Northern Horizons Education Abroad
Five Thousand Years in the Making
A small Scottish archipelago with an outsized story — Neolithic farmers, Norse earls, wartime sailors, and the islanders who still call it home.
Orcadians Do Not See Orkney as “Remote”
Orkney IS the Mainland. Orkney is an archipelago of more than seventy islands and skerries just a few miles off the northern tip of Scotland. Only twenty islands are inhabited today, linked by ferries, small planes, and a set of causeways linking the southern isles to Mainland. Orcadians call this the Mainland because this largest island — not Britain or Scandinavia — is the geographic and cultural center of their naval world. The notion that Orkney is “remote” is foreign to most native Orcadians. And when we vacation “down south,” we speak of “going to Scotland.”
One Island, Many Histories
Very rarely can you stand inside so many histories in a single afternoon.
✦ Neolithic Orkney ✦
The Heart of Neolithic Orkney, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, includes Skara Brae — Northern Europe’s best-preserved Stone Age village — along with the Ring of Brodgar stone circle, the Stones of Stenness, and the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, all older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.
✦ Norse Orkney ✦
Norse settlers arrived in the late eighth century and ruled Orkney as a seat of their own earldom for nearly 700 years, until it passed to Scotland in 1468 as a royal wedding dowry. Their legacy survives in Kirkwall’s St Magnus Cathedral, the Orkneyinga Saga, and the Scandinavian place names scattered across the islands.
✦ Wartime Orkney ✦
Scapa Flow was the Royal Navy’s principal fleet base in both World Wars. After the loss of HMS Royal Oak in 1939, Italian prisoners of war built the Churchill Barriers across the harbor — and, in their off hours, the small and extraordinary Italian Chapel that still stands today.
✦ Modern Orkney ✦
Today’s islands run on farming, fishing, and a fast-growing renewable energy sector — Orkney’s tides and winds have made it a global test bed for marine power research, alongside a lively arts scene and some of Britain’s best local food.
Orkney Today
This is not a museum piece. Orkney today is a working island community built on farming, fishing, and increasingly, renewable energy — its tides and winds make it a global test bed for marine power research. Kirkwall, the main town, mixes a working harbor and a medieval cathedral with independent shops, a thriving arts and music scene, and cafes serving fresh seafood, locally-produced milk and cheese, and premium local meats.
That is what makes Orkney a unique place to study: it asks students to hold Neolithic Europe, Viking Scandinavia, twentieth-century naval history, and a modern and evolving island culture all in view at once — and to think seriously about what it means to visit a place responsibly, not just see it.