Norn

The Norn are the Norse people of Orkney, Shetland and the adjacent Caithness coast, descended from settlers from western Norway in the early ninth century who absorbed or displaced the Pictish inhabitants. Norway annexed Orkney in 875. The Norn language was a West Norse tongue close to Faroese and Icelandic.

In 1379 the earldom of Orkney passed to Henry Sinclair. In 1468 to 1469 the islands were pledged to James III of Scotland as security for Margaret of Denmark's dowry; in 1472 the Scottish Parliament annexed the earldom. Scots spread, though most islanders kept Norn as their first language into the later 1500s in Orkney and the 1600s in Shetland.

Norn died out in Caithness during the fifteenth century. On the islands old people still conversed in it around 1750; its words survived in place-names and fishing vocabulary.