Mousa Broch, the tallest surviving broch in Scotland, was built around 300 BC and was already ancient when the sagas were written. Two of them set stories inside it.
In Egil's Saga, Bjorn Brynjolfsson and Thora Roaldsdottir eloped from Norway and sailed for Iceland by way of Dublin. Their ship ran aground on Mousa, around AD 900 by the usual dating, and they spent the winter in the broch while the ship was mended. Thora's kin had meanwhile got the Norwegian king to outlaw Bjorn, so the pair went on to Iceland, where their daughter Asgerd was born and later married Egil.
The Orkneyinga Saga records that in 1153 a man called Erlend abducted Margaret, the mother of Earl Harold Maddadsson, and took her to the fort at Mousa, where everything had been made ready. Harold besieged it and found it an unhandy place to attack. The siege was ended by a settlement, and Hibbert in 1822 called the broch the Dragon-fortress, noting how the pair huddled in the dark of its galleries.
These are medieval literary episodes with real names, not tales of the supernatural. The broch is now also known for its nesting storm petrels. Access is by boat from Sandwick.
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