Orkney Islands

The Orkney Islands are one of 32 unitary council regions in Scotland, and form a traditional county and Lieutenancy area. Orkney consists of about 70 small islands 16 km north of Caithness in northern Scotland. The largest island in the group is known as "The Mainland"; about 20 are inhabited in total.

Orcadian people

Some well-known Orcadians:

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• Magnus Erlendsson (Saint Magnus) (c1070 – c1117), Earl of Orkney c1105 – 1117
• Rognvald Kali Kolssson (Saint Rognvald) (c1103 – 1158), Earl of Orkney 1136 – 1158
• James Atkine (1613 – 1687), bishop first of Moray and afterwards of Galloway
• Murdoch McKenzie (died 1797), the hydrographer
• Malcolm Laing (1762 – 1818), author of the History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms
• William Sinclair (1766 – 1818), Chief Factor at the Hudsons Bay Company
• Mary Brunton (1778 – 1818), author of Self-Control, Discipline and other novels
• Samuel Laing (1780 – 1868), author of A Residence in Norway, and translator of the Heimskringla, the Icelandic chronicle of the kings of Norway
• Thomas Stewart Traill (1781 – 1862), professor of medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh University and editor of the 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Samuel Laing (1812 – 1897), chairman of the London, Brighton. & South Coast railway, and introducer of the system of "parliamentary" trains with fares of one penny a mile
• Dr John Rae (1813 – 1893), the Arctic explorer
• William Balfour Baikie (1825 – 1864), the African traveller
• Edwin Muir (1887 – 1959), author and poet
• Stanley Cursiter (1887 – 1976), artist
• Eric Linklater (1899 – 1974), novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and poet
• George Mackay Brown (1921 – 1996), poet, author, playwright.
• Cameron Stout, winner of the fourth series of the reality TV show Big Brother
• Luke Sutherland, writer of novels Jelly Roll, Sweatmeat and Venus As A Boy