The Shetland chapel-sites project 1997-98

The work described in the following report formed part of an archaeological research programme begun on the island of Unst in the summer of 1997 as part of an overall collaborative study between the Shetland Amenity Trust, and the universities of Copenhagen and Glasgow - the Viking Unst Project. The survey was limited to an audit of known chapel-sites: assessing their state of preservation and potential for future work, and updating the previous survey undertaken in 1982 by Dr Christopher Lowe (Morris & Brady 1998). This work marks the inception of a new stage in research conducted by the Viking and Early Settlement Archaeological Research Project - VESARP (based in the Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow) on early chapel-sites in areas associated with the Scandinavian settlement in northern and western Britain in its North Atlantic context. The continuation of the work in 1998 on Unst (Brady & Johnson 1998) and its extension to the neighbouring island of Fetlar (Brady 1998) is also reported here.