The Place-names of Ness

By Iain F Macleod

Photograph Credit: Philly Hare

There are place-names on the Isle of Lewis which are older than the settlement of Iceland. They describe the land, some of the contain stories and information on how the land was used.

The Norse began settling in the islands around 800 CE, which maps to the time of the early Viking raids. It's thought that Norse died out on the island in the 15th Century, or a little earlier. That's only twenty generations ago.

You can find the influence of the Vikings in the words borrowed into the Gaelic language, in the architecture and in the material culture they left behind.

You can visit places like Saint Moluag's Church near the Butt of Lewis, first consecrated in the 6th century and rebuilt by the Vikings. And you can see some pieces from the most famous Lewis Viking find - the Lewis Chessmen - in Museum nan Eilean. Made from walrus ivory and whale teeth, the pensive Queen, the shield biting berserkers.

For islanders, the presence of the Norse language is everywhere. MacBain put the amount of Old Norse loan-names compared with place-names of a Gaelic origin at eighty percent. It's found in some of the sayings to do with the place as well - like 'Nis nam fear bàna' or 'Ness of the fair-haired men'.

In this post, I'll be relying heavily on Richard A.V Cox's seminal work on the settlement names of Lewis, and the paper he wrote on the place-names of Ness. Here is a web link to a bibliography of his his writing. (https://www.richardavcox.scot/RichardCoxBibliography.html)

Cox says, " Old Norse loan-words are words which were borrowed from Norse speakers at some time in the past by Gaelic speakers who went on to use them in their own language. In

the process, the sounds of the original Norse words have been largely adapted to the

sound system of the target language, i.e. Gaelic."^[1]

A third layer was added when these place-names were then Anglicised. For example, the village Suaineabost in Gaelic came from Old Norse Sveinabólsta∂r (Sveini's Farm) and was Anglicised to Swainbost. I wonder what Sveini was like. Was he a good farmer? Was he happy in the lovely village of Swainbost and did he take walks on the machair?

Ness is part of the Galson Estate, a large community-owned crofting estate in the North of Lewis. There is a river in Galson that you would have to cross if you were travelling from Ness to Barvas. The second part of Galson comes from Old Norse (ON) sund. It means a stretch of water to be crossed by swimming or a crossing-place.  The first word is ON galt-, or 'hog'. The river crossing of the hogs.

Ness itself comes from promontory or headland, and you can see this word as an element in many place-names on Lewis - Calanais, Stèinis, Aignis... Let's look at a few of the place-name elements which you'll start to see repeated as you travel around the island.

Bost is very common, it means 'farm'. There are villages called Habost and Swainbost (mentioned above) in Ness. Dail comes from ON dalr, a valley. The name of the villageCross, comes from ON kross - it has a few meanings. It's found in many places in Norway and can mean a crossroads, a religious cross, or a boundary marker.

And where does the name 'Lewis' come from. The Norse called the island Ljó∂hùs - a place-name that's found in both Sweden and Norway. A 'sound-house' or a 'people-house', in the sense of a place where people meet regularly. But my favourite translation of it is Watsons - House of Song.

^[1] Cox, Richard A. V., ‘The Norse Element in the Place-names of Ness’, unpublished report prepared for Project Dùn Èistean, 2006.

Iain F Macleod writes about Gaelic stories and places at Gaelic Blog (www.gaelic.blog). You can find out more about his writing at www.iainfmacleod.com