Excerpt from Orkney and Shetland Folk, 872-1350 This paper is an attempt to describe the mixed races which inhabited Orkney and Shetland from the foundation of the Norse earldom, in 872, until the end of the rule of the Gaelic earls, circa, 1350, and it is a first instalment of the evidence on which a paragraph on person-names was founded, in the Introduction to Orkney and Shetland Records, vol. I. The earliest inhabitants, of whom we have any record, were the Picts, and the Irish papas and Columban missionaries, who must have brought some Irish settlers with them. It has already been suggested that the Norse must have settled in Orkney and Shetland, circa 664, among the aboriginal race, the Picts, who would have become their thralls, and with whom the settlers would have intermarried. The first Norsemen who came to Orkney and Shetland would have been adventurers, and t settlers with wives, families and thralls, such as later went to Iceland and Orkney. Consequently such adventurers who settled in the islands would naturally have intermarried with the aborigines. This kind of male settlement may have gone on for some time, before the actual bona fide colonisation took place. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.