Short answers, pulled from the story.
Northern European short-tailed sheep are a group of traditional breeds characterised by a short, broad-based, fluke-shaped tail with typically thirteen vertebrae. They are distributed mainly in the British Isles, Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and the area around the Baltic Sea.
They are thought to descend from the first sheep brought to Europe by Neolithic farmers, making the lineage thousands of years old. The Soay sheep is believed to be a relict of that original Neolithic type.
Larger, long-tailed, white-fleeced sheep from southern Europe displaced them across most of their range. By the early twentieth century, short-tailed breeds were restricted to very remote islands and mountains.
The Finnsheep, from Finland, holds the record within the group, with documented births of up to seven or even nine live lambs at once. The Romanov and Icelandic breeds also regularly produce litters of three or more.
The North Ronaldsay, from the island of North Ronaldsay in the Orkney archipelago, forages mainly on seaweed for much of the year. A stone wall running just above the high-tide mark keeps the flock on the shoreline, away from the island's inland pasture.
More than thirty breeds survive, ranging from the Soay in the St Kilda archipelago to the Romanov in the Volga Valley of Russia. Several others, including the Cladagh from Ireland and the Lítla Dímun from the Faroe Islands, have become extinct.