This chain of Scottish islands is seriously underrated. Here are six reasons to put the windswept Orkney Islands on your list of things to see the next time you're in Europe.

Along with the Shetland islands, Orkney was under Norwegian and Danish control until 1472 when the islands were taken by the Scottish crown as part of Margaret of Denmark’s wedding dowry.

Man has inhabited the islands for at least five and a half millennia, and it was only comparatively recently, in the fifteenth century, that Orkney and Shetland became part of Scotland.