Maeshowe: an Orkney Saga

….As they stumbled forwards, head bowed against the wind, they were suddenly aware of a house looming before them. They circled the house looking for a door, but found none. Fearing death from the weather, in desperation they climbed the roof of the house and used their swords to pry apart the stones that roofed the building. Without hesitation, with no room in their minds for anything but the need for shelter, they dived through the hole they’d made and fell twenty feet to the floor. Groping around the dark interior, they quickly realized that there would be no way out the way they had come. They would survive the storm but if they weren’t to die in this cell, they would have to dig their way out with their hands and swords.

According to the Orkneyinga Saga, Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson broke into the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, on Orkney, in AD1150. In AD1153, Earl Harald Maddadson and a group of his men sheltered there during a snowstorm. The sagas tell us that Rognvald found treasure there and that two of Harald’s men went mad. When the Victorians opened the tomb in 1861, they found Runic graffiti demonstrating that both of these episodes were based on real tomb-breaks. This game combines the two events and casts you as Harald and Rognvald. Earls Harald and Rognvald had landed in Orkney less than an hour ago but the suddenness and ferocity of the snowstorm caught them by surprise….