The New Orkney Antiquarian Journal

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The New Orkney Antiquarian Journal

DRAFT VERSION. Reference to final version:

Ljosland, Ragnhild (2012): The Establishment of the Scots Language in Orkney. In The New Orkney Antiquarian Journal 6, 2012. Pages 65-80. Kirkwall: Orkney Heritage Society.

The Establishment of the Scots Language in Orkney

Ragnhild Ljosland

Introduction

Y

ou may think that this is yet another paper about the death of Norn. In a way it is. But rather than framing the question as ‘When did Norn die?’ the present paper instead asks ‘When and how did the Scots language get established in Orkney?’

Scots is here defined as the language which in the 15th and 16th centuries developed from the Anglo-Saxon dialect spoken in southern Scotland. This language is closely related to English, and was indeed referred to as “Inglis” (McClure 2010 p. 99), but for the purpose of this paper I will treat Scots and English as separate languages, each with its own dialects. I view the present-day dialects of Orkney and Shetland fundamentally as dialects of Scots (albeit with a substratum of Norn). A brief history of Scots is outlined below.

Having turned the question on its head, by asking when and how Scots became established in Orkney, rather than when and how Norn finally went out of use, one crucial problem presents itself: How can we find out when Scots was firmly established as a vernacular of Orkney? In other words: When did Scots stop being a language spoken only by incomers to Orkney, and start being a language spoken by the indigenous community in a linguistic situation characterised by bilingualism both on the societal level and probably also for many on the individual level? The question is not when it became the main language of the majority of the island population, or when certain groups or social classes among the population shifted from Norn to Scots – although that would be an interesting study, too. No, the question is: When did Orkney Scots start living a life independent of incoming speakers of other Scots dialects? When did Orkney Scots consolidate itself? (See Millar 2008 for a more theoretical approach to new dialect formation and consolidation). This paper will present some societal factors and one linguistic factor to start narrowing in the time-frame. However, there are still caveats in the knowledge, especially regarding the linguistic factor (outlined below), so this article should be read as a first – but not last – approach to the question.

My view in this paper contrasts with Millar’s (2008) work on the consolidation of Orkney’s neighbouring dialect Shetland Scots. He argues that the modern Shetland Scots dialect focussed as late as the 1820s onwards, preceded by a period in the 17th and 18th centuries of dialect mixing and levelling, where several Scots dialects, including the more prestigious Edinburgh variety and the geographically closer Northern and North Eastern dialects, as well as Norn, had their influence. In this paper, however, I will argue that there is reason, for Orkney at least, to place the consolidation of the Orkney Scots dialect considerably earlier.

Sociohistoric factors

The literature dealing with the Norn-to-Scots language shift usually focuses on the final phase, when Norn ceased to be used in everyday communication and was left only as a residue of rhymes and sayings, words and phrases and possibly certain grammatical structures in the Orkney and Shetland Scots dialects. The latest researcher to have studied the Norn-to-Scots language shift in detail is Remco Knooihuizen (2005a; 2005b; 2008; 2009; 2010), focussing on Shetland. He argues that the last generation in Shetland to have learnt Norn at home, and failed to pass the language on to their children, was born around 1700. “A survey of the sociolinguistic causes for the language shift should therefore focus on the 17th century” (Knooihuizen 2010 p. 89). For Orkney, Millar (2010 p. 21) assumes a slightly earlier birth date for the last native speakers: “[W]e can be fairly certain that, by the first decades of the eighteenth century, only older people on the outer, particularly northern, islands of the archipelago and particularly in the central parishes of the Mainland would have continued to speak Norn as their everyday language.” A focus on the 17th century makes sense if one is interested in the ultimate death or abandonment of the language. However, the cause of language death has roots going back much further than the last generations of speakers of the language. In this paper, I wish to begin the story as far back as the 12th century, while Old Norse was still at its height and in no immediate danger of being supplanted in Orkney by the emergent Scots. This I will do in order to present the language shift story not as a story of decay and death, but as a story of competition and of the gradual success of Scots. It is therefore necessary to go back to the 12th century in order to understand the success of Scots in Scotland, before its spread to Orkney.

