Skellig Michael

51.7720°N, 10.5400°W.

Pyramidal sandstone island 11.6 km off the southwestern coast of County Kerry, Ireland, rising 218 metres from the Atlantic. Christian monks established a hermitage on the island around 588 CE under Saint Fionán; the monastery was occupied for approximately six centuries until it was abandoned in the late 12th century in response to Viking raids and a deteriorating climate. The monastic remains include six dry-stone beehive cells (clochans), two oratories, and a stairway of 600 hand-cut steps that climb the south peak — still navigable. Approximately 23,000 puffins and other seabirds nest on the island; the rock is a UNESCO World Heritage site (1996). The site appears in 21st-century cinema as the location of the final scene of The Force Awakens (2015) and key sequences in The Last Jedi.

Twelve men climbed six hundred hand-cut steps to a sandstone cone in the Atlantic and lived there alone for six centuries, copying manuscripts above two hundred metres of cliff.