The Great And Little Ormes

[poliphilo]

Llandudno lies between two rocky headlands- the Great Orme and the Litlle Orme. Here's the great Orme.



And here's the Little Orme.



And here's The Little Orme again, shot from the Great Orme. Yes I climbed to the top and it's very steep and my legs are killing me. 



Looks like a great serpent sliding out to sea, doesn't it? I've got it into my head that the word "orme" is related to the old English "wurm" meaning serpent or dragon- but I can't find any  conformation.

Comments

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I found this in Wikipedia.

Both the Great and Little Ormes have been etymologised to the Old Norse word for sea serpent (transliterated to urm (or orm) and pronounced as /ǫrɱ/ in the IPA). (The modern day word, Orme, is pronounced as [ɔːɱ] in English). Marauding Vikings are thus said to have believed that the Ormes (and the wider Creuddyn Peninsula) resembled a sea serpent - with the Great Orme being the serpent's head - as their boats came in. But it is very difficult to substantiate this belief because the Vikings left us no written texts, because it seems unlikely that the Vikings ever colonised the area (there are no other Norse names in Gwynedd), and because etymology is a notoriously imprecise tool.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's really interesting.

It seems like it's an insoluble puzzle how these two Welsh headlands wound up with what seem to be Viking names.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Not really, The Vikings were intrepid travellers. They went anywhere they thought they might find something to steal. Its just that most of the time they went home again. I would not have been difficult for them to get to the outside of the British Isles. After all they got to America before Columbus, perhaps making a stop in Wales whilst on the way. Their boats were very manouverable and very sea worthy. Our local Viking club commissioned the building of a replica. It is so beautiful and WORKS!!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's just that all the other place names on the coast are Welsh. I don't doubt that the Vikings could have got there if they'd have wanted to, only there's no evidence to suggest they actually did.

Would the local Welsh have accepted a couple of Scandanavian placenames from people who were only passing by? That's the real puzzle.