2003 research found that the majority of Orcadians can trace their patrilineality to Scandinavia, with 55% of Y chromosome DNA relating to migrating North Germanic peoples.

[13] Historian Hugh Kearney has written that Orkney's historical connection with the North Sea Empire has allowed Orcadians to remain "ethnically distinctive".

[13] With regards to self-governance, Laurentian University's historian Daniel Travers has written that Orkney Islands Council has "considerably more influence over insular matters than other counties" in the United Kingdom.

[13] Researcher, James B. Minahan, has described the Orcadian people as a stateless nation, noting their history of seeking independence from Scotland, their opposition to the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, and a history of seeking "political status that the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and the Faroese Islands" have in relationship with the sovereign states of the UK and Denmark, respectively.

York University historian, Carolyn Podruchny, notes that "freemen" (as opposed to "voyageurs"), involved in the North American fur trade up until the early 19th-century came from a range of disparate ethnic groups and "could be métis, Orcadians, other Scots, English, and Iroquoians from the St. Lawrence valley".