What Is a Fell? The Words of the Lake District Landscape

Open a map of the Lake District and the names read like another language: Hard Knott, Swirl How, Esk Hause, Sourmilk Gill, Rosthwaite. In a sense they are. Most of the words for the land here were brought by Norse settlers, who came in the tenth century, mainly by way of Ireland, the Isle of Man and western Scotland, and named the fells, streams and clearings they farmed. Older British names survive underneath, and English names sit alongside.

Learn a handful of these words and the map starts to describe itself. Here are the ones you will meet most often, what they mean, and where to find them. (The standard reference, for anyone who wants to go further, is Diana Whaley's A Dictionary of Lake District Place-Names.)

Fell

Fell means a mountain or hill. It comes from the Old Norse fjall or fell, and it originally meant the high, open ground where sheep grazed in common. In the Lake District almost every hill is a fell, whatever its height, which is why walkers here go fellwalking rather than hillwalking, and why Alfred Wainwright's famous guides are the Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. Scafell, Grasmoor and Crinkle Crags are all fells, and so is the little hill behind the village. Fells and mountains paintings.

Tarn

Tarn means a small mountain lake, from the Old Norse tjörn. Most of the high tarns sit in hollows scooped out by small glaciers, right under a crag. Blea Tarn, Stickle Tarn and Red Tarn are among the best known. Our guide to the tarns explains how they formed and which ones to walk to.

Beck

Beck means a stream, from the Old Norse bekkr. It is the everyday Lakeland word for running water smaller than a river: Aira Beck runs down to Ullswater, Barrow Beck runs under Ashness Bridge, and Langstrath Beck runs through one of the wildest valleys in Borrowdale. If you hear someone in Cumbria talk about "the beck", they mean the stream at the bottom of the field.

Gill, or ghyll

Gill means a narrow ravine with a stream running through it, from the Old Norse gil. You will see it spelled two ways. "Gill" is the older form. "Ghyll" first appears in an edition of Wordsworth's poem An Evening Walk printed in the 1820s, where the first edition of 1793 has "gill", and the spelling caught on from there. So the names are mixed: Dungeon Ghyll and Stock Ghyll, but Sourmilk Gill and Greenhead Gill.

Force

Force means a waterfall, from the Old Norse fors. Aira Force, Scale Force, Stock Ghyll Force and Dungeon Ghyll Force all carry it. Aira Force is a name made entirely of Norse: eyrr, a gravel bank, and á, a river, so it is the waterfall on the gravel-bank river. Our guide to Lake District waterfalls goes through the best of them. Aira Force paintings.

Pike

Pike means a peaked summit. Whether it came from Old English or Old Norse is still argued, but the meaning is clear enough when you look at the Langdale Pikes on the skyline, or at Scafell Pike, which was once simply called "the Pikes", meaning the peaks. Dollywaggon Pike, Fleetwith Pike and Red Pike are more of the same. Langdale Pikes paintings and travel posters.

Stickle

Stickle comes from the Old English for steep, and it is used for a hill with a steep, prominent rocky top. Harrison Stickle and the Pike of Stickle are two of the Langdale Pikes, and Stickle Tarn lies beneath them. "Pike of Stickle" is partly a tautology: the peak of the steep peak. Pike of Stickle paintings.

How, or howe

How means a hill or mound, from the Old Norse haugr. It usually names a smaller, rounded top: Silver How above Grasmere, Swirl How in the Coniston fells, Hartsop above How above Patterdale. Silver How paintings.

Knott

Knott means a rocky knoll, a small, craggy hill. Hard Knott, which gives Hardknott Pass its name, Rannerdale Knotts above Crummock Water, and plain "The Knott" above Hayeswater are all examples. Rannerdale Knotts paintings.

Crag

Crag means a steep rock face or cliff. Unlike most of the words here it is not Norse at all: it comes from the old Celtic languages, like the Gaelic creag and the Welsh carreg. Dow Crag above Coniston, Castle Crag in Borrowdale and Walla Crag above Derwentwater all carry it. Dow Crag paintings.