The success of Scots in mainland Scotland

In the 12th century, mainland Scotland was largely Gaelic speaking, although in the south there were areas where a Northumbrian dialect of Old English was spoken (Moessner 1997). It was the descendant of this Old English dialect which later became known as Scots. In the course of the 12th century, the monarchy was modernised, bringing in the concept of Royal Burghs as centres for trade and commerce (McClure 1988 pp. 10-13). The idea of the trading burgh and its laws and institutions were imported from England. A burgh was something more than a town: “It was a place with privileges, mostly for trade, and a particular form of government generally granted by the king. […] It was often small, often with a population of less than a thousand, but it was a special place, and proud of it” (Mair 1988 p. 5). The ancestor of Scots became a popular language in these new, designated trading burghs, and thus became associated with enterprise and prosperity (McClure 1988 pp. 10-13). While Gaelic was still the mother tongue of most of Scotland’s population, many Gaelic speakers coming in to the burghs to trade would have found it advantageous to acquire at least some knowledge of this Anglo-Saxon language. Before the end of the 12th Century, many burghs were established in the Lowlands and along the East coast of Scotland: Roxburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed (then Scottish) were the first to be established, around 1120; by 1125, Dunfermline, Aberdeen, Perth, Stirling, Edinburgh, Renfrew, Rutherglen, Peebles and Hamilton followed; and before 1153, Forres, Elgin, Linlithgow, Montrose, Crail, Jedburgh, Lanark, Inverkeithing and Inverness were added to the network of burghs. By 1306, there were nearly forty Royal Burghs (Mair 1988 pp. 7-8). The Royal Burgh as an institution is an early and important domain where the ancestor language of Scots won terrain, being an important factor in the gradual spread of the language northwards along the east coast of Scotland.

In my opinion, the role played by the institution of the Royal Burgh in the success of the Scots language was also to become important for its success in Orkney. At this point in time, however, Kirkwall was a fast growing Norse town with a “special relationship to Norway, where Trondheim and Bergen provide[d] models” (Lamb and Robertson 2005: 161). Whereas Kirkwall was a market town of a “few houses” when the relics of St Magnus were brought there sometime between 1128 and 1135, it quickly grew in size and importance following Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson’s establishment of the St Magnus Cathedral there in 1137 (Lamb and Robertson 2005 pp. 161, 165). Earl Rognvald also started holding assembly in Kirkwall (loc.cit.), which also tells of its emerging importance. 12th century Kirkwall thus sits at the intersection between the Norse trading centres to the east, and the new and fast growing network of Scottish trading burghs to the south. Moving forward to 1367, we have proof that Scottish people were indeed coming to Kirkwall to trade: An edict of David II forbids people from Scotland to enter Orkney harbours “except for trade and other peaceful purposes” (Thomson 1987 p. 96).

Introduction of Scotsmen to Orkney seats of power and the establishment of Scots in Scottish institutions

Part of the success story of Scots in Orkney entails the installation of Scotsmen in positions of power in the islands. We now move two hundred years forward in time, to 1379, which is still eighty-nine years before the impignoration. In this year, the title of Earl of Orkney passed to the Scots-speaking Sinclair family whose main estate was south of Edinburgh (Thomson 2008 p. 160). This is better described as an early inroad of Scots to the islands, rather than a direct blow to Norn, as the Sinclair earls were preceded by two lines of Gaelic-speaking Earls of Orkney (Marwick 1929 p. xx).

Meanwhile, the success of the Scots language in mainland Scotland continued. In 1390, Scots was first used for parliamentary records in Edinburgh and in 1425, the laws were translated into Scots (Leith 1997 p. 155). Scots is replacing Latin (and to a lesser degree French) as the administrative language of Scotland.

