The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels, etched onto the vellum skin of 185 calves by a handful of anonymous monks on the Scottish island of Iona in the late 790s.

When the Vikings arrived and burned the monastery to the ground, the monks got the book out just in time, carrying it across the sea to a monastery at Kells, north of Dublin, which is how it got its name. It eventually reached Trinity College in the 1650s and has been there ever since.

Up close it is smaller than most people expect, roughly A4 in size, but when scanned and enlarged the geometric designs reveal lines less than half a millimetre apart, drawn with set squares, compasses and brushes made from pine marten tails.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour of Trinity College, narrated by historian Turtle Bunbury, places the Book of Kells within the broader story of the campus, connecting its Viking-era origins to the Long Room and the centuries of scholarship that followed.