Scottish county, the chief difference between the weather of the
archipelago and that of Scotland in general is perhaps the greater
prevalence of high winds in the Islands, which owing to the general
lowness of the land receive the full force of the North Atlantic
gales, and which moreover lie in the most common track of the Atlantic
cyclones, a circumstance which leads to great variability of wind and
weather. Orkney has record of only one hurricane, on 17th November,
1893, with a velocity of 96 miles. Several winter gales of over 80
miles have been recorded, and one summer gale of 75 miles in the year
1890. During the fifteen years 1890-1904, 300 gales were recorded in
Orkney, practically the same as at Fleetwood in Lancashire, while
Alnwick experienced only 157, and Valentia on the west coast of Ireland
only 130. Atlantic cyclones are the dominating factor in Orkney weather
during the greater portion of the year, producing gales of greater or
smaller magnitude, and being almost invariably accompanied by rain,
with sudden changes both in the direction and the force of the wind.
In the spring season, however, anticyclones frequently cause spells
of dry, cold weather, with fairly steady winds from the eastward or
northward.
Winter in Orkney is in general a steady series of high winds, heavy
rains, and ever varying storms, with much less frequent falls of snow,
and fewer severe or continuous frosts than elsewhere in Scotland. Under
the shelter of garden walls we have seen strawberry plants in blossom
at Christmas and roses in January, while chance primroses may be found
in sheltered nooks in any month of the year. The spring is cold and
late, but the prevailing winds from N.W., N.E., or E. have not the
piercing coldness so often felt in the spring winds along the east
coast of Scotland. The summer is short, but remarkable for rapidity of
growth. Fogs are fairly common during summer and early autumn, and come
on and disperse with exceptional suddenness. Thunder in Orkney occurs
mostly in winter, during high winds and continuous falls of rain or
snow. The heaviest rains and the most prevalent and strongest winds are
from the S.W. and S.E.
MEANS OF OBSERVATION IN ORKNEY FOR THIRTY-THREE YEARS—1873-1905
Rainy Snowy Days on Thunder Clear
days. days. which storms. sky. Overcast. Gales.
Hail fell.
219 31 14 6 31 156 79
9. The People—Race, Language, Population
It is unsafe to dogmatise on the early races of Orkney; but from the
undoubted community in blood, speech, and culture with other northern
counties of Scotland during the Celtic period, we may fairly conjecture
that the Islands must have similarly shared in whatever pre-Celtic
population—Iberian or other—these regions as a whole possessed.
Into the vexed question whether any remnant of Celtic population
survived the Norse settlement of the Islands in the ninth century we
cannot enter here. It is certain that for centuries after that era
Norse speech, law, and custom were as universal and supreme in Orkney
as ever Anglo-Saxon speech and institutions were in Kent or Norfolk.
The place-names of the Islands are, save for a late Scottish and
English element, entirely Norse.
The Scottish immigration into Orkney, which commenced about 1230,
came for centuries almost exclusively from the Lowlands—the Lothians,
Fife, Forfarshire, and those parts of Stirlingshire, Perthshire,
Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and Moray which lie outside the “Highland
Line,” being the chief areas drawn from. A later and much slighter
strain of immigration from Caithness, Sutherland, and Ross, which
affected the South Isles more especially, was itself quite as much of
Norse as of Celtic ancestry. The people of Orkney must therefore be
put down as in the main an amalgam of Norse and Lowland Scots.
There never was any very rigid line of division between these two races
in the Islands. So much is it the case that, while the Norse were
being Scotticised in speech and custom, the incomers were at the same
time being Orcadianised in sentiment, that the opprobrious epithet of
“Ferry-loupers,” hurled by native Orcadians at successive generations
of Scots intruders, is itself of Scottish origin. The _genius loci_ was
a very potent spirit, and the Scoto-Orcadian was often prouder of being
an Orcadian than of being a Scot.
The humblest Orcadians have for centuries past spoken English more
correctly and naturally than was at all common among the Scottish lower
orders before the advent of board school education, a circumstance
largely due to the fact that a great portion of the population
exchanged Norse speech for Scots about the period—the later sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries—when educated Scots were themselves
adopting English. Add to this the constant presence of passing English
vessels and the presence of Cromwell’s soldiers. At the same time a
modified Scots dialect is commonly spoken by the less educated classes,
but even in this the admixture of pure English is pronounced. A few
Norse words, mostly nouns, survive imbedded in the local speech,
whether English or Scots. Norse speech lingered in Harray until about
1750.
The population of Orkney, which numbered 24,445 in the year 1801,
increased almost uninterruptedly to a maximum of 32,395 in 1861. Every
subsequent census, except that of 1881, has shown a decrease, and the
9.8 per cent. rate of intercensal decline recorded in 1911 was the
heaviest revealed by the census of that year for any Scottish county.
