Vikings, abandonment and recognition

The Irish annals record a Viking raid on the island in 823 or 824, during which a monk named Etgal was carried off and later died of hunger and thirst. Monastic life nonetheless continued. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the climate worsened and Irish church institutions were reformed, the community moved to the mainland, near Ballinskelligs, but the island remained for centuries a destination of penitential pilgrimage.

In 1996 UNESCO inscribed Skellig Michael on the World Heritage List as an outstanding example of an early monastic settlement. The island is today a reserve for seabirds, including puffins and gannets, and can be visited only in the summer months, by a limited number of boats and when the sea allows, to preserve its fragility.