Stromness Museum

This superb museum, run with great passion, is full of knick-knacks from maritime and natural-history exhibitions covering whaling, the Hudson's Bay Company and the German fleet sunk after WWI. Recent finds from the jaw-dropping excavations at the Ness of Brodgar are on display and there's always an excellent summer exhibition, too. You can happily nose around for a couple of hours. Across the street is the house where local poet and novelist George Mackay Brown lived.