The population in that year was 25,897, being 69 to the square mile.
Under modern conditions Orkneymen have resumed the roving instincts
of their Norse ancestors, and the variety of capacities under which
the sons and daughters of the Islands live in the far corners of the
earth is astonishing. The ostensible local causes of this movement
are in reality of secondary importance. The real causes are improved
education, improved communications, and the grit to take advantage of
them. Can any Scottish or English county show the equivalent of _The
Orkney and Shetland American_, a little newspaper published for years
in Chicago? “A Shields Shetlander,” too, is a current descriptive tag
which might well be supplemented by “A Leith Orcadian.”
10. Agriculture
Farming is the very life of Orkney, giving full or partial employment
to no less than 6400 of the population. The great era of agriculture
in the Islands followed, and was partly the consequence of the failure
of the local kelp industry in the second quarter of the nineteenth
century. The area under crop and permanent pasture rose from about
30,000 acres in 1855 to 86,949 acres in 1870. It is now 107,941 acres,
while in addition at least 52,941 acres of heath and mountain land are
utilised for grazing. The chief crops are oats, 33,153 acres; turnips,
13,877 acres; and hay, 9425 acres. Stock rearing is the cornerstone of
Orcadian farming.
[Illustration: Harvesting at Stenness]
Short-horns and polled Angus are the favoured breeds of cattle,
and many thousand head from the Islands pass through the Aberdeen
auction marts every year. The finest of the beef—and prime Orkney
beef is second to none—finally reaches Smithfield. Cheviots and
Cheviot-Leicester crosses are the common sheep, the small native breed,
of Norwegian origin, being now confined to North Ronaldshay. The old
Orkney horse, itself probably a hybrid of half Norwegian and half
Scottish extraction, has for several generations past been crossed
with Clydesdale blood, and the resultant is a small-sized but very
sturdy and serviceable animal. Oxen are still used to a small extent
as draught animals. The export of eggs and poultry is a great and
growing Orcadian industry, the annual output from the Islands being at
least £60,000 in value, a larger figure be it noted than the purely
agricultural rental of the county. The fattening of geese for the
Christmas market is a special feature of Orkney poultry-farming, the
birds being largely brought from Shetland at the end of harvest and
put on the stubble. The open winter is a valuable consideration to
poultry-keepers in the Islands, increasing the amount of natural food
which the birds are able to pick up, and extending the period of laying.
Large quantities of sea-weed are available as manure in practically
every part of the Islands, and marl in some localities. The chief
disadvantages under which agriculture labours in Orkney are distance
from the markets, and occasional damage to grain crops from sea-gust.
Agricultural co-operative societies, however, which have obtained a
firm footing in the Islands, are doing a great deal to counter-act the
effects of the first-mentioned drawback.
11. Industries and Manufactures
The manufacture of kelp was introduced into the Islands in 1722, and
by 1826 the annual export amounted to 3500 tons, valued at £24,500.
The abolition of the duty on barilla, which is largely used in the
manufacture of glass, destroyed this industry for a time; but since
about 1880 there has been a considerable revival in the North Isles,
the yearly export having again reached about 1500 tons. Orkney kelp is
considered of the finest quality.
[Illustration: Orkney Yawl Boats]
The making of linen yarn and cloth, introduced in 1747, was
successfully carried on for many years, and flax was locally grown.
This industry received a severe check during the Great War (1793-1815),
and gradually disappeared.
The manufacture of straw-plait for bonnets and hats was begun about
1800, and fifteen years later the yearly export was valued at
£20,000, from 6000 to 7000 women being employed in the industry. The
material used was at first split ripened wheat straw; later, however,
unripened, unsplit, boiled and bleached rye-straw was substituted.
The reduction of the import duty on straw-plait finally destroyed this
interesting home industry, of which Kirkwall and Stromness were the
chief centres.
The present-day industries of Orkney are unimportant. No minerals are
worked in the county, although flagstone is quarried at Clestrain
in Orphir, and red sandstone of fine quality at Fersness in Eday.
The numerous sailing boats used in the Islands are mostly of home
construction, the broad-beamed, shallow-draught, and comparatively
light Orkney yawl being a type specially designed to suit local
conditions of weather and tide. The making of the well-known Orkney
straw-backed chairs is restricted by a very limited demand, and the
specimens made for sale are somewhat more elaborate than those used
in the cottages. A small quantity of home-spun tweed is made in the
Islands, and a certain amount of rough knitting—stockings, mittens, and
other articles used by the seafaring classes—is done in some districts.
