Her mother was a Greer and her father's family came from the Orkney Isles.

* 1650 – The Battle of Carbisdale: A Royalist army from Orkney invades mainland Scotland but is defeated by a Covenanter army.

By now Blenheim was under assault from every side by three English generals: Cutts, Churchill, and Orkney.

The time was about 16: 30, and the two armies were in close contact across the whole four-mile ( 6 km ) front, from the skirmishing in the marshes in the south, through the vast cavalry battle on the open plain ; to the fierce struggle for Ramillies at the centre, and to the north, where, around the cottages of Offus and Autre-Eglise, Orkney and de la Guiche faced each other across the Petite Gheete ready to renew hostilities.

The number of these compartments ranges from 4 in the earliest examples to over 24 in an extreme example on Orkney.

Examples include Midhowe on Rousay and Unstan Chambered Cairn from the Orkney Mainland, both of which date from the mid 4th millennium BC and were probably in use over long periods of time.

In addition to Maeshowe itself, which was constructed c. 2700 BC, there are various other examples from the Orkney Mainland.

Examples from elsewhere in Orkney are the Vinquoy cairn, found at an elevated location on the north end of the island of Eday and Quoyness on Sanday constructed about 2900 BC and which is surrounded by an arc of Bronze Age mounds.

Fair Isle ( from Old Norse Frjóey ; Scottish Gaelic Fara ) is an island in northern Scotland, lying around halfway between mainland Shetland and the Orkney islands.

Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements, and the wonderfully well-preserved stone house at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray dating from 3500 BC predates by about 500 years the village of similar houses at Skara Brae on West Mainland, Orkney.

The settlers introduced chambered cairn tombs from around 3500 BC ( Maeshowe offers a prime example ), and from about 3000 BC the many standing stones and circles such as the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney and Callanish on Lewis.

George Mackay Brown from Orkney, and Iain Crichton Smith from Lewis, wrote both poetry and prose fiction shaped by their distinctive island backgrounds.

Sources from the 17th and 18th centuries speak of Norn ( sometimes identified as " Norse ", " Norwegian " or " Danish ") as being in a state of decline and generally indicate that the language remained stronger in Shetland than in Orkney.

A source from 1670 states that there are " only three or four parishes ” in Orkney where people speak " Noords or rude Danish " and that they do so " chiefly when they are at their own houses ".

Another from 1701 indicates that there were still a few monoglot " Norse " speakers who were capable of speaking " no other thing ", and notes that there were more speakers of the language in Shetland than in Orkney.

Hoy ( from Norse Háey meaning high island ) is an island in Orkney, Scotland.

The dramatic coastline of Hoy greets visitors travelling to Orkney by ferry from the Scottish mainland.

It is separated from mainland Orkney by the Eynhallow Sound, and, like its neighbours Egilsay and Wyre, can be reached by a ro-ro ferry ( MV Eynhallow ) from Tingwall, on the mainland of Orkney, which takes 20 – 25 minutes.

Seeing that Schultz and Spaar were faltering, Marlborough now ordered Orkney ’ s second-line British and Danish battalions ( who had not been used in the assault on Offus and Autre-Eglise ) to move south towards Ramillies.

The Allied commander now summoned the cavalry on the right wing to reinforce his centre, leaving only the English squadrons in support of Orkney.

Orkney now sent his English troops back across the Petite Gheete stream to once again storm Offus where de la Guiche ’ s infantry had begun to drift away in the confusion.

The Bookan type is named after a cairn found to the north-west of the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, which is now a dilapidated oval mound, about 16 metres in diameter.

There are quite a few churches dedicated to St. Boniface in the United Kingdom: Bunbury, Cheshire ; Chandler's Ford and Southampton Hampshire ; Adler Street, London ; Papa Westray, Orkney ; St Budeaux, Plymouth ( now demolished ); Bonchurch, Isle of Wight ; Cullompton, Devon.

Margaret, by now seven years of age, sailed from Norway for Scotland in the autumn of 1290, but fell ill on the way and died in Orkney.

The decisive final attack was made on the now weakened French centre by British infantry under the command of the Earl of Orkney, which managed to occupy the French line of redans.

Papa Westray, also known as Papay, is one of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, with a population of 65 at the time of the 2001 Census, now increased to 70 people.

