After returning to the Orkney archipelago for a week, I noticed something.  

Obviously, Orkney has changed, such as new cars on the roads, better roads and new roundabouts, more technology, and all the same generic commercialism to be found anywhere else in the UK. Even with the daily influx of cruising tourists one change stuck out; the lack of Orcadians.

 Since I left Orkney for the south of England 30 years ago, Orcadian culture has undergone a significant alteration. Sure, there are museums and workshops that glory the great neolithic & community past the islands can be proud of, but most of the accents I heard in the town or on the islands were not Orcadian and most of the people serving, directing or conversing with me in the week-long visit, were not Orcadian. Yes, I was a visitor and met fellow-visitors, but the kids from the school who joked around the town centre, the workers in the shops and on the boats, and the dwellers in the islands were predominantly non-Orcadian.

At risk of sounding a bit of an Orcadian nationalist, I started to ponder what might happen if all the Orcadians disappear. Will all the incomers adopt Orcadian culture at some point and keep it alive? As the incomers begin to outnumber the native-Orcadians, how soon before the archipelago becomes native-free?

Should we care? Is this just a progressive dynamic of Orkney becoming part of a modern global majority? Is it insensitive to the incomers to broach the subject? Or is there no compelling reason to keep the Orcadian culture alive?

Yes, the museums are great, having visited many, but they are museums, and for a culture to stay alive it needs to be practiced. I don’t expect the spinning wheel to make a comeback, but I holiday here to experience the diverse islands experience and we need to accept the irrecoverable changes are the way forward, or address the matter for the sake of a unique Orcadian way of life.