Orkney's not often icy - the North Atlantic Drift keeps the islands reasonably mild. Very windy and pretty wet, and the winter nights are long.
As to the pre=Norse inhabitants, we don't really know much about them - the version of history Jackie quotes is very ganciful, but I won't start a debate, and the main point is true, slave raiding and trading were certainly part of the 'Viking' way of life. No need for me to have been in Orkney, though, there was at least as good a chance of being snatched away down near the Irish Sea - most famously after the siege of Dumbarton in 870, the victorious Vikings carried off 'a great booty' of slaves to the slave-market in Dublin, which was the biggest and busiest in the islands. From there, marketable slavegirls might well have shipped by merchants to the Mediterranean and those great markets of the Levant.