Legimus uero in ipso oceano iam expleta parte occidentali tanquam ad partem regredientes meridianam que sunt numero insule triginta tres que et dorcades appellantur. que quamuis non existant omnes exculte attamen nomina illarum uolueramus christo nobis iuuante designare. sed quia peccatis emergentibus suete a diuersis gentibus ipsa dominatur patria et ut barbarus mos est uariis uocationibus easdem insulas appellant.
As early as the time of Pomponius Mela, writing in the first half of the first century AD, before the conquest of Britain, the Orkneys were reckoned as being thirty in number. This appears to have been a literary trope (although others, such as Isidore of Seville, recorded 33, while Pliny counted 40) and need not be taken seriously.