History of Orkney
Humans have inhabited Orkney, an archipelago in the north of Scotland, for about 8,800 years: Archeological evidence dates from Mesolithic times.
Finely made and decorated Unstan ware pottery links the inhabitants to chambered cairn tombs nearby.
But, according to scholars like Montesanti, "Orkney might have been one of those areas that suggest direct administration by Imperial Roman procurators, at least for a very short span of time".
They were followers of Saint Columba, and their efforts to convert the folk to Christianity seem to have impressed the popular imagination, for the names of several islands include the epithet "Papa" in commemoration of the hermits.
In that year the earldom of Caithness was granted to Magnus, second son of the Earl of Angus, whom the king of Norway apparently confirmed in the title.
[6] In 1564 Lord Robert Stewart, natural son of James V of Scotland, who had visited Kirkwall twenty-four years before, was made sheriff of Orkney and Shetland, and received possession of the estates of the udallers; in 1581 he was created earl of Orkney by James VI, the charter being ratified ten years later to his son Patrick, but after Patrick's execution in 1614 the earldom was again annexed to the crown.
During the Protectorate they were visited by a detachment of Oliver Cromwell's troops, who attacked various locations with his English Navy and the Roundhead Army.
The see remained vacant from 1580 to 1606, and from 1638 till the Restoration, and, after the accession of William III, the episcopacy was finally abolished (1697), although many of the clergy refused to conform.
Readers of Scott's Pirate will remember the frank contempt which Magnus Troil expressed for the Scots, and his opinions probably accurately reflected the general Norse feeling on the subject.
When the islands were given as security for the princess's dowry, there seems reason to believe that it was intended to redeem the pledge, because it was then stipulated that the Norse system of government and the law of Saint Olaf should continue to be observed in Orkney and Shetland.
Margaret Thatcher's plans to open such a mine were halted in 1980 after local campaigning, which included production of The Yellow Cake Revue by composer and conductor Peter Maxwell Davies,[15] who lived on the neighbouring island of Hoy.
In July 2023 the Orkney Council began moves to change its status, considering options such as becoming a British Crown dependency or a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Norway.[1].
In September 2021, archaeologists announced the discovery of two polished stone balls in a 5500 years-old Neolithic burial tomb in Orkney in Sanday.
