Fitful Head, Tongue of Gangsta, The Trip
: Shetland and Orkney have some wonderful place names. Steve Goldman has done a wonderful job of collecting them.
Strange Maps picks out some of the best of them:
Somehow, the
Banks of Runabout
sounds vaguely like a critique of the financial sector. And the
White Stane of Willies
might as well have been mentioned in the lewd paragraph. The
Taing of the Busy
? That’s that faint ringing noise that gets inside your head when you’ve been up for 24 hours straight. Also known as the
Head of Work
. The
Knowes of Euro
?
The
Candle of Sneuk
? The
Riff of Wasbister
? We sort of know what half the name means. But how frustrating to have not even the glimmer of a clue about the
Neven o’ Grinni
, the
Sinians of Cutclaws
, the
Glifters of Lyrawa,
or the
Quilse of Hoganeap.