Orkney Islands: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Celts entered and conquered the Scottish Highlands from around 700 BC - a time of great uncertainty, with frequent raids by marauding European tribes. The Roman general Agricola was able to defeat a vast army of Picts at the Battle of Mons Graupius in AD 84, thought to be near modern-day Inverness. Agricola went on to sail around the Orkneys, establishing for the first time that Britain was an island. The Romans abandoned the British Isles by the end of the 3rd century AD.

The first Viking longboats were seen off the shores of the Orkneys in the 780s. Eventually the Norsemen took control of Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and large parts of northern and western Scotland.

Over time these territories were ceded back to Scotland, starting with Orkney, falling under the care of the Scottish crown in 1231 after the death of the last Norse earl. The west coast quickly followed suit, passing to the Scottish king Alexander III after the Battle of Largs in 1263. Three years later the Western Isles were gifted to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth, in exchange for an annual rent to the King of Norway.

Soon enough the struggle for power turned toward England, with Edward I besieging the lowlands after the Scots signed an allegiance with France - then at war with England.

When John de Balliol was imprisoned by Edward I, Wallace - son of the Laird of Elderslie in Ayrshire - allied himself with Andrew de Moray, a highland laird from near Inverness, to defeat the English roundly at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (1297). After the victory, Wallace was declared guardian of the realm but was defeated by the English at Falkirk a year later and tried for treason. Inspired by the example of men such as Wallace, the nobles slowly allied themselves behind Robert the Bruce, who mounted a huge campaign to drive the English out of Scotland. Repeated defeats later forced the rebels to go into hiding.

Continued raids on England, however, eventually forced Edward II to sue for peace, and, in 1328, the Treaty of Northampton gave Scotland its independence, with Robert I, the Bruce, as its king.

Squabbling betweeen lowland families under various weak Steward kings, continued over the following centuries. In 1542, only days before James V's death, his French wife, Mary of Guise, bore him a daughter, Mary. With no male heirs, for the second time in its history, the throne of Scotland passed to a female monarch, Mary I (1542-67).

In 1560 the Scottish parliament created a Protestant Church that was independent of Rome and the monarchy, abolishing Latin Mass and denying the pope's authority.

Mary's reign came to an end in 1567 and her son James VI took the Scottish throne and eventually inherited the English throne too when Queen Elizabeth I of England died childless in 1603.

The first king of Great Britain immediately moved his court to London, setting a tradition which continued, with few deviations, right up until Scottish devolution in 1997.

During the 17th century, the Catholic Charles I (1625-49) tried to impose episcopacy (the rule of bishops) and an English liturgy on the Scottish Presbyterian Church, triggering widespread unrest. In 1638, hundreds signed a National Covenant affirming their right to follow the Presbyterian faith.

By the 1640s, Scotland had become divided between the Covenanters and those who supported the king. Led by the charismatic but brutal Oliver Cromwell, the English Parliamentarians seized control of the country and executed Charles I in 1649. His son Charles II was offered and took the Scottish Crown but was quickly deposed by Cromwell, who pressed far into the Highlands and islands from his fortress at Inverness to track down Royalist sympathisers. Cromwell died in 1658 and Charles II was restored to the throne two years later, immediately betraying his supporters by reneging on the Covenant.

Modern History

Many Highlanders were called upon to fight in the Boer War, WWI and WWII, with huge casualties that were felt keenly by small Highland communities. During the war, Italian prisoners helped build causeways between Mainland and the islands of Lamb Holm, Burray, Glimps Holm and South Ronaldsay. At the end of WWI, the German fleet was impounded in Scapa Flow in Orkney, where it was scuppered by the German admiral to prevent it falling into British hands. The Highlands and islands were crippled by the collapse of the Eastern European market for herring and the decline in demand for fish and farm produce during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The region saw a further wave of depopulation as more Highlanders went into self-imposed exile in the New World.

In the postwar years, the Forestry Commission brought much-needed income to the Highlands, as did the development of hydroelectric schemes in many of the glens. The worldwide growth in tourism led to an influx of Americans and Canadians of Scottish descent visiting the Highlands and islands in search of their cultural roots. The English continued to have a huge presence, of course, buying up many sporting estates and Highland homes in their quest for the Scottish idyll. Although the welcome they received was often less than enthusiastic - the immigrants are still referred to as 'white-settlers' by many locals - the movement went into overdrive during the Thatcherite economic boom in England in the 1980s. Locals were understandably resentful that the same economic policies that were crippling Scotland were allowing wealthy southerners to buy up Scottish houses at rock-bottom prices.

The discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea in the 1970s brought new prosperity to Aberdeen and the surrounding area, and to Shetland, but much of the oil revenue was siphoned off to England. This, along with takeovers of Scots companies by English ones (which then closed the Scots operations, asset-stripped and transferred jobs to England), fuelled increasing nationalist sentiment in Scotland. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) developed into a third force in Scottish politics, taking 30% of the popular vote in the 1974 General Election. The first serious attempt to address the so-called 'Highland Problem' - characterised by low incomes, high unemployment and out-migration - was the creation of the Highlands and islands Development Board in 1972, which built many schools, fishing ports and community centres across the region. More funding arrived from Europe in the form of grants for community projects such as the advancement of Gaelic education. The fishing industry moved onto new catches such as cod and mackerel, but lost its competitive edge when Britain joined the European Union (EU), crippled by fishing quotas imposed from Europe and by over-fishing. Today the fishing industry survives on a smaller scale, fishing for exclusive catches for the restaurant market.

Recent History

In 1979 a vote for self-rule was defeated, however, another election was held in 1997 on the creation of a Scottish parliament. This time the result was overwhelmingly and unambiguously in favour. Elections to the new parliament took place on 6 May 1999, and the Scottish parliament convened for the first time on 12 May in the Assembly Rooms of the Church of Scotland at the eastern end of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh; Sir Donald Dewar (1937-2000), formerly the Secretary of State for Scotland, was nominated as first minister (the Scottish parliament's equivalent of prime minister). The parliament was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 1 July 1999. One of it's first actions was to dissolve the feudal system of land tenure in 2000.

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