Likewise, the inhabitants of English and Norse-speaking parts were ethnically linked with other regions of Europe. At Melrose, people could recite religious literature in the English language. In the later part of the twelfth century, the Lothian writer Adam of Dryburgh describes Lothian as "the Land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots". In the Northern Isles the Norse language evolved into the local Norn, which lingered until the end of the eighteenth century, when it finally died out and Norse may also have survived as a spoken language until the sixteenth century in the Outer Hebrides.