Orcadians
Orcadians are the indigenous inhabitants of the Orkney islands of Scotland.
Historically, they are descended from the Picts, Norse and Scots.Well-known Orcadians
- Jim Baikie British comics artist, who is best known for his work with Alan Moore on Skizz
- William Balfour Baikie, explorer and naturalist
- George Mackay Brown, poet, author, playwright
- Mary Brunton, author of Self-Control, Discipline and other novels
- Dr David Clouston, author and agriculturalist
- J. Storer Clouston, author and historian
- Thomas Clouston, psychiatrist, Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum
- James Copland, physician and prolific medical writer
- Stanley Cursiter, artist
- William Towrie Cutt, author
- Walter Traill Dennison, Orcadian folklorist
- Kris Drever, folk singer and guitarist
- Magnus Erlendsson , Earl of Orkney c.1105–1117
- John Flett and his son William Roberts Flett FRSE also a geologist
- Matthew Forster Heddle, mineralogist, author of The Mineralogy of Scotland
- Colonel Henry Halcro Johnston, botanist, physician, rugby union international and Deputy Lieutenant for Orkney
- Lt.Col. James Johnston, early and principal Scottish merchant at Quebec following the fall of New France
- Malcolm Laing, author of the History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms
- Samuel Laing, author of A Residence in Norway, and translator of the Heimskringla, the Icelandic chronicle of the kings of Norway
- Samuel Laing, chairman of the London, Brighton & South Coast railway, and introducer of the system of "parliamentary" trains with fares of one penny a mile.
- Kristin Linklater, born 1946, voice teacher, actor, director and author
- Magnus Linklater, journalist, son of Eric Linklater
- John D. Mackay, headmaster and Orkney patriot
- Ernest Marwick, a writer noted for his writings on Orkney folklore and history
- Murdoch McKenzie, hydrographer
- F. Marian McNeill folklorist, best known for writing The Silver Bough
- Edwin Muir, author and poet
- Dr. John Rae, Arctic explorer
- Robert Rendall, poet, and amateur naturalist
- Rognvald Kali Kolsson , Earl of Orkney 1136–1158
- Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, Earl of Orkney
- Julyan Sinclair, television presenter
- Bessie Skea aka Bessie Grieve, writer of prose and poetry about nature and Orkney life
- Thomas Stewart Traill, professor of medical jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh and editor of the 8th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
- Cameron Stout winner of Big Brother in 2003, brother of Julyan Sinclair
- Margaret Tait,filmmaker and poet
- Thorbjorn Thorsteinsson, known as Thorbjorn the Clerk, Viking
- James Wallace, physician and botanist
- William Walls, lawyer and industrialist
- Thomas Webster, geologist and architect
- Sylvia Wishart, landscape artist
- The Wrigley Sisters Jennifer and Hazel, international folk duo
People associated with Orkney
- Rev. Matthew Armour, Sanday's radical Free Kirk Minister
- Sweyn Asleifsson or Sveinn Ásleifarson, Viking, born in Caithness, who appears in the Orkneyinga Saga
- V. Gordon Childe, Australian archaeologist and philologist who excavated Maeshowe
- Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, composer and Master of the Queen's Music
- John Gow, a notorious pirate
- Andrew Greig, writer
- Jo Grimond, Liberal Party leader and MP for Orkney and Shetland 1950–1983
- David Harvey, footballer
- Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, wife of Thorfinn the Mighty, mother of Paul and Erlend Thorfinnsson, subsequently queen of Scotland
- Eric Linklater, novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist and poet
- Margaret, Maid of Norway, Queen of Scots and a Norwegian princess
- Robert Shaw, English actor and novelist
- William Sichel, ultra distance runner
- Luke Sutherland, writer of novels Jelly Roll, Sweetmeat and Venus as a Boy
- Jim Wallace, Baron Wallace of Tankerness, former MP for Orkney and Shetland, MSP for Orkney, Deputy First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats
