It may be difficult for outsiders to envisage the distinctiveness of the Orcadian identity. A glance at a map suggests that the Orkney Islands are merely a part of Scotland; a glance northward on a clear day from John o'Groats on the northern tip of Scotland displays the archipelago apparently just a few miles offshore. Yet those few miles of sea, combined with the sense of distance from Edinburgh--let alone from London--keep alive a sense of being different from Scotland that is the result of many centuries of separate tradition and history. During the age of the Vikings, Orkney was part of a political and cultural world that included Norway to the east, Caithness in northern Scotland to the south, the islands off the west coast of Britain (including the Isle of Man and Ireland), and territories stretching to Iceland and beyond, even to Vinland, as Brown reminds the reader in his 1992 novel of that title. To a considerable extent mainland Scotland was relevant to Orcadians solely as a source of plunder; Orkney and Shetland were formally incorporated into Scotland (as part of a dowry) in 1468-1469.
That northern world, of which Orkney was a central constituent, had its history commemorated and its separate self-awareness embodied in great sagas, including the Orkneyinga Saga , written by an Icelander around 1200.
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