Erosion of the soft volcanic rocks by the sea has created an extraordinary variety of caves, stacks, arches, blowholes, and cliffs.

Today the main settlement on the island is Biggings, just to the east of which is Housa Voe from where the Snolda ferry arrives from its base at West Burrafirth on the Shetland Mainland.

At that time the Scottish landmass formed part of the Old Red Sandstone Continent and lay some 10–25 degrees south of the equator.

The accumulations of Old Red Sandstone, laid down from 408 to 370 million years ago, were created as earlier Silurian rocks, uplifted by the formation of Pangaea, eroded and then were deposited into river deltas.

The freshwater Lake Orcadie existed on the edges of the eroding mountains, stretching from Shetland to the southern Moray Firth.

[7][8][14][15] Erosion of the soft volcanic rocks by the sea has created an extraordinary variety of caves, stacks, arches, blowholes, cliffs, voes and geos that are among the finest in Britain.

This was the favourite of John Tudor who wrote of the island in his Victorian memoirs and described the cave as: ...in fairyland, so exquisite is the colouring of the roof and sides and so pellucid is the water... [with] alcoves or recesses like stalls in a church.In 1953 the spectacular headland, 'Da Horn o Papa' fell into the sea during a storm.

This was the scene of a duel, fought and won by Lord Thorvald Thoresson, who was accused of corruption in the 1299 document and was later called 'dominus de Papay'.

[8] In the 16th century merchants from Bremen and Hamburg were operating a summer trading booth to buy fish from the local fleet.

They maintained a prosperous Haaf (Old Norse: 'deep sea') fishing industry, undertaken in the summer months using six-oared boats known as sixareens.

[23] 300 metres (980 ft) from the present church there may be an older chapel site of Sneeans or Snøyans on the headland between the west end of Kirk Sand and the bay of Tusselby.

It is called the 'ald kirk' by locals and referred to by the Ordnance Survey as "the site of a Romish chapel belonging to about the twelfth century".

Excavations in 2004 found little besides large blocks of rhyolite and a piece of whalebone rib, suggesting that the oral tradition may have some truth to it.

Edwin Lindsay, an Indian army officer and the son of the 6th Earl of Balcarres, was declared insane and sent to the island in disgrace after refusing to fight in one.

[26] Originally these were two-storey buildings with turf roofs, built into banks to give access to the upper floor where the millstone was sited.

Some were still in use on Papa Stour in the early years of the 20th century, and there is still a working example of one of these mills on the Burn of Clumlie, at Troswick in the south Mainland of Shetland.

[20][27] In common with many small Scottish islands, Papa Stour's population peaked in the 19th century and has experienced a significant decline since then (see e.g. Mingulay).

The Aberdeen trawler Ben Doran A178, foundered on the Ve Skerries 3 miles northwest of Papa Stour, on the evening of 28 March 1930 while on her way to the village of Scalloway to land her catch.

[32] Another shipwreck occurred on 9 December 1977 when the Aberdeen trawler Elinor Viking A278, skipper Alec Flett, foundered on the Ve Skerries.

At the request of Alec Webster, Coastguard Station Officer, Lerwick, a volunteer crew in a British Airways Sikorsky S61N helicopter from Sumburgh Airport was scrambled.

There was no loss of life, but this incident prompted the building of a lighthouse on the skerries in 1979, and may also have been the example required for the formation of the present Search and Rescue helicopter unit, based at Sumburgh Airport.

Sheep form the backbone of the agricultural economy but a diversity livestock are kept, including cattle, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks and geese.

Vegetable are grown too, often in the shelter of circular walls, such plots being known as 'planti crubs' – these were originally used to propagate kale (cabbage) seedlings and were built well away from other buildings where they would be safe from mice.

[36] The Papa Stour Project is a Christian supported housing service offering accommodation to men with drug and alcohol issues.

[8] For visiting yachts the four main voes provide good shelter, but the strong tides in both the Sound of Papa and to the north west require considerable care.

refers to the fishermens' practice of rowing their open fishing boat out to sea until the high cliffs of Foula were no longer visible.

An extra layer of meaning is added by the knowledge that Da Horn o Papa collapsed in a storm around the time of this poem's composition, so that it is a tribute not just to a lost way of life, but a noted geographical feature.