At the end of the 17th century, observers noted the appearance of people on kayaks near the Orkney Islands. The locals called them Finns. The question of who these mysterious travelers were and how they managed to reach the coast of Northern Scotland has been repeatedly raised in foreign historiography. There are several possible answers: Sami, Eskimos, or Sikhirtya-the predecessors of the Nenets on the northern coast of Russia. The purpose of this study is to analyze the available sources and identify the main approaches to solving this problem. Keywords: Scotland, Orkney Islands, XVII-XVIII centuries, kayaks, Finns, Sami, Eskimos, Sikhirtya. In 1693, James Wallace, a curate from Kirkwall, published a Description of the Orkney Islands. Among the various notes that are of a geographical and cultural nature, the following interesting description stands out:: "From time to time, people who are called Finns appear in these waters. In the year 1682, one of them was seen in a small boat off the southern tip of the island of Edey, and many people gathered to see him, but when they decided to launch a boat to try to capture him, he immediately took to flight. Also in the year 1684, another was sighted off the coast of the island of Uestrei, and after that, for some time, the fishermen caught little or no fish at all, so that it was noticed that the Finns were taking fish away from the places where they sailed. These Finns seem to belong to those peoples who inhabit the Davis Strait region, a full description of which can be found in the Natural and Moral History of the Antilles, chapter XVIII. One of their boats was sent from Orkney to Edinburgh and is on display at the Royal College of Physicians with an oar and a device used for fishing" (Wallace, 1693, p. 28). The priest's son, James Wallace, Jr., in the second edition of the book, provided the above passage with the following commentary:: "I must admit that it is not entirely clear to me how these Finns came to be off ... Read more