Orkney and Shetland

The word shire is of Old English origin, and meant charge, administration. The Norman Conquest introduced an alternative designation, the word county—through Old French from Latin comitatus, which in mediaeval documents stands for shire. County denotes the district under a count, the king’s comes, the equivalent of the older English term earl. This system of local administration entered Scotland as part of the Anglo-Norman influence that strongly affected our country after 1100.

The exceptional character of the historical nexus between the Orkney Islands and Scotland, makes it somewhat difficult to fix definitely the date at which Orkney can be fairly said to have first constituted a Scottish county. For a period of about one hundred and fifty years after the conditional and, to all intent, temporary cession of the Islands to Scotland in the year 1468, Scottish and Norse law overlapped each other to a large extent in Orkney. And although during that period the Scottish Crown both invested earls, and appointed sheriffs of Orkney, yet so long as Norse law subsisted in the Islands, as it did largely in practice and absolutely in theory until the year 1612, it is hardly possible to consider Orkney a Scottish county. The relation of the Islands towards Scotland during this confused period of fiscal evolution bears more resemblance to that of the Isle of Man towards England at the present day. When, however, in the year 1612 an Act of the Scottish Privy Council applied the general law of Scotland to the Islands, although the proceeding was in defiance of the conditions of their cession, Orkney may be held to have at last entered into the full comity of Scottish civil life, and may thenceforth, without impropriety or cavil, be considered and spoken of as the County or Shire of Orkney.

The Latin name Orcades implies the islands adjacent to Cape Orcas, a promontory first mentioned by Diodorus Siculus about 57 b.c. as one of the northern extremities of Britain, and commonly held to be Dunnet Head.

The Norse name was Orkneyar, of which our Orkney is a curtailment. The name orc appears to have been applied by both Celtic and Teutonic races to some half-mythical sea-monster, which according to Ariosto, in Orlando Furioso, devoured men and women; but the suggested connection between this animal and the name of the county appears a little far-fetched, although the large number of whales in the surrounding waters is quoted to support it.