In the summer months you can visit Mousa at night, and not only experience this site in the atmospheric 'summer dim', but also see the amazing sight of the Storm Petrels who nest there flitting back to their nests after a day out at sea. Highly recommended.
Mousa Broch is the finest example of a 2000 year old Iron Age tower or broch anywhere. It stands 13.3 metres high and dominates the landscape of the small island of Mousa just off the Shetland mainland.
Accessibility is only by boat and it is thought that the only reason it still stands so proud today is because it would have proved too difficult for past generations to sail over and steal the stone.
We find from Egil's Saga, ch43, that about AD900 'Bjorn Hairld of Aurland in Sogn, who had fled from the fiords with Thora Hladhond, sister of Thorer Herse, was wrecked near Moseyjarborg' (Mousa) and took shelter there until his ship was repaired, and he could continue his voyage to Iceland. Again in 1154, Erlend Junge, a chief from Hjaltland, fled with Earl Harald's mother, Margaret, widow of Madadh of Atholl, and shut himself up in Mousa, where he stood a siege (p342 in the Orkneyinga Saga). Neither of these notices, however, necessarily implies that the broch was at these dates owned or occupied by any one, but rather the reverse.
Cribbed from
IV.—The Brocks or "Pictish Towers" of Cinn-Trolla, Carn-Liath,and
Craig-Carril, in Sutherland, with Notes on other Northern Brochs,