After being largely abandoned, the island was bought at the end of the 20th century by traditionalist Catholic monks of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, who operate a monastery and farm there.

[3] A thin tongue of land curls west from the main part of the island, and then south to form the Point of the Graand (a local word meaning a "sandbar").

[8] The site was in a good state of repair circa 1783, but the structure was completely demolished sometime before 1795 "to provide material for a barn".

Many human bones of an ordinary size were found, and, moreover, fragments of a human skull, and of a lower jawbone, with the case of teeth, which were perfectly found, and fragments of thigh bones; these were all of an enormous size and afforded a convincing proof that the body buried there had required a grave of the dimensions above specified.

Thorfinn permitted all others to come out except Earl Rögnvald's men, and when most of them had gone out a man came to the door dressed in linen clothes only, and asked Earl Thorfinn to lend a hand to the deacon; this man placed his hands on the wall and sprang over it and over the ring of men, and came down a great way off, and disappeared immediately in the darkness of the night.

[14]The unknown writer of the Orkneyinga saga wrote that "Everyone agrees that of all the Earls of Orkney he [Rögnvald] was the most popular and gifted, and his death was mourned by many.

[3] In 1999, the island was purchased from farmer Charles Ronald Smith by the monastic community of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, a traditionalist Catholic religious congregation[18] formerly affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X.

Monks at the Golgotha Monastery, which has a working farm, hail from as far afield as Australia, Samoa, South Africa and Poland.

The ancient monastic ruins dating back to the 7th and 8th centuries mark Papa Stronsay as a holy island and the intention is to rebuild them.

The original, which is believed to date from the medieval period,[16] was found on the island in a graveyard close to St Nicholas’ Chapel around 1850.

His burial there is related by William Edmonstoune Aytoun (1813–1865), who after his retirement as Sheriff and Lord Admiral of Orkney and Shetland edited a collection of Scottish poetry.

Is it, then, a forced conjecture, that the shipwreck took place off the iron bound coast of the northern islands, which did not then belong to the Crown of Scotland?