Whether or not you’re actually sailing to Skellig Michael (we are not), this little center (with basic exhibits and a find 15-minute film) explains it well – both the story of the monks and the natural environment.
Skellig Islands – The twin wave-battered pinnacles of the Skellig Islands (Oileain na Scealaga) are the site of Ireland’s most remote and spectacular ancient monastery. The 12km sea crossing can be rough, and the climb up to the monastery is said to be steep and tiring.
The jagged 217m-high rock of Skellig Michael (Michael’s Rock; like St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and Mont St Michel in Normandy is the larger of the two Skellig Island and a Unesco World Heritage site. Early Christian monks established a community and survived here from the 6th until the 12th or 13th century. The monastic buildings perch on a saddle in the rock, some 150m above sea level, reached by 618 steep steps cut into the rock face.
Influenced by the Coptic Church (founded by St Anthony in the deserts of Egypt and Libya), the monks’ determined quest for ultimate solitude led them to this remote, windblown edge of Europe. Not much is known about the life of the monastery, but there are records of Viking raids in 812 and 823 CE.
Skellig Michael famously featured as Luke Skywalker’s Jedi temple in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Start Wars: The Last Jedi, attracting a whole new audience to the island’s dramatic beauty.
Small Skellig is long, low and craggy; from a distance it looks as if it’s shrouded in a swirling snowstorm. It’s not snow – it’s a colony of gannets – over 23,000 of them – the second largest breeding colony in the world.