Viking Orkney
Orkney, perhaps the first place to be colonised, is an ideal place to search. The original people who were living in Orkney at the start of the Viking Age were Celtic-speakers. They were known as Picts, and inhabited part of the Kingdom of the Picts which made up most of mainland Scotland. The question of what happened to them is still hotly debated, especially between historians, linguists and archaeologists.
'... the colonisation of Orkney had been so successful that it had become a Norwegian earldom.'
According to Scandinavian historical sources, the Orkney islands were either deserted at the time of the earliest Norse settlement or their inhabitants were slaughtered. Very few Celtic place names survive, lending weight to this picture of desertion or wholesale genocide. But by the end of the ninth century, the colonisation of Orkney had been so successful that it had become a Norwegian earldom.
The very strength of this Norse settlement would ensure that in time the pre-Norse names would disappear, and we simply do not know how quickly that happened. The archaeological evidence shows that Pictish artefacts were still in use in the early Norse settlements.
The question is how this evidence should be interpreted. Does it mean that Pictish slaves were servicing new masters? Or that the Norse colonists needed to acquire tools and equipment from the Picts? At the very least it ought to imply that there were still Picts around and that they had not been exterminated by the Vikings.
Published: 2004-09-11
