Introduction
While the short answer to the question posed is a clear and obvious “no,” with the fixed national and international borders of the modern day, portions of Scotland have indeed been considered at least somewhat Nordic in the past. If the Faroe Islands of Denmark can be considered Nordic, then so can the Shetland and Orkney Islands, both included within Scotland. Even further south are the Counties of Caithness and Sutherland, with Sutherland identifiable with a saltire overlaid on a Nordic cross on the modern flag.
Shetland Islands
Today, the Shetland Islands continue to celebrate the associated Nordic heritage of the region with a Nordic cross flag, white on the inside and blue on the outside. Though the flag is effectively inverted from the Finnish flag, the Shetland blue is supposed to be somewhat brighter than the Finnish blue, and the Shetland cross may be thinner as well, more akin to the Danish flag. Historically associated with the Kingdom of Norway and with general Norwegian rule, the region continues to represent a crossroads between modern Iceland, modern Norway, and the northern edge of the mainland of Scotland. Today, the county town of the Shetland Islands is known as Lerwick, also at least partly representative of the Nordic heritage of the region and general area.
Orkney Islands
To the south of the Shetland Islands are the Orkney Islands. While the modern population of the British Isles would not consider the Orkney Islands directly part of the Nordic realm, the historical context of the Orkney Islands was also related to the geographical position of the islands relative to the Scottish mainland. Immediately off the coast of Caithness, the Orkney Islands are perhaps most prominently identified by the county town of Kirkwall. If the Shetland Islands can be considered Nordic, then the Orkney Island culture may be identified quite similarly, though the Viking heritage of the general region has largely been diluted after over a millennium, firmly establishing the Orkney Islands as identifying within modern Scotland even if geographically more akin to the Faroe Islands of Denmark.
Caithness and Sutherland
The two northernmost counties on the Scottish mainland, north even of the Hebrides on the west coast of the country, are Caithness and Sutherland. While Caithness represents the absolute northernmost portion of the Island of Great Britain and uses Wick as the county town, Sutherland is located primarily to the south and west and is named using Norse terminology for “southern land” from the vantage points of either Caithness or the Orkney Islands.
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