Over in Norway, the Hanseatic League established an office in Bergen, Norway’s main commercial site, which operated between c.1350-1750 as one of four main Hanseatic trading posts. With this new influx of Low German speakers, Bergen became a bilingual speech community. Bilingualism was stable from the mid-14th century, and may from the 16th century be characterised as “double diglossia” with the everyday speech of the community being Norwegian and Low German dialect, whereas written communication, influencing formal speech, was in the Danish and High German standards (Nesse 2012 pp. 81, 87, 88). Smith (1996) points out that in order to trade, the Shetland population during this period would have benefited from having some command of some form of German. If Kirkwall was still in a “special relationship to Norway, where Trondheim and Bergen provide[d] models” (Lamb and Robertson 2005 p. 161), its relationship with Bergen would not have been a secure anchor-hold for Norn anymore as the trading population became increasingly dependent on the German language.

In Orkney, positions of power continued to fall into the hands of Scots speakers. In 1420, the leadership of the church fell into Scottish hands when Thomas Tulloch was appointed Bishop of Orkney (Thomson 2008 p. 175). Still, there are 48 years to go before the pledging. Hugh Marwick (1929 p. xxii) argues that whereas “the influence of Lowland Scots in Orkney can hardly have been appreciable prior to 1379”, the situation was “materially altered” with the appointment of Thomas Tulloch who, although Mass was conducted in Latin, would still have brought in Scottish notaries to work for him. Thomson, however, finds that already in 1320 there were “underlying tensions between native-born Orcadians and incoming Scots churchmen” (Thomson 1987 p. 97). Marwick (loc. cit.) also points out that the last extant Orkney document in Norn and the first in Scots appear in 1425-1433 and that in 1439 a decision by the Orkney lawman is written in “the now triumphant language of Scotland” (Marwick 1929 p. xxii). The early influence of Scots brought by incoming people from mainland Scotland into these important positions is what Hugh Marwick is thinking of when he says that “(...) the pledging of the isles to Scotland in 1468 merely accelerated a process that had been going on for almost a century previously” (Marwick 1929 p.xxii). However, the language situation surrounding the Earl and Bishop does not tell us what the language situation was among the ordinary people of Orkney. Here, we can only speculate. It is possible for a language to survive for long periods of time without the support of higher institutions, as Norn indeed did. On the other hand, without support from official institutions, the language loses prestige and may be seen by its speakers as inferior to the competing language which has the support of official institutions (see, for instance, Swann et al 2004 p. 82).

Meanwhile, in Scotland, Scots is consolidating itself. It starts to develop linguistic characteristics separating it from Northern English dialects: “In general terms, divergence from the Northern English dialect towards the rise of a Scottish regional norm can be dated from the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century” (Meurman-Solin 1997 p. 12). At the same time, Scots steadily gains more speakers and institutional support, so that “[b]y the end of the sixteenth century Scots may be seen as the language of an independent Scottish state and a large section of Scotland’s population” (Leith 1997 p. 155). The relationship between Scots and English at this stage was as “a pair of mutually remote dialects each serving as the language of government, administration and letters in its own kingdom” (McClure 2010 p. 100). Although both descended from Old English, Scots and English were now discrete varieties belonging in two separate and politically opposed kingdoms.

The pledging of Orkney in 1468 therefore comes right at a time when Scots is enjoying a surge of popularity, a huge growth in prestige and is in the process of consolidating itself as an independent language. And what happens only eighteen years after the pledging, or fourteen years after Scotland formally took possession of Orkney and Shetland? In 1486, Kirkwall gets the title of City and Royal Burgh, thus joining it to the now significant network of such trading burghs all along the Scots speaking east coast of Scotland. In my opinion, this has been overlooked as an important factor in the Norn-to-Scots language shift in Orkney. The success of Scots in Orkney clearly parallels and is closely linked to the success of Scots in Southern and Eastern Scotland, with trade as an important early factor, followed by the introduction of Scots to official institutions both in the Scottish state and in Orkney. So while Millar (2010 p. 26) believes in a top-down introduction of Scots “first by the incoming landholding classes, then the urban middle classes, then the working people of the towns and, finally, the peasantry” I rather see a two-directional introduction of Scots: Bottom-up through the gateway of commerce, and top-down through official institutions and landholders.