Orkney and Shetland Folk
872–1350
By
A. W. JOHNSTON
LONDON
Printed for the Viking Society for Northern Research
University of London
1914
ORKNEY AND SHETLAND FOLK, 872–1350.
Note.—Unless where otherwise stated this paper is founded on Orkneyinga Saga (Rolls Series, text and translation). Page references are to Orkney and Shetland Records, Vol. I. Fb., Flateyjarbók. Hkr., Heimskringla. J.J., Jacob Jakobsen’s works. S.S., Sturlunga Saga.
This paper is an attempt to describe the mixed races which inhabited Orkney and Shetland from the foundation of the Norse earldom, in 872, until the end of the rule of the Gaelic earls, circa 1350, and it is a first instalment of the evidence on which a paragraph on “person-names” was founded, in the Introduction to Orkney and Shetland Records, vol. I.
The earliest inhabitants, of whom we have any record, were the Picts, and the Irish papas and Columban missionaries, who must have brought some Irish settlers with them.
It has already been suggested that the Norse must have settled in Orkney and Shetland, circa 664, among the aboriginal race, the Picts, who would have become their thralls, and with whom the settlers would have intermarried.