An account of 1792 in Archaeologia Scotica describes how young couples plighted their troth through the hole in the stone. The promise carried such weight that elders sternly reprimanded a man who had abandoned his pregnant partner for having broken the promise of Odin. Visitors left offerings such as bread, cheese, cloth or pebbles, and it was believed that children passed through the hole would never shake with palsy in old age.
At New Year, people gathered at the Stones of Stenness, the so-called Temple of the Moon, and the Ring of Brodgar, the Temple of the Sun, for feasting and dancing lasting several days, and couples made vows at both sites. Those names for the circles come from the antiquarian tradition.
In December 1814 Captain W. Mackay, a recent landowner who objected to the visitors trampling his land, destroyed the Odin Stone and toppled a standing stone before public outrage stopped him. One account says the farmer wanted the stone for a cow-house. A toppled stone was re-erected in 1906. Neighbours reportedly twice tried to burn his property, but there is no tale of supernatural vengeance.
The Odin Stone appears in Scott's novel The Pirate. That is fiction and is not the source here. The pin is at the Stones of Stenness because the stone itself no longer exists.
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