History of Orkney should continue to be observed in Orkney and Shetland. Thus the udal succession and mode of land tenure (that is, absolute freehold as distinguished from feudal tenure) lingered to some extent, and the remaining udallers held their lands and passed them on without written title. The islands cluster round the huge deep-water anchorage of Scapa Flow like a protecting hand, and in both World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy had a major base there, enabling them to challenge any attempt by German warships to emerge into the ocean through the Norwegian Sea. After the Armistice in
Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney Henry I Sinclair, Jarl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin (13451400) was a Scottish and a Norwegian nobleman. Sinclair held the title Earl of Orkney (which refers to Norðreyjar rather than just the islands of Orkney) under the King of Norway. He is sometimes identified by another spelling of his surname, "St. Clair". He was the grandfather of William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness, the builder of Rosslyn Chapel. He is best known today because of a modern legend that he took part in explorations of Greenland and North America almost 100 years before Christopher