Before the days of steam communication there were two ferries across the Pentland Firth to Huna in Caithness, one from Walls and the other from South Ronaldshay. Edinburgh was the usual objective of Orcadians using this route, and Shanks’ nag the common means of locomotion, save for persons of quality, who rode horses. The only other means of reaching the Scottish capital, the sole place out of the Islands which old-world Orcadians considered of much account, and a place where all the well-to-do among them had relations, cronies, and “gude-gangin’ pleas,” was by occasional sailing packets from Kirkwall to Leith.

Steamboat communication between Kirkwall and Leith and Aberdeen was established about 1832, and nowadays there are two boats a week between these ports and the Orcadian capital, besides two to Stromness, and a fortnightly boat to St Margaret’s Hope. There is also a daily mail-steamer from Stromness, touching at Kirkwall (Scapa) and South Ronaldshay, to Scrabster in Caithness, thus connecting the Islands with the Highland Railway at Thurso. Stromness is farther connected with Liverpool and Manchester by a weekly steamer, and both Kirkwall and Stromness with Lerwick and Scalloway in Shetland. Kirkwall has communication with the more important of the North Isles, and Stromness with the chief of the South Isles (except South Ronaldshay and Burray) by local steamers sailing several times a week. Motor or horse conveyances run between Kirkwall and Stromness several times a day. There are no railways in Orkney.

The first Orkney Road Act was passed in 1857, and under that and subsequent local Acts, and finally under the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act of 1874, the greater part of the roads in the county were constructed. The agricultural depression and land legislation of the “eighties,” by attenuating the incomes of proprietors, tended somewhat to check this development; but a dozen years or so later the Congested Districts Board came to the rescue with grants-in-aid, largely by means of which many miles of new roads were completed. With very few exceptions, all the islands of any population are now amply provided with good roads.