Map - Orkney Islands (Orkney Islands)

Orkney (Orkney; ; Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of the coast of Caithness and has about 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, the Mainland, has an area of 523 km2, making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles. Orkney’s largest settlement, and also its administrative centre, is Kirkwall.

Orkney is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, as well as a constituency of the Scottish Parliament, a lieutenancy area, and an historic county. The local council is Orkney Islands Council, one of only three councils in Scotland with a majority of elected members who are independents.

The islands have been inhabited for at least 8,500 years, originally occupied by Mesolithic and Neolithic tribes and then by the Picts. Orkney was colonized and later annexed by the Kingdom of Norway in 875 and settled by the Norsemen. In 1472, the Parliament of Scotland absorbed the Earldom of Orkney into the Kingdom of Scotland, following failure to pay a dowry promised to James III of Scotland by the family of his bride, Margaret of Denmark.

In addition to the Mainland, most of the remaining islands are divided into two groups: the North Isles and the South Isles. The climate is relatively mild and the soils are extremely fertile; most of the land is farmed, and agriculture is the most important sector of the economy. The significant wind and marine energy resources are of growing importance; the amount of electricity that Orkney generates annually from renewable energy sources exceeds its demand.

The local people are known as Orcadians; they speak a distinctive dialect of the Scots language and have a rich body of folklore. Orkney contains some of the oldest and best-preserved Neolithic sites in Europe; the "Heart of Neolithic Orkney" is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Orkney also has an abundance of marine and avian wildlife.

Pytheas of Massilia visited Britain – probably sometime between 322 and 285 BC – and described it as triangular in shape, with a northern tip called Orcas. This may have referred to Dunnet Head, from which Orkney is visible. Writing in the 1st century AD, the Roman geographers Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela called the islands Orcades (Όρκάδες), as did Tacitus in 98 AD, claiming that his father-in-law Agricola had "discovered and subjugated the Orcades hitherto unknown" (although both Mela and Pliny had previously referred to the islands ). The Byzantine John Tzetzes in his work Chiliades is calling the islands as Orcades.

Etymologists usually interpret the element orc- as a Pictish tribal name meaning "young pig" or "young boar". Speakers of Old Irish referred to the islands as Insi Orc "islands of the young pigs". The archipelago is known as Ynysoedd Erch in modern Welsh and Arcaibh in modern Scottish Gaelic, the -aibh representing a fossilized prepositional case ending. Some earlier sources alternatively hypothesise that Orkney comes from the Latin, whale. The Anglo-Saxon monk Bede refers to the islands as Orcades insulae in Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Norwegian settlers arriving from the late ninth century reinterpreted orc as the Old Norse orkn "seal" and added "islands" to the end, so the name became Orkneyjar "Seal Islands". The plural suffix -jar was later removed in English leaving the modern name Orkney. According to the Historia Norwegiæ, Orkney was named after an earl called Orkan.

The Norse knew Mainland, Orkney as Megenland "Mainland" or as Hrossey "Horse Island". The island is sometimes referred to as Pomona (or Pomonia), a name that stems from a 16th-century mistranslation by George Buchanan, which has rarely been used locally.