Fish-curing is carried on at Kirkwall, and to a small extent, as a home
industry, in country districts. There are distilleries at Stromness,
Scapa, and Highland Park, near Kirkwall, the output at the last-named
being large, and in high esteem among whisky-blenders.
12. Fisheries and Fishing Station
Of recent years Whitehall in Stronsay has become one of the great
centres of the summer herring fishing, with an annual catch of from
80,000 to 90,000 crans, a total exceeded in Scotland only at the ports
of Lerwick, Fraserburgh and Peterhead. As at many other places where
this great industry is carried on, however, the boats, the capital,
and the personnel come almost entirely from outside. There are smaller
stations of this fishery at Kirkwall, Sanday, Stromness, Holm, and
Burray, at the last-named of which alone the boats and crews are local.
The white fishing is carried on in a desultory fashion in Orkney waters
by some 350 fishermen, who use small locally-made yawls, but the annual
catch is not important compared with that of other fishery districts.
Haddocks, cod, and saithe are the commonest fish. Saithe simply swarm,
but are caught chiefly for household consumption. Some 250 other men
who style themselves “crofter-fishermen” in the census returns, are in
reality small farmers who do an occasional day’s fishing, mainly for
the pot. Lobster fishing is the one branch of the industry which the
“crofter-fishermen” do follow with any persistence, and lobsters and
other shell-fish, mainly whelks, to the value of from £6000 to £7000,
are exported from the Islands annually. The whelks are gathered mainly
by women. There are 338 fishing boats in Orkney, of an aggregate burden
of 2154 tons, and of a value, including fishing gear, of £16,095.
Sea-trout are plentiful along much of the Orkney coast, especially
near estuaries; but although surreptitious netting is intermittently
done by unauthorised persons, this fishing is not, as with proper
care it might be, on any sound commercial footing. Sea-trout run to
a large size in the Islands, fish of from 8 to 10 lbs. being not
uncommon. Walls, Hoy, the Bay of Ireland, Holm, and Rousay are the best
localities. The net season is from 24th February to 10th September, the
rod season from the same opening date to 31st October.
Longhope and the Bay of Firth were of old famous for oysters, and at
the latter place a praiseworthy effort was recently made to restore the
fishery.
13. History of the County
Our knowledge of the Orkney Islands before the Norse settlement in
the latter part of the ninth century is of a slight and fragmentary
character. In particular, what Latin writers say gives no sure
information, the references in poets like Juvenal and Claudian being
manifestly for literary ornament.
The earliest writer of British race to throw any light on the Islands
is Adamnan, who mentions that in the sixth century Cormac, a cleric of
Iona, with certain companions, visited the Orkneys, and adds that the
contemporary Pictish ruler of the Islands was a hostage in the hands
of Brude Mac Meilcon, King of the Northern Picts. Whatever degree of
power this Pictish king may have exercised over the Islands, we learn
from the _Annals of Ulster_ that in the year 580 they were invaded by
Aidan, King of the Dalriadic Scots, and as the next mention of the
Orkneys in the native chronicles is the record of their devastation
by the Pictish King Brude Mac Bile in the year 682, it is perhaps a
fair inference that Dalriadic influence had predominated there during
the intervening century. That the Islands were christianised about
this period by clerics of the Columban or Irish Church, is a point too
firmly established by archaeological, topographical, and other data to
require any insistence on here. Many pre-Norse church dedications to St
Columba, St Ninian, and other Celtic saints, tell their own story.
Little is known of the state of the Islands during two centuries
preceding the date of the Norse settlement _c._ 872 A.D., but from
that era until the year 1222 Orkney possesses in the _Orkneyinga Saga_
a record of the highest value. The _Saga_ states that the Islands
were settled by the Norsemen in the days of Harald the Fair-haired
(Harfagri), but had previously been a base for Vikings. Harald Harfagri
had about the year 870 made himself sole King of Norway, and in so
doing had incurred the odium of a large section of the Odallers, or
landowners, many of whom in consequence emigrated to Iceland, Shetland,
Orkney, the Hebrides, and the coasts of Ireland. The settlers in
Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Islands took to piracy, and so
inflicted the coasts of old Norway, that in 872 Harald followed up the
fugitives, conquered all the islands of the Scottish seas, and placed
his partisan Rognvald, Earl of Moeri, as hereditary Jarl over Orkney
and Shetland. This nobleman, however, preferring to live in Norway,
gifted his western jarldom to his brother Sigurd, who is commonly
considered the first, as he proved one of the greatest, of the long
line of Orcadian Jarls. Sigurd speedily spread his power over northern
Scotland as far south as Moray, and from his time until the close of
the thirteenth century the Orkney Jarls had the controlling hand in
Caithness, Sutherland, and Easter Ross. Jarl Sigurd died in 875, and
was ultimately succeeded by the scarcely less strenuous Torf-Einar,
a son of Jarl Rognvald, and a half-brother of Hrolf (Rollo), the
conqueror of Normandy. Einar got his _sobriquet_ of “Torf” from the
fact of his having learned in Scotland, and taught the islanders,
the practice of cutting turf for fuel. He was succeeded by three
sons, of whom the two elder, Arnkell and Erlend, fell in the battle
of Stanesmoor in England, in 950. The third, Thorfinn Hausacliuf
(Skull-Splitter), proved as good as his name, and well maintained the
doughty reputation of a family which later, in a collateral line,
produced William the Conqueror.
