In 1468, an impoverished King Christian I of Denmark and Norway arranged the marriage of his daughter Margaret to James III of Scotland. But the future husband, who was looked at with money and knew his father-in-law’s precarious situation, did not trust him to pay the negotiated dowry of fifty thousand guilders, and demanded the Orkney Islands, in the North Atlantic, between Both countries. A year later, as the sum had not actually been delivered, the Shetland Islands were added to the bail, valued at an additional eight thousand guilders. And in 1472 the two archipelagos became dependent on Edinburgh.
Now, 550 years later, Orkney plans to go back in history and ask for reincorporation into Norway as a self-governing territory. To begin with, the Scandinavian country no longer suffers from the economic problems of the fifteenth century, when it had its sights set on the East and its coffers were empty, but has become rich with oil to the point of having a sovereign wealth fund that is the envy of the entire world. While Great Britain is impoverished, nothing works, and the islanders feel neglected, they believe that they contribute much more than they receive.
The 22,000 Orcadians, spread over the 70 islands that make up the archipelago, have a strong identity of their own, with great cultural, geographical and historical ties with Norway, different from the British and Scottish ones, although they do not renounce them. In the 2014 referendum they voted 67% to 33% no to Scottish independence (and in Brexit no to leaving the European Union). “Many thought that we would gain nothing by going from control of London to control of Edinburgh, from one bureaucracy to another, the same dogs with different collars, and that for that it was better to continue as we were,” says Magnus, a common name, that of the saint and martyr after whom Kirkwall Cathedral is named.
But business as usual no longer works amid the decline of the UK, and Orkney feels economically strong (it has North Sea oil fields and renewable energy sources) to be a self-governing territory under the sovereignty of Oslo, or else as a crown dependency in the style of the Isles of Man and Guernsey. “Both the British and Scottish governments have abandoned us in terms of funding,” says James Stockan, the head of the Orkney administrative authority, one of the 32 that Scotland is divided into. During the last forty years our oil has contributed much to the prosperity of the country, but in return we have received less than Shetland or the Hebrides. Apart from energy, the economy of the archipelago is centered on agriculture, fishing, tourism (cruise ships with Nordic tourists arrive to see the Neolithic ruins) and livestock. The original name in Gaelic was “the islands of the pigs”, but in Old Norse it became “the islands of the seals”. Today what there are are thousands of cows and sheep in its green meadows.
Orkney is not ceasing to be part of the UK anytime soon, a highly complex process that would require petitions, referendums and lengthy negotiations with the Holyrood and Westminster parliaments in order to obtain the charter of freedom and join Norway. , to Iceland (another option envisaged) or to become an Overseas Dependency with considerable autonomy. What the local Administration has done, putting the different possibilities on the table, is to draw the attention of London or Edinburgh, with the message of “either you pay more attention to us, or we are ready to leave”.
Orkney belongs to Scotland but is a world apart, not only geographically but also politically. They have a seat in the Westminster Parliament, as part of the same constituency as Shetland, which has been held by the Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael for more than two decades (the Liberals have always ruled the archipelago). It is not SNP territory, to the point that, if Scotland had seceded from the UK in 2014, Orcadians were contemplating divorce from Edinburgh.
With low unemployment and a good standard of living, Orkney is prosperous but isolated and communications are problematic. They were won by Scotland when Christian I was unable to pay the dowry for his daughter Margaret. Now much richer, they knock on Norway’s door. Knock Knock…