Dale

Dale means a valley, from the Old Norse dalr, with an Old English cousin, dæl. The names are often little stories. Borrowdale is the valley of the fortress river. Wasdale is the valley of the lake, and Wast Water takes its name from the valley rather than the other way round. Our article on the Lake District valleys visits every one. Valleys and passes paintings.

Mere and water

Mere is the Old English for a lake: Windermere is Winand's lake, first written down as Winendermer in the twelfth century, and Grasmere is another. Water is the commoner name for a big lake here, as in Ullswater, Wast Water and Coniston Water. Some waters hide older Norse words: Elterwater was the swans' lake. Only one of the lakes is actually called a lake, and that is Bassenthwaite Lake. Grasmere paintings.

Thwaite

Thwaite means a clearing, from the Old Norse þveit: a patch of land cleared from woodland for farming. It is one of the commonest endings on the map. Bassenthwaite was Bastun's clearing. Braithwaite, Rosthwaite, Seathwaite, Satterthwaite and Thornthwaite are all farms or hamlets that began as clearings. Braithwaite paintings.

Rigg

Rigg means a ridge, and the double "g" is a sign of its Scandinavian roots (Old Norse hryggr, a back or ridge). High Rigg near Keswick, Blea Rigg above Easedale and Lank Rigg in the western fells are all long, low ridges. Blea Rigg paintings.

Hause

Hause means a neck: the low point between two fells, where a path crosses from one valley to the next. Esk Hause, at the heart of the high fells, is the highest walkers' pass in the Lake District. Boredale Hause lies above Patterdale, and the road from Pooley Bridge into Martindale climbs over Martindale Hause by St Peter's Church.

Nab and scar

A nab is a projecting spur or end of a hill, and a scar, from the Old Norse sker, is a cliff or a bare rocky outcrop. Nab Scar, above Rydal Water, has both: the steep rocky end of the Fairfield ridge. The Nab, in the quiet country above Martindale, is a spur of its own. Nab Scar paintings.

Raise and man

Two words for the stones on top. A raise is a cairn, a heap of stones raised up. Dunmail Raise, the pass between Grasmere and Thirlmere, is said to be the cairn of Dunmail, a king of the old kingdom of Strathclyde. High Raise, and the fell simply called Raise, carry the same word. A man is a summit cairn, as on the Old Man of Coniston and Sergeant Man; where the word comes from is still uncertain. Old Man of Coniston paintings.

Edge

Edge is Old English for a narrow ridge or escarpment, and in the Lake District it means the knife-edged ridges that walkers both love and fear. Striding Edge and Swirral Edge lead up to Helvellyn on either side of Red Tarn. Sharp Edge, on Blencathra, was once called Razor Edge. Striding Edge paintings.

Holme, garth and side

A holme, from the Old Norse holmr, is an island or a patch of dry ground in wet land: Lady Holme is an island on Windermere, and Holme Fell stands above Coniston. A garth, from garðr, is an enclosure, as in Dalegarth in Eskdale. And side usually just means a hillside, but watch for the trap: Ambleside is not a hillside at all. Its name comes from Norse words meaning the summer pasture by the sandbank on the river.

The older names

Underneath the Norse there is an older layer, from Cumbric, the British language once spoken here, close to Welsh. Cumbria itself means the land of the Cymry, the same word the Welsh use for themselves. Blencathra probably means the summit of the seat, from words for a top and a chair, which suits its saddle-shaped profile. Helvellyn is probably Cumbric too, perhaps meaning yellow moorland. You can often tell the British names because they put the main word first, like Blen- and Glen-, where Norse and English names put it last, like -fell and -dale. Blencathra paintings.

A fell they know by name

Every painting on this page is of a place you can find on the map, and any one of them makes a thoughtful present for someone who has walked there. The paintings are impressions of these places rather than photographs, sold as prints and canvases in three sizes:

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