Loganair's scheduled network grew, and Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles were served comprehensively from Glasgow and Edinburgh, and mainland routes were now firmly established.

It is administratively part of Caithness ( now in the Highland council area ), while its neighbour Swona, to the north, is part of the Orkney Islands.

The Act applied to croft tenure in an area which is now recognisable as a definition of the Highlands and Islands: that of the ancient counties of Argyll, Inverness-shire, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland.

Brown was now working on his first novel Greenvoe, the story of an imaginary Orkney community menaced by an undefined project called ' Operation Black Star '.

Another example is the influence of the now extinct North Germanic Norn language on the Scots dialects of the Shetland and Orkney islands.

There is no BBC Local Radio in Scotland and although opt-out stations were established in Inverness ( BBC Radio Highland ) on 25 March 1976, followed by Radio Aberdeen in April 1976, BBC Radio Orkney and BBC Radio Shetland in May 1977, Selkirk ( BBC Radio Tweed ) on 11 April 1983 and Dumfries ( BBC Radio Solway ) on 16 April 1983, only the Orkney and Shetland stations still exist ; the others had all been closed by the early 1990s and are now served by Radio Scotland with four opt-out news bulletins a day.

The creek now flows as a storm sewer under the following streets ( starting at the Delaware River and running from southeast to northwest ): Canal, Laurel, Bodine, Cambridge, and Orkney Streets.

A bishop's castle was established near the mouth of Wolf Burn while Caithness was part of the Norse earldom of Orkney: foundations are all that now remain.

The two Papeys Orkney, the great and the little ( anciently Papey Meiri and Papey Minni ), now Papa Westray and Papa Stronsay ... Fordun in his enumeration of the islands, has a ' Papeay tertia ' Papey, which is not now known.

* Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney ( 1075 – 1116 / 7 ), martyred saint in Orkney, now in Scotland

The name and capbadge is now carried by the Orkney Independent Cadet Battery of the Army Cadet Force.

In the course of the Second World War Italian prisoners of war were kept on Orkney Mainland ; they improvised a chapel with elaborate architecture out of corrugated iron and other base materials, which is now a tourist attraction.

Orkney witch Elspeth Reoch is tried, and Agnes Berrye is hanged as a witch in Enfield, England.

Three quite different accounts of the creation of the Norse earldom on Orkney and Shetland exist.

– Lord Orkney.

Marlborough ’ s horse tumbled and the Duke was thrown – " Milord Marlborough was rid over ," wrote Orkney some time later.

* 1904 – The United Kingdom sells a meteorological station on the South Orkney Islands to Argentina, the islands are subsequently claimed by the United Kingdom in 1908.

* 1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.

* 1666 – George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, British soldier ( d. 1737 )

* 1737 – George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, British soldier ( b. 1666 )

* 1919 – Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney.

The Kalmar Union ( Danish, Norwegian and ; ) is a historiographical term describing a series of personal unions ( 1397 – 1523 ) that intermittently joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden ( then including Finland ), and Norway ( then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, prior to their transfer to Scotland in 1471, Shetland and Orkney ).

* 1940 – First person killed in a German bombing raid on the UK in World War II during a raid on Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, James Isbister.

Unusually, no Maeshowe-type tombs have been found on Rousay and although there are a large number of Orkney – Cromarty chambered cairns, these were built by unstan ware people.

* Gammeltoft, Peder ( 2010 ) " Shetland and Orkney Island-Names – A Dynamic Group ".

* August 2 – Squadron Commander E. H. Dunning lands his aircraft on the ship in Scapa Flow, Orkney.

* December 6 – The South Orkney Islands are discovered by George Powell and Nathaniel Palmer.

* April 27 – Battle of Carbisdale: A Royalist army invades mainland Scotland from the Orkney Islands but is defeated by a Covenanter army.

* January 29 – George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, British soldier ( b. 1666 )

* c. 3100 – 2600 BC — Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, is inhabited.

* February 9 – George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, British soldier ( d. 1737 )

* April 16 – Saint Magnus, Earl of Orkney ( executed )

* Insular Scots – Orkney and Shetland.

* August 20 – Rögnvald Kali Kolsson ( b. 1100 ), Earl of Orkney and Saint

* February 20 – Orkney and Shetland are returned by Norway to Scotland, due to a defaulted dowry payment.