We'll hear of an ancient forest, lost below the rising sea, and about plans to test robots on the Orkney seabed today. We'll hear the story of the great auk and other vanished seabirds, and how voyagers from the Neolithic north may have sailed a stone for Stonehenge. There’s the search for the earliest stars and galaxies, the mysteries of auroral sounds, and the crises that life on Earth has come through over billions of years. We'll make a photographic journey from pole to pole, via Pacific islands. We will find out how two young Orcadians made equipment to receive the first mechanical TV transmissions, and how the island of Sanday knitted its way into the world of international fashion. And where was Orkney’s only nightclub?

They’re coming from Iceland and Faroe, Northern Ireland and Berneray, bringing stories of the native sheep and old and new uses of the meat and wool. You can find out how to cook Icelandic lamb, or how a Norse cloak can be woven today. You can join a gathering from the different islands to find out the ways of knitting and weaving the wool. You can hear about the progress of the Boreray flock established in Orkney, and find out about the new wool and meat developments with North Ronaldsay’s seaweed-eating sheep.

Quantum theory emerged in Helgoland 100 years ago, when Heisenberg went there to escape hay fever. A century on, the consequences are immense, but people still struggle to understand it. We’ve invited some of the freshest thinkers to explore its meaning – through poetry and music as well – and look ahead to new applications, from quantum cameras to quantum computers.

The Earth’s temperature is rising and the climate language is changing, moving towards practical action to cope with risks ahead. Speakers in four sessions on Monday 8 September have a remit to come up with practical actions which can be taken at an Orkney wide level or by communities, or even individuals. For each topic the audience assesses, with a panel assisting. We hear about Energy, Food from the Land, Housing and Transport. The day is opened by Prof. Tim Lang, a national authority on food security, who earlier this year warned of the urgent need for action and the vital role of communities.

There is a Cathedral concert, a choir from the Mearns, and the sweet sound of synthesizers. There is the harmony of harp and harmonica, an insight into the role of numbers in musical structure, and music in a quantum landscape. We go on a musical journey north to Faroe and Iceland with fiddle and accordion; and onward to Greenland with poetry and film for stories of whales and whaling and a search for lost ships.

Our new landscape film spans the immensity of geological time – from the ancient mountains of Caithness to the Stromness granite, from the sand hills of Dunnet Bay to boulder clay in Shapinsay from a long-ago ice flow; with sweeping panoramas from our new drone above. The passage of time is the theme of a new film at West Side Cinema, looking at buildings in a world of rock and concrete. Live poetry and music accompany a film of the graceful movements of whales.

The buffet lunches of Orkney fare at the Peedie Kirk are a treat to look forward to. They’re an opportunity to meet some of the varied mix of people who gather, and each of the five lunches has a One O’Clock Toast, with the subject this year including an Orkney woman doctor, Orkney’s first county archaeologist, and a great 19th-century folklorist. And in the evenings we have a wonderful mix of talents in the Orkney Club – fiddle players, accordionists, stories of life at sea and explorations of the quantum world, a poet from Ireland and a choir from Aberdeenshire.

Sample carrots to see if adding quarry dust to the soil helps their flavour. Visit the centre for testing wave and tide devices of the future. Meet the robots and hear about plans for a new Orkney subsea test centre for them. Take an evening trip to Birsay to hear the story of Robert Rendall’s love of the shore in poetry and prose, or spend an afternoon at a working meal mill. Enjoy the Vintage Rally in Kirkwall, and later the sound of the pipes on Broad Street. Visit the Cathedral for the Sunday morning service. And don’t miss the closing ceilidh!

The planetarium is back at the Family Day, plus a wealth of other activities, from building medicinal molecules to making electric circuits; and travelling in virtual reality through the underwater sights and sounds of seagrass meadows and ocean kelp forests. There are coding workshops, astronomy, energy activities. And you can meet the robots! How could you find love as a honeybee? – Find out in a new family show. And in another family show you can enjoy some astonishing illusions and the science of magic – see a head mysteriously grow and shrink and a coin pass through a solid rubber sheet.

See the varied colours and patterns knitted or woven from the wool of native sheep. Learn how to bring science into poetry. Sing with a choir for health and wellbeing. Plan your autumn garden work, and see new crops growing under glass. Find out how a distillery is recovering waste heat, and how to recycle ocean plastic with tabletop equipment.

Travel the world, pole to pole, with Belgian explorer Christian Clauwers’s photographs at the Ship of Fools gallery. Orkney Museum highlights worlds illustrated by artist Jim Baikie, for comic book series like Star Trek and Dr Who. It also features items from Orkney folklorist Walter Traill Dennison, some going back to Armada and Jacobite times. Orkney Wireless Museum is a treasure chest of social history, and the Camera Club’s theme is Orkney food and the stories behind it. Stromness Museum shows Orkney’s pioneering role in energy, and the Pier Arts Centre blends photographs and poetry for grasses and their uses.