After the election of the Healey government in the first year of the Caroline Era, state funding was given to the small societies for the promotion and revival of Norse heritage in the isles and northern Highlands. This soon became a project to revive the Norn languages, which itself led to the establishment of popular classes in Norn in the isles and northern Highlands along with a major oral history project. This formed a rallying point for Orcadian and Shetlandic nationalism, particularly in the more northerly isles where popular feeling had led to the argument that the Act of Union did not apply for historical reasons and was in any event inappropriate for such a remote group of islands.