Not to mention the birds! @fairislebirdobs.bsky.social 🐧🕊🦅🦆🦢🦉🦤

Gairsay, home of Sveinn Ásleifarson in the #Saga of the Earls of #Orkney!... Will we see the caves in which he hid from Earl Haraldr as we pass Greenholm!? open.substack.com/pub/uonengli...

Wonderful Open Country episode re Fair Isle! We remember Marie's knitting studio, Eileen's fantastic baking and lovely times in the Community Hall talking #placenames and #sagas! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

We've just been to the preview of this wonderful exhibition by @papayranger.bsky.social and Saiorse Higgins, a must-see if you're in Glasgow, in fact a reason to go! #Papay #Orkney gsaexhibitions.co.uk/exhibition/s...

Should you happen to be in Kirkwall on Saturday the 25th of October, do come and say hello in the Orcadian Bookshop!

Congratulations Matthew, Corinna, and Judith. I’m so pleased to see that your brilliant project has a lasting legacy in these publications and the forthcoming website. I am really looking forward to reading Judith’s new translation and exploring the places on the map!

Really pleased to see these gorgeous fruits of the @ragnasislands.bsky.social project along with core team members @shroomgirl.bsky.social and @matthew-blake.bsky.social

This was fun! We're so pleased with how they turned out!

The Ragna's Islands Project has come to an end... but it lives on!... in these beautiful booklets (one for Fair Isle, one for North Ronaldsay, & one for Papay)... which judithjesch.bsky.social unboxed today! #Orkney #PlaceNames #OrkneyingaSaga

ON dys occurs in many #Orkney #PlaceNames incl. Disher (N. Ronaldsay) where it appears in the plural, Geo of Dishan (Egilsay) where the ending appears to retain the ON definite article & Milly-dissan & The Disses o’ the Holm (both Holm of Papay) the first applying to a fishing mark! (Marwick)

Delighted yesterday to meet another #Ragna in a #runic inscription (Sm 169) set in the outside wall of the church at Ljungby, Småland, Sweden. @ragnasislands.bsky.social 🧵1/4

And it all started when the Icelander Hallr rocked up in #NorthRonaldsay... Ragna, of @ragnasislands.bsky.social's fame, got him the introduction to Rǫgnvaldr's court. See #SagaoftheEarlsofOrkney ch. 81.

As we near the end of @ragnasislands.bsky.social, I look back with pride on the last 18 months. Thanks in large part to the core team, @shroomgirl.bsky.social and @matthew-blake.bsky.social, we achieved what we planned and aspects of the project will live on: blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...

The Ragna’s Islands project has now come to an end. BUT it is not the end! Read our final blogpost for exciting news about forthcoming publications including the new translation of The Saga of the Earls of Orkney by @judithjesch.bsky.social and other resources! blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...

A new paper on the Knap of Howar has confirmed that the two Neolithic structures are much later than once thought. #archaeology #Orkney #Neolithic

After our @ragnasislands.bsky.social research trip to Orkney in March/April, project member @shroomgirl.bsky.social stayed on to do some more #placename research for her PhD project. vsnr.org/2025/05/09/r...

Anyone in #Orkney in June, fancy learning more about geophys? What a wonderful experience this will be 😍

Well, we've been researching Ragna's Islands for over a year now... and thanks to the fab #OrkneyMuseum you can finally meet her! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Looking forward to this!

That @ragnasislands.bsky.social is everywhere!

Many of you no doubt will have been wondering when you will be able to read a solid bit of research on ‘synonym substitution’ in Orkney place-names, well as the weekend beckons here is your chance!

'...and they left behind Irish books and bells and croziers; from that it could be understood that they were Irish men.' This meaning of 'papi' is also found in place-names in Iceland and Scotland, such as Papay (Papa Westray), where there is good evidence for a pre-Norse religious community. 3/3

The other meaning of Old Norse 'papi' is also found in Íslendingabók, in its account of the earliest inhabitants of Iceland: 'At that time there were those Christian men here whom the Norsemen called 'papar', but they later went away because they did not want to be here with heathen people...' 2/3

The Old Norse term 'papi' has two meanings. Most commonly (also spelled 'pápi') it means pope, as when Íslendingabók (The Book of Icelanders) says that Leo VII (an error for Leo IX) was pope when Ísleifr became Iceland's first bishop. #Pope #LeoXIV #Norse (photo from a garage door near me). 🧵1/3

Our latest blog on the #OrkneyingaSaga #PlaceName Geitaberg is out! #Orkney blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...

Our latest blog looks at the #saga #PlaceName Paplay! Where was it, when was it, and what does it mean?! #Orkney #OrkneyingaSaga blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...

Today is the feast day of St Magnus, patron saint of #Orkney, martyred by his cousin Haakon on the island of Egilsay on this day 1117AD. The beautiful @stmagnuscathedral.bsky.social was founded by his nephew in 1137 in memory of Magnus. His relics still lie in a pillar there.

