The Village Names of Lewis

A new edition of the classic work on the island's Old Norse place-name heritage.

It is now over 50 years since Magne Oftedal’s classic article on ‘The Village Names of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides’ was published in Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, Volume 17 (Oslo, 1954). It was an important by-product of research carried out by Oftedal into the Gaelic dialect of the Leurbost district of Lewis (published in 1956), where he lived from 1950 to 1951 This booklet consists of a facsimile copy of the original article, together with the most interesting map which accompanied it. We have added some photographs, concentrating particularly on villages whose names are of Norse origin – at least 99 of the 126 place-names described in the article, as Oftedal notes at the end of the article.

Published: 2009