About our surroundings

Griomsiader has about 30 houses, 2 street lights, a Royal Mail mailbox, red BT telephone booth, community church, lots of sheep & no shops. We are about 7.5 miles from Stornoway, so we don't feel totally out in the sticks! It's quite a cosmopolitan village with Germans, South Africans & other Scottish incomers. Strictly speaking anybody not born in the village is an "incomer", although these days the term are mostly reserved for people not from the Isle.

The Outer Hebrides are also known as the Western Isles, and I agree with other writers that the latter are kind of meaningless, because the "Western" part implies that there should be "Eastern" Isles too; which is where? The word Hebrides probably originated from a misprint of the word "Hebudes" by which the islands west of the coast of Scotland was known to Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer and mathematician. The name Hebudes is considered to be a corruption of the Norse word "Havbredey", meaning 'Isles on the Edge of the Sea'.

The Isles was under Norse rule until about 1266 and to this day four out of five place-names are Viking in origin. But as you can see, names aren't the only leftovers from Norse rule....

You may also have noticed that I write about Isles (plural), obviously because there are more than one. The biggest one is Lewis & Harris (just to confuse matters, the locals talk about the Isle of Lewis & the Isle of Harris but it is actually only one Isle, albeit connected by a fairly narrow strip of land). Then there are (going south) Taransay, Berneray, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, Eriskay, Barra, Vatersay, Sandray, Pabbay & Mingulay. (All names are the English spellings, the Gaelic for Benbecula, as an example, is Beinn na Faoghla.) There are also scores of even smaller isles surrounding the bigger ones, some inhabited, others not.

Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, is with a population of about 9,000 people, the main town of the Outer Hebrides and the seat of the Comhairle nan Eilan Siar (literally the Council of the Isles).

The isles east of the Minch are known as the Inner Hebrides, including the Isles of Skye and Mull. The Minch is the sea channel between the Inner & Outer Hebrides & in the north, the channel separating the Outer Hebrides from the Scottish Mainland.

Harris is, amongst other things, famous for tweed & Lewis for the Callanish (Calanais in Gaelic) Standing Stones, a circle of stones as impressive & expansive, although not as tall, as Stonehenge. Callanish is much more accessible as Stonehenge: it is possible to walk right up to the circle of Standing Stones.

The name Lewis comes from the Gaelic word Leodhas which means marshy. Quite an accurate name, let me tell you! Moors & bogs abound, probably because the Isle is underlaid by so-called Lewisian gneiss: at 2,900 million years old, the oldest rock in Europe & over half the age of the Earth itself.

One result of all the moors & bogs, is peat. These days peat has lost it's importance as a fuel, but is still used quite extensively on the Isle (also in the Highlands in the manufacture of whisky). One can still get a peat bank assigned to oneself by speaking to the local Grazings Clerk, which gives you permission to dig your own peat, usually in late spring.

The Outer Hebrides are the stronghold of Gaelic, after Greek & Latin, the oldest literary language in Europe. For many people, especially the elderly, English is their second language, Gaelic being their mother tongue. Gaelic is making a strong comeback & is once again taught at schools & there are even some Gaelic-only playgroups & classes at school.