(Area: 376 square miles)
Orkney is a group of islands north of the mainland of Great Britain but clearly visible from the north coast of Caithness. Between Caithness and Orkney is the Pentland Firth. There are some 90 islands comprising Orkney, but fewer than a third are inhabited.
The main island is Mainland. To the north of Mainland are many scattered islands including Shapinsay, Roussay, Egilsay, Westray and Papa Westray, Stronsay, Sanday, and the furthest, North Ronaldsay. From the south-east edge of Mainland a series of causeways built during the War runs southwards to Burray and then to South Ronaldsay.
Lying to the southwest is Hoy. Unique among the islands, Hoy is mountainous. The rest are generally low, rocky, and treeless, with an occasional cultivated area.
Hoy, Flotta, South Ronaldsay and Mainland form a ring around a great body of water; Scapa Flow. Scapa Flow is the Navy's finest deepwater anchorage, and famous also as the place where in 1918 Rear Admiral von Reuter scuttled the German High Seas Fleet rather than let it remain in British hands.
The county town, Kirkwall is on Mainland. St Magnus's Cathedral, built by the Norse Earl Røgnvald, is an impressive edifice, and the town's dominant feature.
Across the islands of Orkney are prehistoric remains of standing stones, mounds and monuments. The folk of Orkney though claim Norwegian blood. King Harold I (Harold Fairhair) of Norway added Orkney to the Scandinavian domain in 875, long after the Norse had settled the islands, and made them a Norwegian Earldom. The islands remained nominal dependencies of Norway until 1468, when Christian I of Norway and Denmark pledged them as security for the dowry of his daughter, Margaret, on her marriage to James III of Scotland. The pledge was never redeemed, and Orkney remained the property of Scotland. Nevertheless, the islanders, while proud to be British, insist that they are not Scots but Orcadians.
(Area: 551 square miles)
Shetland is the northernmost part of the Kingdom, 93 miles north of mainland Great Britain at its closest, and 45 miles north of Orkney. Shetland is a scattering of stark-featured, windswept islands. It has over a hundred islands, some twenty of them inhabited, and countless islets, rocks and skerries.
The Norse heritage of Shetland is worn openly. The islands are 180 miles west of Norway. They were part of the Earldom of Orkney from the tenth century and together with Orkney were pledged to the Crown of Scotland only in 1472. The links with Norway remained though; the nearest city to Shetland is Bergen and Shetland fishermen always bought their boats from Norway as there are no trees in Shetland. The Norn language is said to have survived in Shetland to the end of the eighteenth century.
Though linked to Orkney historically, Shetland is very different. While Orkney is islands of low rolling hills, Shetland's islands are mountainous, steep and rocky. Another difference is oil; Orkney keeps its rural aspect but Shetland is the hub for the outer oil rigs and a port for Norwegian yachtsmen, and money shows.
The main island of Shetland is Mainland. Lerwick, the county town, is seated in the middle of the island, on the east coast, protected by the island of Burray across the sound.
From Lerwick to Sumburgh Head in the south, a spine stretches due south as a broad ridge, steep on the east but with its scarp plunging far down into the sea on the west incredibly steeply. North of Lerwick the island broadens, with a scattering of rock-bound islands deeply cut with voes (fjords).
On the west coast of Mainland opposite Lerwick is the former capital, Scalloway, now a fishing port but home also to the remains of a mediæval earl's hall. An earlier centre lies between the two, at Tingwall; a peedie peat island in bog but which was for a long period the law-seat of Norse Shetland.
North of Mainland, across the Yell Sound, is Yell and north of Yell is Unst, the northernmost inhabited island in the United Kingdom. North of it are Muckle Flugga and Out Stack; the utter northernmost rocks of the United Kingdom.