And of course both Rousay (Hrólfsey) and Gairsay (Gáreksey) occur several times in #OrkneyingaSaga... nice to see the skáli name too!

It is finally out... 'Scapa…part two… the klif-hanger…' What do we make of the various manuscript forms of this #PlaceName?! Find out in our latest blog! blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...

Visited the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh today & one of my favourite things must be this wonderful Scandinavian necklace from Westness #Rousay that I was lucky enough to hear about from Caroline Patterson at the @ragnasislands.bsky.social workshop in #Orkney earlier this month!

Left Hrólfsey for Þingavöll early this morning, before making our way to Kirkuvágr & thence to Hafnarvágr for the stretch across the Péttlandsfjörðr to Þórsá in Katanes. The last of the Ragna place-names team have left the Orkneyjar... for now... #PlaceNames #OrkneyingaSaga #Orkney

In collaboration with the University of Leicester, we are delighted to announce the return of the Midlands Viking Symposium! Saturday 17 May 2025, 10am - 5pm Senate Chamber, Trent Building, University of Nottingham Registration: £30 Find out more: nott.ac/midlandsvikingsymposium

Today we visited the site of Hugh Marwick's childhood home, Guidal (originally Bergoodale, 1734) in Sourin (#Rousay). If you're interested in #Orkney #PlaceNames Marwick's works are the place to start! For more of Guidal see the fab #RousayRemembered website! rousayremembered.com/nethermill-t...

Today I've been pondering the #PlaceNames in the Sourin district of #Rousay (Sorweik in 1563). Marwick suggests 2 meanings for this place which is named for the burn which runs through it. Either deriving from susa 'a hissing sound' or ON saurr 'filth, mud' + suffixed definitely article #Orkney

I'm also making use of this fantastic #Rousay website! Such a wonderful resource for the history of this isle! rousayremembered.com

Today I've been prowling around on the SW coast of #Rousay looking at places and their names. This is the pier at Geo of Romps below Hullion in Frotoft, with Gairsay in the distance. #PlaceNames. Marwick notes that the name, recorded on the OS map, is unknown locally #Orkney

One of the #Ragna team is off this week after the fab project workshop in #Kirkwall, looking at the #PlaceNames of #Rousay! AKA Hrolfsey in #OrkneyingaSaga - ON Hrólfs-ey ‘Hrólfr’s island’. Here's Saviskaill, ON sœvar-skáli, 'sea-skaill' i.e 'hall or house by the sea' (Marwick).

Professor Ingrid Mainland, Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon and Dr Siobhan Cooke-Miller were invited to participate in a @ragnasislands.bsky.social project workshop held in Kirkwall earlier this week. #archaeology #orkney #viking #norse #placenames archaeologyorkney.com/2025/04/03/r...

The Ragna team have been exploring the #OrkneyingaSaga places of Egilsay and Wyre today!

Spent the morning in the fab @orkneylibrary.bsky.social #archives today... yes... thinking about #PlaceNames... here are a couple of rather nice spellings of two places that occur in #OrkneyingaSaga: Rapness and Orphir

Guess where we are!

This is a week tomorrow!

‘Scapa’ is an important place in #OrkneyingaSaga & is still applied to a number of places in #Orkney: to #ScapaFlow & Scapa Bay, to the farms of Upper & Nether Scapa & of course the #ScapaDistillery... but what does #Scapa mean?! Find out in our latest blog! blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...

Date for your diary! If you're in Kirkwall on Tuesday 1st April, come along to our FREE #PoetryReading at the St. Magnus Centre at 7:30pm! With poets Charlotte Eichler and Lydia Harris and #saga poetry from @judithjesch.bsky.social! Book your place (details on the poster)!

Coming up in March, we look forward to hosting this year's 'History and Archives in Practice' day conference, on Weds 5th, with partners @ihr.bsky.social and The National Archives bit.ly/3XlcLbW #HAP25's theme is ‘Working with Memory', with contributions from historians and archivists #Skystorians

No fooling! If you're in #Kirkwall on 1st April, come along to our reading of #poetry composed in and inspired by #Orkney and #Shetland. 7.30 pm in the St Magnus Centre, and free. A @ragnasislands.bsky.social event.

And a longer account of Jenny Murray's recent work here: archaeologyorkney.com/2025/02/25/s...

It was 553 year ago today, Orkney and Shetland came along to play. They're both a really nice group of isles, and they're guaranteed to raise a smile. So may I introduce to you, The act you've known for all these years... etc

Cathedral Curator Fran is giving a walk and talk about some of the cathedral's most extraordinary gravestones! Spaces are strictly limited so BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL - see poster for details. ☠️

Where are the Orkneyinga #saga #PlaceNames Hellisey & Vǫlunes? Can tracing the route Sveinn Ásleifarson took to escape Earl Haraldr help us locate these 'lost' places? Find out in our latest blog! #Orkney blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasisland...