AS I EXAMINED the cave at Seacliff last weekend, it at first seemed an unlikely temple to a Norse god. Yet the story of the discovery of the cave, and what was then found here, is intriguing and does add a sense of mystery to the place.

The first thing you notice is the setting. Today it may be next to one of the car parks that gives access to the beach (after £3 is paid at the barrier) and I watched as people parked right by the cave and didn’t even seem to notice it.

Yet if you take away the cars in your imagination and stand at the entrance of the cave, you do get a real sense of the magnificence of the location. At sunrise in the summer the sun’s rays will pour directly into its shallow chamber.

And the sea is ever present. On this day I visited, waves were rolling in and crashing on the beach at high tide. The sound seemed to echo in the cave. Also from the entrance there is a perfect view of St Baldred’s Boat, a rocky plateau which legend tells us was once moved closer to the shore by St Baldred, who steered it like a boat, in order to make it less perilous for fishermen.

The cave itself also bears his name: St Baldred’s Cave. Here, tradition tells us, the saint would rest or sleep when he wasn’t on the Bass Rock. It seems an unlikely place to spend the night but then again it was around 1,400 years ago and roughing it was all part of the commitment to a holy life.

Yet I thought to myself that it would make a fabulous storytelling location (once the cars were away) and so would also have been an obvious place to preach. The Bass Rock looms on the horizon, and the vision and sound of the sea creates a backdrop any theatre would envy. Plus it is very close to a traditional landing place when St Baldred would moor his boat when returning from the Bass.

And so I wondered about the tale of its discovery and the subsequent findings. It was in 1831 that George Sligo discovered this cave. He lived at Seacliff and decided to clear sand that had accumulated in the area so as to improve access to the beach.

He told his workmen to continue clearing the cave and as they did so more was revealed. Flat stones were found on the floor of the cave, which George reckoned had been laid as paving stones.

But as the digging proceeded a mystery developed. There was charred wood ash, bits of bone and lots of limpet shells. It was becoming clear that this cave may have been used by people in some way, but by whom and what for?

So now the clearing of the cave took on a new dimension. There was a feeling that this was a discovery of something unknown, and so the work continued more carefully in case something was missed or damaged. The flat stones seemed to be paving, laid out as if in a circular pattern. Was this to facilitate some kind of ceremony?

Now the massive stone at the mouth of the cave attracted George’s attention. Was it used in some way as an altar? To me it looks like an erratic but I must admit its position at the mouth of the cave is intriguing. When Sligo examined it he said he found a stain on the flat surface, which he claimed looked as if things had been burnt on it. Then two skeletons were found buried in the ground by the stone. They were of young children. Why were they buried here, and how did they die? Iron Age pottery was also found, as was a handle of a knife made of bone.

The other bones in the cave were mostly of animals, including sheep, pigs, dog and even horse. There were also fragments of human bones.

Sligo decided that all this suggested that he had discovered an ancient site where worship and sacrifice, perhaps even human sacrifice, took place, possibly accompanied by feasting. But if this was the case, who were these people and to whom did they offer their sacrifice?

I sat in the cave and wondered about this as my kids got ready for the beach. It really is possible to imagine that this could have been a place for such ancient rituals. Yet the cave looks man made. To me, it seems as if it has been chiselled into its current form. Does that add to the idea that this was some kind of ancient temple to a pagan god before its association with St Baldred?

George Sligo thought so. He put forward the idea that the god worshipped here was the Norse god Balder, a son of Odin. His name is spelt various ways but it does have a similar ring to Baldred. Sligo suggested that all the places in the vicinity now named after Baldred may have originally been named after this Norse god.

It was of course common practice for early Christians to take over places of pagan worship and ‘Christianise’ them. Indeed, many Christian festivals and holy days were originally pagan ceremonies. So do the discoveries in this cave suggest that the same process has taken place here in East Lothian?

Stories of St Baldred are of course a little confused and very magical. They are clearly a mix of Christian and older ides. But were the stories about him rooted in earlier tales of Balder? In Norse legend, Balder is carried on a rock type boat, for example. Was this the original source for the tale, that later was associated with St Baldred. A I said, St Baldred’s Boat is clearly seen from the mouth of the cave, and Balder was worshipped as the sun, which visits the cave on sunrise.

Sligo cited other evidence of a Norse link to the area. The local name Scougall is very similar to the Icelandic word Skogall, which means rocky promontory. Were there early Norse visitors here?

It all sounds fascinating, but is it all just romanticised gothic fancy from the 19th century? I would have thought if the evidence was so clear and that we really did have a unique site where a Norse god was worshipped with human sacrifice (and there is evidence that the Vikings did practice human sacrifice) then it would have been more thoroughly investigated.

Yet George Sligo’s theory remains still unchallenged. I’m not saying I think the evidence is conclusive but as far as I know there has been little or no serious investigation of the cave since it was last examined in 1905, although the RCAHM looked at it briefly in 1962. The Iron Age finds remain in the National Museum and today the cave has filled up with more recent rubble and so is smaller than originally discovered. Who knows what still lies there awaiting discovery.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we have a major ancient Norse temple on our shoreline!