Author(s): Peter Marshall

Nature Writing

From Peter Marshall, winner of the Wolfson Prize 2018, a history of Orkney islands that dives deep into island culture, difference and the evolution of folklore, belief and community memory.

Peter Marshall was born on Orkney, his ancestors farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday. In fact, one of them was murdered by a witch there in 1624.



In this book, Marshall looks afresh at the small island that has been treated by history as a footnote, remote and peripheral. Through Orkney, we encounter a wild, isolated place where language was different to the mainland, neighbours depended entirely on each other and beliefs were pieced together by communities over generations. We traverse three centuries of religious, political and economic upheaval, a time during which what we think of as modern Scotland, and then modern Britain, was being forged and tested.