Maeshowe 4½ miles North east of Stromness on the Orkney mainland is said to be the most advanced chambered cairn in the british isles , the only similar structures as advanced as this are in the mediteranian area , much of this site remains intact an in good condition although there has been a certain amount of damage in it's 3500 or so years of existence , on the outside the cairn is 24 ft. high and 115 ft. diameter and is surrounded by a shallow ditch. The entrance is on the south west side and and is around 5 ft. high leading to a 36 ft. long passage and the main chamber . During sunrise at winter solstice the sun gradually makes it's way down the passage before breifly....

Lighting up the chamber as you can see here from the inside of the monument , the builders put the passageway in it's prescise position for just this reason . During these times of course the sun and the moon played a very important part of the peoples lives as they were the religious or spiritual symbol's of the time. This type of allignment is common in monuments in Scotland and in some other places too, pointing not only towards sun and moon but stars and some constellations (deliberate?) and at different times of the year eg. solstice and other important Pagan dates !

These runes found in the burial chamber are not messages from the builders but from marauding theives from scandinavia who brag of female conquests and the raiding of the riches from the chamber, so it amounts to no more than graffiti, one line talks of how Hakon 'bore single-handed all the treasure from this Howe' another boasts of a band of pirates led by Rognvald and Eindrid the younger who in 1150-51 A.D. were probably the first to enter the tomb since it was closed 3000 years previously.

Unstan burial chamber on mainland Orkney 4 kilometers from Stromness is a stalled cairn which breaks in to 5 sections or 10 cells, it is T shaped in build and covered by a oval mound, excavations here in 1884 uncovered the shattered remains of around 30 finely decorated neolithic bowls which is now known as Unstan Ware, human and animal bones were also found here including a crouching skeleton which was still in one peice, unfortunately these were not properly recorded or preserved.

Midhowe stalled cairn on the island of Rousay in the Orkney Island's is in 12 sections (24 cells), reaching 76 feet long with a passage on the same axis that is nearly 13 feet long beneath a mound 107feet × 42feet and is rectangular in shape with rounded corners this is the largest of the cairns of this type. The first four cells were empty but in the others bones of at least 25 skeletons, of which there were 8 almost complete lying with their backs against the wall, these must have been the last people to be buried in the tomb, some examples Unstan Ware pottery were also found on excavation of the site in the 1930's.