The castle sits on an offshore rock that rises forty feet above the sea, separated from the mainland by a twenty-foot gap that was once spanned by a walled bridge and a drawbridge. The pivot holes for the drawbridge are still visible. To reach the courtyard you would have crossed the bridge, climbed a flight of walled stairs, and passed through a door into the curtain wall - five feet thick at its base. The Gaelic name is Dùn Sgàthaich, which translates roughly as Fort of Shadows, and it is said to be the legendary stronghold of Scáthach, the warrior-maiden of Irish mythology who trained the hero Cú Chulainn in the arts of combat.
Scáthach - the name means Shadow - appears in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology as a Scottish warrior woman, fierce enough that the great Cú Chulainn travelled from Ireland to learn from her. Among the techniques she taught him was the gáe bolga, a savage weapon that branched inside its target. The Irish name for the fort, Dún Scáthaigh, is derived from hers. The story belongs to a stratum of myth that linked Ireland and western Scotland long before there was any clear border between them - heroes crossed the North Channel as easily as they crossed any other water, and their teachers lived on rocks that could only be reached on foot at low tide. Whether anyone called Scáthach ever lived here is not the question. The story is what shaped the name.
The stone castle on the rock dates from the 1300s, when it was held by a group of Viking descent led by Gilbert MacAskill, grandson of the Norse explorer Ascall Mar Ragsnaill. The MacAskills were lieutenants of the coast - sea-fighters whose loyalties shifted with the politics of the Hebrides. Before 1395, Clan MacDonald of Sleat - a branch of Clan Donald - took Dunscaith from the MacAskills. Then Clan MacLeod took it back, briefly assisted by the MacAskills who had become MacLeod allies. The MacDonalds recaptured it again in the 15th century. Each clan held it for a few decades, fortified what their predecessors had built, and waited for the next assault.
In the late 15th century, King James IV moved decisively against the Lordship of the Isles, breaking the political power of the MacDonald chiefs who had effectively ruled the western seaboard for over a century. The Lordship was forfeited to the crown in 1493. Dunscaith was caught up in this reckoning, and the castle was seized by royal forces. The MacDonalds were allowed to keep possession of the building itself, but the wider political world had changed under them. They held the castle through the 16th century, but the strategic importance of a stone keep on a sea-stack diminished as the politics of the Highlands turned more often on London and Edinburgh than on Skye and the Outer Isles. In the early 17th century, the MacDonalds abandoned Dunscaith. It has been a ruin ever since.
Today the castle is a scheduled monument, parts of the curtain wall still surviving along the cliff edge, but most of the inner buildings gone. In the courtyard you can see a well and the remains of a stairway that once led up a tower. The bridge that once spanned the gap to the mainland is gone, leaving only the stair-stepped scars on the rock face where it joined. To approach the rock you walk across the foreshore at low tide, which is when most visitors come - the timing dictated, as it has always been, by water. The view back toward Skye takes in the small bay of Tokavaig, the Cuillin ridge rising sharply behind, and the long arm of Loch Eishort opening westward. Scáthach's name still sits on the place.
Coordinates 57.1366°N, 5.9759°W on the west coast of the Sleat peninsula, Isle of Skye. From 2,000-3,000 ft AGL the castle is visible as a square stone fragment on an offshore stack just south of Tokavaig, with Loch Eishort opening westward. The dramatic Cuillin ridge rises sharply 5-8 nm to the north. Nearest fields: Plockton (EGPO) 22 nm northeast, Oban (EGEO) 60 nm south. Watch for downdrafts off the Cuillin in westerlies. Approach via Sleat peninsula along A851. Tidal access on foot; access at low water only.