To say that Orkney was important to George Mackay Brown's art is to understate massively. For Brown, Orkney was the source of his art. Its presence is all-pervasive in his poetry and in his prose works. Its history and myth provide Brown with the bulk of the material he used in his fifty years as a professional writer. Brown was born and lived all his life in Stromness, a small town on Mainland, the largest of the Orkney Islands, situated off the northern coast of Scotland. Indeed, save for a few years as a student at Newbattle Abbey and Edinburgh University, Brown scarcely left Orkney. His identification with these islands is complete, and any appreciation of his work must take account of the central position occupied by the lore, language, history, and myth of the islands.

Uniquely in the British Isles, Orkney was Norwegian territory until 1470, when it...