[Illustration: Kirkwall]
Let us pause here, however, to outline the polity and state of society
which had now become established in the Islands. The Orkney Jarls were
not autocratic rulers. The Odallers, assembled at the _Thing_, made
the laws, on the advice or with the concurrence of the Jarls, but
these laws were superimposed on a body of old Norse oral laws which
the settlers had brought with them from over-sea. The land law taking
no account of primogeniture, the sons of an Odaller succeeded equally
to his estate, and a daughter could claim half the share of a son. The
eldest son, however, could claim possession of the Bu (English _by_,
as in Whitby), or chief dwelling. An Odaller could not divest himself
of his odal heritage, except for debt, or in security for a debt, and
in such a case a right of redemption lay for all time, not only with
his nearest heir, direct or collateral, but on refusal of nearer heirs
to avail themselves of it, with any descendant whatsoever. Under such
a system free men without landed interest actual or prospective were
few, and the odal-born formed the bulk of the population. Some of the
wealthier Odallers, however, possessed a limited number of thralls, and
thraldom was hereditary. Land tax, or _scat_, was paid by the Odallers
to the Jarl, and by the Jarl to the King, but in both cases the payment
was a fiscal imposition rather than a feudal exaction, the Crown of
Norway recognising the obligation of defending the Islands against
outside foes in final resort. Apart from this, the overlordship of the
mother-country was so slight that in the European diplomacy of the
times the Jarls were treated as sovereign princes.
Thorfinn Hausacliuf died _c._ 963; and the rule of his five sons,
Havard, Hlodver, Ljot, Skuli, and Arnfinn is noticeable for the first
of those family feuds which form so marked a feature of the history of
the Jarls. Skuli took the title of Earl of Caithness from the King of
Scots, and fared against Ljot with a host provided by the King and the
Scots Earl Macbeth. Ljot defeated him in the Dales of Caithness, Skuli
being slain. Earl Macbeth with a second host, was in turn defeated by
Ljot at Skidmoor (Skitton) in Caithness, and here Ljot fell. His other
brothers having already disappeared in domestic strife, Hlodver was
now left sole. He married Edna, an Irish princess, and their only son
Sigurd Hlodverson, the Stout, is one of the most famous characters of
the _Saga_. Succeeding his father in 980, Sigurd held Caithness by
main force against the Scots. A Scots maormor, Finnleik, the father of
the celebrated Macbeth, having challenged him to a pitched battle at
Skidmoor by a fixed day, Sigurd took counsel of his mother, for she, as
the _Saga_ says, “knew many things,” that is, by witchcraft. Edna made
her son a banner “woven with mighty spells,” which would bring victory
to those before whom it was borne, but death to the bearer. Armed with
this uncanny device, Sigurd defeated his challenger at Skidmoor, with
the loss of three standard-bearers. An incident of wider consequence,
however, befell Sigurd in the year 995. Olaf Tryggvi’s son, King of
Norway, came on the Jarl aboard ship in a small bay in the South Isles.
The King had the superior force, and, a recent convert himself, he
there and then forced christianity upon the reluctant Jarl, and laid
him under an obligation to impose the faith upon the people of Orkney.
The _Saga_ adds, “then all the Orkneys became christian,” and so indeed
the Islands henceforth remained. Sigurd himself, however, reverted
to the old gods, and in the year 1014, he joined the great Norse
expedition against Brian, King of Ireland, which led to the battle of
Clontarf. In that famous fight the Skidmoor banner again did service,
but the spell was broken. “Hrafn the Red,” called out the Jarl after
two standard-bearers had fallen, and an Icelander who knew its fatal
secret had declined to touch it, “bear thou the banner.” “Bear thine
own devil thyself,” rejoined Hrafn. Then the Earl said, “’Tis fittest
that the beggar should bear the bag,” at the same time taking the
banner from the staff and placing it under his cloak. A little after,
the Earl was pierced through with a spear.