ORKNEY ISLANDS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Orkney Islands

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/ˈɔrkni ˈaɪləndz/ Listen

Orkney Islands

noun

An archipelago of about 70 islands in the North Atlantic and North Sea off the northeastern coast of Scotland.

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Etymology of 'Orkney Islands'

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"Orkney Islands" Quotes from Famous Books

... popular belief. The earliest alleged reference of this kind is placed by one writer in the middle of the fifteenth century, before the Orkney Islands had passed from the crown of Denmark to the crown of Scotland. A manuscript of the then Bishop of Orkney, dated Kirkwall 1443, states that when Harald Haarfagr conquered the Orkneys in the ninth century, the inhabitants were the two "nations" of the Papae and ...

— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... fifty miles, with a layer of sand four inches deep; the air was so darkened by it, that at a place one hundred and forty miles off, white paper held up at a little distance could not be distinguished from black. The fishermen could not put to sea on account of the darkness, and the inhabitants of the Orkney islands were frightened out of their senses by showers of what they thought must be black snow. On the 9th of April, the lava began to overflow, and ran for five miles in a southwesterly direction, whilst, some days later,—in order that no element might be wanting to mingle in this ...

— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... year 1832 I landed with my husband, J.W. Dunbar Moodie, in Canada. Mr. Moodie was the youngest son of Major Moodie, of Mellsetter, in the Orkney Islands; he was a lieutenant in the 21st Regiment of Fusileers, and had been severely wounded in the ...

— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

Words linked to "Orkney Islands" : archipelago, Atlantic, North Sea, Scotland, Atlantic Ocean