Public Seminar Series. Emigration from Scotland's Edge. 300 years of leaving Orkney & Shetland by Professor Marjory Harper
he people of Scotland’s Northern Isles have always looked outwards, settling or sojourning across the world. This talk – based on a recent monograph – is a thematically-rooted exploration of the motives and experiences of emigrants from Orkney and Shetland over a three-century timespan beginning in the mid-1700s.
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It sets the story of those who left the islands within the framework of emigration from Scotland as a whole, considering whether the decisions and experiences of Orcadians and Shetlanders were shaped by the same issues that influenced their compatriots elsewhere, or whether there were elements of exceptionalism in the outflow from Scotland’s northern edge. Was there an island mentality that they shared with their fellow emigrants from the Western Isles or elsewhere?
If Scotland itself was viewed by some from Orkney and Shetland as a foreign land, how did that perception affect islanders’ attitudes to overseas, intercontinental emigration? After reviewing the evidence for emigration, most of the talk focuses on the triggers for leaving and the experiences and legacies of island emigrants. It incorporates practical and cerebral aspects of their relocation, including travel and employment, as well as issues of identity retention and loss and the significance of family and community networks.
Bio
Marjory Harper is Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. Her research focuses on British (particularly Scottish) emigration since 1800. Two of her monographs have won international prizes, including the Saltire History Prize, and she has published around 100 articles and book chapters. She had edited a number of books, including Migration and Mental Health: Past and Present (2016). Her monograph, Testimonies of Transition (an oral history of twentieth-century Scottish emigration) was published in 2018, and a revised version was published as an audio book in 2020. Her most recent monograph, Northern Isles No More?
The story of emigration from Orkney and Shetland since 1700, was published in 2026. She has devised and directed an online Master’s Programme in Scottish Heritage and in 2020 she was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s Jinty Nelson Prize for Inspirational Teaching and Supervision. She contributes regularly to radio and television programmes such as Digging Up Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are?
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