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The Picts and the Martyrs or Did Vikings Kill the Native Population of Orkney and Shetland?

Medievalists.net — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 13:41:57 +0000

I suspect that the Norse invaders of Orkney and Shetland didn't just overwhelm', or 'submerge' the native population: I think they killed them.

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Vikings in the Prehistoric Landscape: Studies on Mainland Orkney

Medievalists.net — Tue, 19 May 2015 03:41:27 +0000

Norse colonists in Orkney contended not only with the islands’ existing occupants, but also with a foreign landscape filled with visible ancient monuments. This paper provides a brief synthesis of the results of research on the landscapes of Viking-Age and Late-Norse Orkney which explored the strategies undertaken by the Norse settlers to re-model their social identities in their adopted environment.

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A Viking Pacifist? The Life of St Magnus in Saga, Novel, and Opera

Medievalists.net — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 23:50:24 +0000

Vikings settled in, and ruled, many parts of the British Isles and Ireland, but of these areas only the Norse earldom of Orkney has a whole Icelandic saga devoted to its early history.

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The Viking Language of the Highlands and Islands: Reconstructing the Norn Language from Old Norse

Medievalists.net — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 22:57:32 +0000

The Orkney and Shetland islands of Scotland were at one time colonized by Vikings and belonged firmly within the field of Scandinavian cultural influence. During this time the people of these archipelagos spoke a unique language known as Norn which evolved from the Old Norse language.

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The Orkney Islands in the Viking Age

Medievalists.net — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 04:53:26 +0000

How and when did Orkney become such a key player in the relations between Norway and Scotland? Were the Earls of Orkney a barrier to war between the nations?

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Earl Rögnvaldr of Orkney, a Poet of the Viking Diaspora

Medievalists.net — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 14:33:31 +0000

Kali Kolsson, later Rögnvaldr, Earl of Orkney, ca. 1103–1158, is a truly international figure. He was born in Noway. He travelled to England with some traders in his youth. He then came to power in Northern Scotland.

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Vassals or Vikings?: Orkney‘s identity in the changing Norwegian world (1151-1206)

Medievalists.net — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 14:05:50 +0000

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Jarldom of Orkney and Caithness maintained a fine balance between its geographical proximity to the Scottish mainland and its political and cultural proximity to the kingdom of Norway.

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The Stewart Earls of Orkney and the History of Orkney and Shetland

Medievalists.net — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 01:09:04 +0000

The Northern Isles have their own national, or at any rate quasi-national, historical tradition. It is quite separate from that of Scotland, though it is clearly connected to it; and it offers parallels to the nineteenth-century growth in historical consciousness elsewhere in the British Isles.

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Norse Influences in the Organisation of the Medieval Church in the Western Isles

Medievalists.net — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 22:54:08 +0000

In its definitive form of a system of local churches serving identifiable districts, usually known as parishes, grouped together under a diocesan bishop, the medieval church cannot be said to have existed in the general area of Scotland until the twelfth century. At this time, and for some three centuries previously, the islands to the north and west, with parts of the adjacent mainland, were under Norse control.

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War or Peace? The Relations Between the Picts and the Norse in Orkney

Medievalists.net — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 17:38:28 +0000

This article will focus mainly on the earliest period of Norse settlement, before the Norse earldom was established.

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