Qualla: Uig, Lewis

Uig, Lewis: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chmee2, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1831, the sand at Camas Uig shifted, and ninety-three small figures emerged from a thousand-year sleep. The Lewis Chessmen, carved from walrus ivory, had probably been buried by a Norse trader sometime in the 12th century and forgotten. A local crofter found them. They are now scattered across two of Britain's greatest museums, but the sand they came from is still here, fringing one of Scotland's loneliest bays at the western edge of the Isle of Lewis.

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Image: Chmee2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Uig, Lewis: Bay of the Norsemen

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name says everything. Uig comes from the Old Norse Vik, meaning bay, and the Vikings who named it left fingerprints across the parish. Place names in Gaelic and Norse layer the map like sediment. The civil parish of Uig sprawls across roughly 250 square miles, reaching from t...

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Image: Nessy-Pic | CC BY-SA 3.0

Uig, Lewis: The Shell-Sand Beaches

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Camas Uig is one of those rare places where the geology cooperates with the eye. A vast strand of ground shell forms the beach, and where the shell sand meets the grass it produces machair, a fertile coastal meadow that bursts into wildflowers in summer. Similar shell beaches edg...

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Image: Public domain

Uig, Lewis: The Clearances

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1841, the parish held nearly 2,000 people. The villages around Uig Bay - Capadale, Pennydonald, Baileneacail, Baileghreusaich, Earastadh and Mealastadh - were thriving crofting townships. Then the evictions began. Landowners wanted sheep and sporting estates, and over the next...

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Uig, Lewis: The Chessmen and the Seer

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nachosan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pennydonald was the place. A crofter found the hoard buried in the sand at Camas Uig sometime before 1831 - the exact circumstances were lost almost immediately to legend. Most of the pieces are now at the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, with replicas at the U...

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Image: Nachosan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Uig, Lewis: What Remains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The archaeology of Uig is dense. The Callanish Stones, a Neolithic site of international importance, sit within the parish - older than Stonehenge and ringed by seven smaller satellite circles. Dun Carloway is the second-best preserved Iron Age broch in Scotland, after Mousa in S...

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Image: Public domain