Historic Orkney was established to offer a more considered and locally grounded way to experience the islands.
As Orkney’s international reputation has grown, so too has the volume of tourism. Historic Orkney was created to ensure that visitors seeking depth, accuracy, and genuine local knowledge can experience the islands in a way that feels informed, responsible, and properly handled. Built from the ground up and shaped by lived experience and long-standing client trust, the company continues to evolve carefully and deliberately, with a clear commitment to quality, consistency, and long-term stewardship.
Every experience is planned and led directly, ensuring clarity and continuity from first contact through to completion. This allows every visit to be shaped carefully around those travelling rather than following a fixed or high-volume model. Visitors who value depth, authenticity, and a well-handled private experience tend to find this approach markedly different from more standard touring options. The intention has never been to follow tourism trends, but to maintain a standard of guiding shaped by genuine local knowledge and long familiarity with the islands themselves.
A Considered Approach
Every experience is designed with a long-term view of how Orkney should be encountered and understood. The focus remains on clarity, accuracy, and a calm, well-paced approach that allows visitors to engage properly with the landscape and its history.
Orkney does not lend itself to hurried interpretation or simplified narrative. It reveals itself gradually, through context, observation, and time spent well. Historic Orkney operates with the belief that these islands deserve to be presented with care and honesty, allowing visitors to encounter the place as it truly is rather than through a scripted or condensed version.
While firmly rooted in Orkney, many guests now continue their journeys across the wider landscapes of Scotland, travelling with continuity and trusted guidance throughout.
Independence and Responsibility
Historic Orkney operates as a fully independent provider of private guided tours, maintaining direct responsibility for the design, coordination, and delivery of every experience offered. Each tour is planned and led personally, ensuring consistency and accountability throughout.
Where specialist input is required, carefully selected local professionals may be involved for specific elements of an experience. All operate to the same standards of care, professionalism, and genuine local connection. Responsibility for the experience always remains here.
Operating independently allows Historic Orkney to remainflexible, consistent, and personally accountable for every journey undertaken.
Professional Standards
Quality, safety, and trust sit at the core of everything delivered.
Historic Orkney operates as a fully independent and externally verified provider of private guided tours, maintaining full commercial insurance and legal compliance at all times. The business holds verified local status, membership of the Scottish PVG Scheme, and membership of SITOA in accordance with its code of conduct.
Vehicles are professionally maintained and regularly inspected, and all guiding is delivered to recognised professional standards that protect clients, collaborators, and the places explored. These standards exist so that every experience is handled properly, safely, and with full professional responsibility from beginning to end.
Continual Development
Ongoing research, continual professional development, and long familiarity with the landscape continue to shape the approach taken across every tour. Orkney is a place of extraordinary depth, and presenting it properly carries responsibility. New discoveries and evolving understanding mean that interpretation must remain thoughtful, accurate, and open to refinement.
Each season brings new insights and renewed perspective, ensuring that every visit benefits from current knowledge as well as long familiarity.
A Long-Term Commitment
Historic Orkney remains locally grounded and intentionally independent, built on generational knowledge of the islands and a commitment to maintaining the standards and depth that visitors travel here to experience.
Visitors who choose Historic Orkney are typically looking for a calm, well-informed, and carefully handled way to experience the islands. For those who have travelled far to reach Orkney, that assurance matters.
See Orkney with the depth, clarity, and local insight it deserves.
I'm Calum, Born and raised in Orkney, I guide privately and personally across the islands, sharing a lifetime of local knowledge with specialist insight into the Neolithic and Viking past. Each visit is carefully planned and unhurried, ensuring your time here is handled properly.
“One of the best trips of my life… something we will remember forever.”
I guide only one private tour per day so that every visit remains calm, flexible, and shaped entirely around you.
Get a free 20min trip consultation with Callum
This allows you to confirm timing, priorities, and pacing, removing guesswork and ensuring you experience the most complete and rewarding Orkney day tour possible.
