Earldom of OrkneyThe Earldom of Orkney is the official status of the Orkney Islands, and was a Norse territory ruled by the earls (or jarls) of Orkney from the ninth century until 1472. It was founded during the Viking Age by Viking raiders and settlers from Scandinavia (see Scandinavian Scotland). In the ninth and tenth centuries it covered the Northern Isles (Norðreyjar) of Orkney and Shetland, as well as Caithness and Sutherland on the mainland. It was a dependent territory of the Kingdom of Norway until 1472, when it was absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland.
OrkneyOrkney (ˈɔrkni; Orkney; Orkneyjar; Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands or The Orkneys, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of the coast of Caithness and has about 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, the Mainland, has an area of , making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles. Orkney's largest settlement, and also its administrative centre, is Kirkwall.
PictsThe Picts were a group of peoples who lived in Britain north of the Forth–Clyde isthmus in the Pre-Viking, Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and details of their culture can be inferred from early medieval texts and Pictish stones. The term Picti appears in written records as an exonym from the late third century AD, but was adopted as an endonym in the late seventh century during the Verturian hegemony. This lasted around 160 years until the succession of the Alpínid dynasty, when the Pictish kingdom merged with that of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba.
BrochA broch brɒx is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure found in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex Atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s. Brochs are roundhouse buildings found throughout Atlantic Scotland. The word broch is derived from the Lowland Scots 'brough', meaning fort. In the mid-19th century, Scottish antiquaries called brochs 'burgs', after Old Norse borg, with the same meaning.
Scottish GaelicScottish Gaelic ('gaelIk, ; Gàidhlig ˈkaːlɪkj), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as both Irish and Manx, developed out of Old Irish. It became a distinct spoken language sometime in the 13th century in the Middle Irish period, although a common literary language was shared by the Gaels of both Ireland and Scotland until well into the 17th century.
British IslesThe British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland), and over six thousand smaller islands. They have a total area of and a combined population of almost 72 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of Ireland), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
