The earliest inhabitants, of whom we have any record, were the Picts, and the Irish papas and Colum ban missionaries, who must have brought some Irish settlers with them. It has already been suggested that the Norse must have settled in Orkney and Shetland, circa 664, among the aboriginal race, the Picts, who would have become their thralls, and with whom the settlers would have intermarried. The first Norsemen who came to Orkney and Shet land would have been adventurers, and not settlers with wives, families and thralls, such as later went to Ice land and Orkney. Consequently such adventurers who settled in the islands would naturally have intermarried with the aborigines. This kind of male settlement ma)r have gone on for some time, before the actual bona fide colonisation took place.
