Northern Light, Northern Words: Selected Papers from the FRLSU Conference, Kirkwall 2009

In late July 2009, the ninth Triennial Conference of the Forum for Research on the languages of Scotland and Ulster was held at Orkney College, Kirkwall, Orkney. This was the first time that this conference was held in the Northern Isles (although its success suggests that it will not be the last). Many of the papers presented had the language varieties of the Northern Isles, past and present, as their subject matter. As is normal for our conferences, however, papers on any language varieties spoken presently or in the past in Scotland or the nine counties of Ulster were welcome. It is therefore fitting that this selection of essays derived from the papers should represent both the first and the second set of subjects.