Of all the countries visited by the Vikings it is undoubtedly the British Isles which bear most definitely the marks of their presence. The history and civilisation of Ireland, the Orkneys and Shetlands, the Western Islands and Man, Scotland and England, were profoundly affected by the Viking movement, and its influence is none the less interesting because it varies greatly from place to place, in both character and intensity. These variations are doubtless due in part to differences of political and social organisation as between Norsemen and Danes, or between men coming from scattered districts of the as yet loosely co-ordinated kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, but their chief cause lies in the wide divergences in the social and political conditions of the lands in which they settled. The Orkneys and the Shetlands were settled by the Norsemen earlier than any other part of the British Isles and they formed part of the Norse kingdom till 1468. It is not surprising therefore that the great Norse historian Munch describes them as _ligesaa norskt som Norge selv_, 'as Norse as Norway itself.' The old Norse speech was still spoken there by a few people until the end of the 18th century, and we have a version of the ballad of _King Orfeo_ taken down from recital at the close of that century with the Norse refrain still preserved '_Scowan ürla grün--Whar giorten han grün oarlac_,' i.e. probably _Skoven årle grön--Hvor hjorten han går årlig_ = 'Early green's the wood--where the hart goes yearly.' Place-nomenclature is almost entirely Norse and the modern dialects are full of Norse words. Several runic inscriptions have been found, the most famous being that at Maeshowe in Hrossey, made by Norse crusaders when they wintered there in 1152-3 and amused themselves by breaking open the how, probably to look for treasure, and scoring their runes on the walls of the grave-chamber. In the system of landholding the 'udallers' are an interesting survival of the old Norse freeholders. 'The Udaller held his land without condition or limitation in any feudal sense,' says Mr Gilbert Goudie, i.e. he held his _udal_ on precisely the same free terms that the native Norseman did his _óðal_. From the Shetlands and the Orkneys the Norsemen crossed to the Scottish mainland. Sutherland (i.e. the land south of the Orkneys), Caithness, Ross and Cromarty are full of Norse place-names, and Norse influence may be traced even further south.