The Hiberno-Norse label refers to the hybrid culture that emerged as Norse settlers interacted with the native Irish population from the ninth century onwards, producing communities that were neither purely Scandinavian nor purely Gaelic. That such a community may have left its mark on this small, wind-exposed island adds a quiet strangeness to a place that most visitors to the Iveragh Peninsula would pass without a second thought.

The settlement at Canroe, the highest point on the eastern end of Beginish, is more substantial than its remote setting might suggest. Spread across the summit and down to the rocky eastern shoreline, it encompasses eight houses, fifteen cairns, eight animal shelters, two poorly built subsidiary structures, and an extensive network of fields and walls. At the western end of the island there is also evidence of iron smelting. Excavations carried out by M. J. O'Kelly in the early 1950s focused on two of the houses, a cairn, and an animal shelter. The two houses in question, known from his reports as Houses 6 and 7, sit adjacent to one another on the western side of Canroe, their foundations roughly rectangular in plan. A hand-carved stone bowl, considered probably Viking in type, was found in 1959 approximately three metres to the north-east of House 7, a small but telling object that sharpens the Norse association considerably. O'Kelly published his findings in 1956 and returned to the bowl in a separate report in 1961.

At certain low tides, a curving sand-bar at the south-eastern tip of the island connects Beginish to the nearby Church Island, making the relationship between these two sites feel rather more immediate than a map might suggest. The settlement at Canroe is accessible on foot once on the island, rising from the western slopes to the summit and dropping towards the shore, though reaching Beginish itself requires a boat crossing from the Valentia area.