Fed up with being ignored by far-flung politicians, officials in Scotland’s remote Orkney Islands are considering a drastic solution: rejoin Norway, the Scandinavian country that gifted them as royal wedding dowry more than 550 years ago.
Orkney Islands Council is due to discuss options for “alternative governance models” on Tuesday, including exploring the “Nordic connections” of the archipelago, which lies about 10 miles north of the Scottish mainland.
Council leader James Stockan said both the Scottish government, 300 miles to the south in Edinburgh, and the even more distant UK government in London had failed on the islands.
“On the street in Orkney, people come up to me and say: ‘When are we going to return the dowry? When do we go back to Norway? There is a great affinity and a very deep cultural relationship there,” Stockan told the BBC. “This is exactly the time to explore what is possible.”
Norway kept a diplomatic distance from the debate.
“This is a British constitutional and domestic matter,” the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We have no opinion regarding this motion.”
Long an impoverished area reliant on the unpredictable fishing industry, Orkney prospered after vast offshore oil reserves were discovered in the 1960s. The islands, with a population of around 22,000, also have a flourishing wind power industry and a growing tourism sector.
But Stockan said Orkney receives less support from the Scottish government than other island communities in Shetland or the Hebrides, and desperately needs new ferries to keep its many islands connected.
“Every time we have been denied. They have asked us to wait, they have asked us to do another study,” she said.
“We look with envy at communities in Norway,” he added, “where there is a completely different approach from remote and rural areas.”
A report accompanying Stockan’s motion suggests Orkney should investigate options that include status like that of the Faroe Islands, a self-governing dependency of Denmark that sits between Scotland and Iceland.
Another option is to emulate British Crown Dependencies, such as the Channel Islands, which are largely self-governing tax havens.
The report acknowledges that any constitutional change is a long way off and would likely require a combination of petitions, referendums and legislation by the Scottish and UK governments. The Edinburgh and London governments are at odds over the Scottish administration’s ambition to make Scotland an independent country outside the UK.
Along with the Shetland Islands further north, Orkney was under Norwegian and Danish control for centuries until 1472, when the islands were seized by the Scottish crown as part of Margaret of Denmark’s wedding dowry to King James III of Scotland.
“In a place where we have 5,000-year-old houses in the landscape, that’s pretty recent history for us,” said Leslie Burgher, an architect who serves as Norway’s honorary consul in Orkney.
Burgher said there were still “strong cultural and personal connections” between Norway and Orkney, where a parade every May 17 marks Norway’s Constitution Day. He said the Norse influence was widely evident, from place names and personal names to St Magnus Cathedral, “a fabulous piece of medieval architecture” built in Norse times.
Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit paid an official visit to the Orkney Islands in 2017.
The British government poured cold water on the idea of allowing Orkney to forge new links with Norway. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman, Max Blain, said there was “no mechanism” to change Orkney’s status.
“Fundamentally we are stronger as one UK. We have no plans to change that,” she said.
