Saint’s face recreated with aid of old photos
This is St Magnus as never seen before. A facial reconstruction has been made of the Orkney aristocrat to help mark the 900th anniversary of his death.
Research by Hew Morrison, a forensic artist, to create the image included studying black-and-white photographs from the 1920s of what was said to be the skull of the 12th-century Norse earl.
Magnus Erlendsson shared the earldom of Orkney with his cousin, Hakon, but Hakon’s jealousy of his popularity on the islands resulted in Magnus being put to death.
Although the date of his martyrdom is uncertain — estimates range from 1115 to 1118 — Orkney’s annual St Magnus International Festival has chosen 2017 to mark the anniversary.
The story of Magnus’s life and death is told in the