New history book focuses on
day-to-day Orcadian life
Story dated: April 3, 2008

A new book from the author of the highly-acclaimed The New History of Orkney is being launched in Kirkwall on April 11.

Orkney Land and People, by W. P. L. Thomson, covers the period from the Viking age to the 20th century, focusing on the day-to-day life of ordinary Orcadian folk.

In its pages, the reader will find much less about kings, earls, sagas and violent deeds, and much more about the day-to-day life of the ordinary folk of Orkney.

The low, fertile islands of Orkney, with their rich resources of land, sea and shore, have been an attractive environment for human activity ever since the Neolithic period.

Orkney: Land and People takes up the story in the Viking-age, when all pervading Norse farm-names indicate the overwhelming nature of Scandinavian settlement.

The book looks behind the stories of Orkneyinga saga to describe the settlement pattern and to reconstruct the large farms which dominated many parts of Orkney.

Then it pieces together the meagre surviving evidence for the Black Death which brought this period to an end and resulted in a severe demographic and economic crisis in the late medieval period.

The book describes traditional farming, as it existed in the early modern period - the structure of townships, the workings of run-rig agriculture and the management of common land. Later, as Orkney was drawn more fully into the national economy, the effect of the kelp boom is described and, as population increased, there was a spread of new cottar settlement on to hill land.

In the 19th century, Orkney's successful agricultural revolution swept away the traditional landscape and transformed the economy, and it was followed in the twentieth century by the break up of big estates.

Although the change of status of Orkney farmers from tenants to owners was hugely important, and laid the basis of modern farming, this is the first time the 'owner-occupier revolution' has been described in any detail.

As well as describing farming and settlement through the centuries, the book also examines institutions such as the parish bailie courts and the kirk sessions, which attempted to control the economic, social and moral affairs of the community.

Orkney Land and People is published by The Orcadian, priced £19.99