In which UK constituent country are the Orkney Islands?

The Orkney Islands are in Scotland, one of the United Kingdom’s constituent countries.

Orkney is an archipelago off Scotland’s northern coast, separated from mainland Caithness by the Pentland Firth. The group contains about 70 islands, around 20 of them inhabited. Mainland, Orkney’s largest island, contains Kirkwall, the administrative centre and largest settlement.

Orkney has a distinctive Norse and Scottish history. Norse settlers controlled the islands for centuries after their arrival in the Viking Age. In 1472, the Scottish Parliament absorbed the earldom into the Kingdom of Scotland after a dynastic marriage debt involving James III and Margaret of Denmark went unpaid.

Orkney is also a Scottish council area, parliamentary constituency and historic county. It is sometimes confused with Shetland, another Scottish island group farther northeast, or with the Northern Isles as a whole. Northern Ireland, England and Wales are separate UK constituent countries and do not contain Orkney.