Kirkwall

Kirkwall takes its name from the Old Norse Kirkjuvágr, "church bay", after a settlement founded by the Norsemen in the 11th century; the church in question was not the cathedral but the 11th-century church of St Olaf of Norway, of which one late medieval doorway survives. The town first appears in the Orkneyinga saga in 1046 as the residence of Earl Rögnvald Brusason, who was killed by his uncle Thorfinn the Mighty. Iron Age earth houses on the western edge of town show that people lived here long before.

In 1137 Earl Rögnvald Kali began building a cathedral in memory of his uncle, Earl Magnus Erlendsson, who had been killed and was venerated as a saint; it took some 300 years to complete. Beside it rose the Bishop's Palace, home to the first bishop, William the Old, whose authority came from the Norwegian archbishop at Nidaros. After Orkney passed to Scotland, James III made Kirkwall a royal burgh in 1486. In 1607 Patrick, Earl of Orkney, began building the Earl's Palace next door, largely with forced labour.

Later the town became part of the Northern Burghs, which shared a member of parliament, until it merged into the Orkney and Shetland seat in 1918. Steamers linked it to the Scottish mainland from 1836, the town hall was completed in 1884, and Andrew Carnegie and his wife opened the town's library in 1909. Extensive work on the harbour facilities has made Kirkwall a regular stop for cruise ships.

The Ba' Game is the town's great tradition. Every Christmas Day and New Year's Day the Uppies and the Doonies, each representing one half of the town, battle for the ba' through the streets in a mass game of medieval-style football. The cathedral stands at the heart of the town, and the Kirkwall City Pipe Band often parades along Broad Street on Saturday evenings.

Kirkwall is the centre of the St Magnus International Festival, a week-long arts festival held each midsummer, which the composer Peter Maxwell Davies helped to found. Orkney Theatre, a 384-seat venue next to Kirkwall Grammar School, opened in 2014, and the Orkney Library and Archive keeps the islands' records; the original library of 1909 was the most northerly of the world's Carnegie libraries. The film-maker Margaret Tait set many of her films in the town, including her Aspects of Kirkwall series.

The town also has names in Scots, Norn and Gaelic, a reminder of the layers of its past. Its Norse heritage lives on in the cathedral and the saga stories, and the Orkney Museum's prehistoric, Pictish and Viking collections are of international importance.

Kirkwall is the largest town in Orkney and the most populous island settlement in Scotland. Its population has grown steadily, from about 6,200 in 2001 to about 9,300 in 2011, and was estimated at around 10,000 in 2026. It is the administrative centre of the islands, with the headquarters of Orkney Islands Council and NHS Orkney, and it is the hub for ferries to the North Isles.

The harbour, with nearly a kilometre of quay, supports fishing and dive boats and a marina, and the main commercial terminal at Hatston handles the ferries to Aberdeen and Shetland and the largest cruise ships. Around 140 cruise ships call at Kirkwall and Stromness each year, sometimes several a week, which has brought prosperity to a lively sector of independently owned shops but also crowds at the main sights on cruise days.

Education is a big part of town life: Kirkwall Grammar School traces its history to about 1200 and moved into a new building in 2014, and Orkney College UHI has its main campus here in a building opened in 2000. The Pickaquoy Centre, the islands' largest leisure centre, has a pool, gym and cinema, and the town's main supermarkets stand beside it on Pickaquoy Road.

Orkney's farms and waters supply much of what Kirkwall eats. The islands export beef, cheese, whisky, beer, fish and other seafood, and 90 per cent of their milk goes into Orkney Cheddar. Fishing today concentrates on herring, white fish, lobsters, crabs and other shellfish, alongside farmed salmon.

The most distinctive local ingredient is bere, an ancient six-row barley grown on a small area of Orkney. Barony Mills, a 19th-century watermill, grinds it into beremeal, which is used locally in bread, biscuits and the traditional beremeal bannock, and research at Orkney College has opened new markets in whisky, beer and biscuits. Scottish dishes such as haggis — sheep's heart, liver and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal and suet — appear on pub menus too.

Drink is a point of local pride. Highland Park, in Kirkwall, is the northernmost single malt Scotch whisky distillery, Scapa stands half a mile to the south on the shore of Scapa Flow, and a third distillery opened at Deerness in 2023. Orkney Distilling makes Kirkjuvagr gin on the seafront, and the Orkney Brewery's beers are served in the town's pubs.