Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 1 (2004), p. 109

William Thomson’s revised History of Orkney (first published in 1987) spans the history of the islands from Iron Age to the twentieth century and is a model of what a local history should be. Lucid, comprehensive interesting, it exemplifies the value of local studies, ticularly when the locality is an independent cultural unit like a group of islands. As all historians and anthropologists know, islands are very interesting sociological entities, especially when they are distinctive and populous enough to have their own cultural identity. Orkney’s case this identity is mirrored in a very long-lived aristocratic title, originating as a Viking jarldom ina self-sufficient agricultural community and in a well-organized urban mercantile oligarchy in Kirkwall.

These islands lie at the northern end of the British Isles, and along with Shetland came under the influence and control of Norway in the early middle ages. earls of Orkney are the epitome of the islands’ Norse character, established as Viking warlords, and using islands as a base for harrying and raiding the Christian kingdoms to the south of them. Their own saga still vives and provides a remarkable early account of their deeds and dynastic struggles. They imprinted Norse speech and culture on their island empire and created Scandinavian colony which retained its ethnic identity into the early modern period. The problem is, however, that the brilliance of this aristocratic fiefdom (which acquired its own saintly dynastic martyr and built cathedral for his resting-place which has survived better than any other Scottish cathedral) overshadows the of Orkney’s history. Previous Orkney historians have had difficulty breaking free of this mould, tending to the Norse period as the apogee of Orkney’s cultural and the following centuries as one long slow decline. The social and economic peculiarities which give these islands their own particular character, different from rest of Scotland, were explained as traces of earlier Norse administrative methods, and older historians attempted

Reviews to stress the Norseness of all Orkney’s agrarian phenomena. The particular value of Thomson’s writings, as a geographer with wide knowledge of economic and agricultural change, is that he understands the post- Norse period to be of interest in its own right, with its own hybrid blend of Norwegian/Scottish culture. In fact

the his History takes the reader right up to the post-war

period more comprehensively than any previous study and of Orkney history. par- Orkney is therefore fortunate to have a local historian

(the author has taught geography in the secondary schools of both Orkney and Shetland) with the particular expertise to understand and explain the sometimes complex economic and fiscal organizations which dif- In ferent social systems have introduced in the islands. This is one of the most interesting historical aspects of the , fertile Orkneys which consist of mostly low-lying beds of Old Red Sandstone capable of producing arable crops far beyond the normal output of grain-growing cultivation in the north of Scotland. This feature has made them exceedingly attractive possessions to Iron-Age

The Picts, Norse Vikings, medieval churchmen, Scots

colonists, and improving landowners. Each layer of the landlord power has left traces of its land assessment

units or agricultural methodology in document, place-sur- name or landscape feature. The author commands all

the evidence, whether it is the complex excavated remains of the Pictish period; the complexities of the a Norse fiscal assessment system and the taxing and rent-ing of land in medieval Orkney; the introduction of a new form of feudal tenure after the Reformation; the actualities of runrig arrangements; the different phases a of agricultural improvement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the changes wrought by it on the

rest face of the islands; the merchant-lairds and the kelp-

boom (about which he has written a whole book); or the see effects of war in the twentieth century when the Orkney past islands became a front-line military zone.

There can be few areas of Scotland which reveal so much about the past in the present landscape. Ranging

the from the magnificent prehistoric monuments – the

main sites of which now form a World Heritage Site – to the medieval cathedral of St. Magnus, to the wrecks

110 the agricultural of the scuttled German fleet in Scapa Flow, these are theproduct of the fertile land and of the nodal position which these islands occupy at the northern tip of Britain. Such features in the landscape can only be fullyappreciated by the visitor with an understanding ofthe historical circumstances. Thomson’s New history of Orkney explains these and places them in context. It also puts the historical issues into context, by explaining the arguments and controversies, whether they are to do with the violence or otherwise of the Viking settlement, the value or otherwise of the saga of the earls, the existence or otherwise of the udal system of land tenure, and from more recent history, the effects of the various phases of agricultural improvement. Moreover, this revised version is a new history of Orkney, much of it reworked since its 1987 predecessor, with new chapters added, particularly on the early period, incorporating excellent discussions of work which has appeared since then. Additionally, the illustrations are transformed from 42 to 108 maps and photos. There can be few localities and very few indeed in Scotland, which have such a valuable overview of their history.