Orkney Visitor Page
A page containing videos and blog posts of interest to visitors to Orkney
Welcome to the Institute for Northern Studies visitor page. Orkney boasts a rich and diverse history, along with a unique culture that reflects the character of the islands. For many years, the stories of these islands remained largely untold, but over the past 15 years, the Institute for Northern Studies has been dedicated to uncovering these histories through world-renowned research and sharing this knowledge through courses and public seminars. This webpage contains a number of selected videos and blog posts telling the untold story of these islands. I hope you enjoy them.
- Viking burials in Orkney and where to find them
- Witchcraft in Orkney
- The Ladykirk Footprints in Stone
- Life in Orkney During the 1940's and 50's
Check out our blogs and YouTube channel for a glimpse into the research we are undertaking.
Also, see the latest on our social media account
Smuggling in the North Atlantic in the 18th Century
This paper considers how illegal, and to a lesser extent legal, trade was affected by seasonality in the High North Atlantic. Both legal and illegal trade were deeply impacted by seasonality, particularly winter storms, but they were impacted in different ways; in this paper, I will discuss how and why this impact differed and what it can reveal about the connectivity of the North Atlantic during the winter months. The focus will be on the smuggling trade between the Faroe Islands and Scotland, which was endemic from the 1760s to the 1780s
It was brought on by inter-imperial rivalry, war, and domestic dissent and came to have a formative role in the economic life of the northern reaches of the Atlantic. The study draws on a wide range of sources from tax records to autobiographies which enables me to present both quantitative and qualitative data that sheds new light on the enduring interconnections between the islands and the formative power of the subarctic environment. This paper forms part of a new research project that explores the creation and repercussions of illegal trade across the High North Atlantic during the period 1760–1820.
The Ministry and Magic in Early Modern Orkney' with Prof Peter Marshall, University of Warwick
This paper explores practices and attitudes around access to supernatural power in early modern Orkney, from the later sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.
It seeks to ask what parish ministers thought of the persistence of magical beliefs within their congregations, and also what people in those congregations may have thought of the powers and potential of their ministers. The investigation involves a new look at the Orkney witch trials, and the significance of an unusually close connection in the islands between witchcraft accusations and healing practices of various kinds. It also considers the extent to which the slow demise and prolonged afterlife of the Norn language helped shape an alternative world of custom and belief, inviting comparison with other places where Protestant reform took place in a bi-lingual society. Challenging the conventional notion that the Reformation in Orkney was a bit of a non-event, the paper examines how profound, but often unexpected, patterns of cultural change were shaped in the prolonged encounter between clerical incomers and indigenous parishioners.