Can you imagine how bleak life was there and then.
"Darlin', I'm tired of all this sand."
"Just hand me my bucket and shovel."
I'd have to say that, if people lived there, things may not have been how they are now. OTOH, the Orkneys have been pop-pop-popular (as popular as things get in the North Atlantic) for quite a while. Note, the "Orcades" mentioned here in Tacitus:
Tacitus: Life of Cnaeus Julius Agricola, c.98 CE
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/tacitus-agricola.html
"The form of the entire country has been compared by Livy and Fabius Rusticus, the most graphic among ancient and modern historians, to an oblong shield or battle-axe. And this no doubt is its shape without Caledonia, so that it has become the popular description of the whole island. There is, however, a large and irregular tract of land which juts out from its furthest shores, tapering off in a wedge-like form. Round these coasts of remotest ocean the Roman fleet then for the first time sailed, ascertained that Britain is an island, and simultaneously discovered and conquered what are called the Orcades, islands hitherto unknown. Thule too was descried in the distance, which as yet had been hidden by the snows of winter. Those waters, they say, are sluggish, and yield with difficulty to the oar, and are not even raised by the wind as other seas. The reason, I suppose, is that lands and mountains, which are the cause and origin of storms, are here comparatively rare, and also that the vast depths of that unbroken expanse are more slowly set in motion. But to investigate the nature of the ocean and the tides is no part of the present work, and many writers have discussed the subject. I would simply add, that nowhere has the sea a wider dominion, that it has many currents running in every direction, that it does not merely flow and ebb within the limits of the shore, but penetrates and winds far inland, and finds a home among hills and mountains as though in its own domain."
Tacitus mentions "Thule", which was probably the Shetlands.