“Fell” (from Old Norse fell, fjall, "mountain"[1]) is a word used to refer to mountains, or certain types of mountainous landscape, in Scandinavia, the Isle of Man, and parts of northern England.
Contents |
The English word fell comes from Old Norse fell, fjall (both forms existed).[1] It is cognate with Icelandic fjall/fell, Faroese fjall, Danish fjeld, Swedish fjäll, and Norwegian fjell, all referring to mountains rising above the alpine tree line.[2]
In Northern England, especially in the Lake District and in the Pennine Dales, the word fell originally referred to an area of uncultivated high ground used as common grazing. This meaning is found in the names of various breeds of livestock, bred for life on the uplands, such as Rough Fell sheep and fell ponies. It is also found in many place names across the North of England, often attached to the name of a community; thus Seathwaite Fell, for example, would be the common grazing land used by the farmers of Seathwaite. The fellgate marks the exit from a settlement onto the fell (see photograph for example).
"Fell" can refer to any one of the mountains and hills of the Lake District and the Pennine Dales. This meaning tends to overlap with the previous one, especially where place names are concerned: in particular, names that originally referred to grazing areas tend to be applied to hilltops, as is the case with the aforementioned Seathwaite Fell. In other cases the reverse is true; for instance, the name of Wetherlam, in the Coniston Fells, though understood to refer to the mountain as a whole, strictly speaking refers to the summit; the slopes have names such as Tilberthwaite High Fell, Low Fell and Above Beck Fells.
In northern England, there is a Lord of the Fells - this ancient aristocratic title being associated with the Lords of Bowland in north-eastern Lancashire.
Groups of cairns are a common feature on many fells, often marking the summit — there are fine examples on Wild Boar Fell in Mallerstang Dale, Cumbria, and on Nine Standards Rigg just outside Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria.
As the most mountainous region of England, the Lake District is the area most closely associated with the sport of fell running, which takes its name from the fells of the district. "Fellwalking" is also the term used locally for the activity known in the rest of Great Britain as hillwalking.
In Norway and Sweden, fjell (Norwegian) or fjäll (Swedish) usually refers to any mountain or upland high enough that forest will not naturally survive at the top, in effect a mountain tundra. It can in some instances refer to other mountains of the same shape as the far northern mountains even when they permit forest growth to the top, but this isn't very common. Without a tree line, it would generally be referred to as simply a mountain.
In Finland, the mountains characteristic of the region of Lapland are called tunturi (plural: tunturit), but this term is often translated with the Swedish term fjäll in English (tunturi is used to refer to treeless plains at high altitudes in far north regions, as well). They are round inselbergs rising from the otherwise flat surroundings. The mountains in Finnish Lapland reach heights of up to 400 and 800 metres, where the upper reaches are above the tree line. Those that do not reach the tree line, on the other hand, are mostly referred to as vaara. The mountains in Finnish Lapland form vestiges of the Karelides mountains, formed two billion years ago. The term tunturi is a loan from Sami, compare Kildin Sami tūndâr, which means "uplands, treeless mountain tract". From this expression, the word tundra is borrowed, as well.[3][4]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||