Orkney Image Library

I have an ancestral line that I can trace back to stronsay late 1700's I have never been there and this is the first photograph I have ever seen of the island, please find or add more.

That house on the left is where I was born and brought up. It's called "Fagerheim" as my mother was Norwegian.

I understand there was a fairly high percent of the population that was of Norwegian descent. Makes sense considering the location of the Orkney Island chain. Is there a translation for "Stronsay" does it actually have a meaning. Someone told me it is actually a Norwegian word for something?

Like so many Orkney placenames, and virtually all the islands' names, 'Stronsay' comes from the old Norse language. There has been some debate as to what Stronsay actually 'means'. I can't improve on Charles Tait's words in one of his guidebooks:
Stronsay (ON Strjonsey - gain or profit island - most likely in the sense of good farming and fishing).

Mark, I think at some point in the distant past, it meant "Strjons øy - the island of someone called Strjon, presumably a Viking!

Thanks Ian for the insight into the name... the other one that has always made me wonder is the small place or village on one of the islands called Brinyan.

My bibles when it comes to Orkney place-names - Marwick's 'Orkney Farm-names' & 'The Place-names of Birsay' - make no mention of Brinyan, or any name similar enough to suggest a common origin. Yet the word Brinyan does have an Orkney 'feel' to it.

Thanks Ian, I'll relocate my source for that name and see if I can then shed some light on it.

Marwick's Rousay Place Names gives two possible origins for The Brinnyan - O.N. bringan, the breast or on phonetic grounds O.N. brennan, the burnt clearing. It's a small district to the SE of Rousay.

Ian
If you look at Marwick's Rousay Place-names you will find it on p 52 he is uncertain as to whether it is from O.N. bringan (breast) or brennan (the burnt clearing)

Thanks Cathleen and Jim.

Thanks to all of you for your efforts to clarify that word for me, very intresting as it comes very close to the limited information I was given years ago by one of the last people here in Canada I knew who still spoke Gaelic. His interpretation was that it was a " hillside clearing",so it appears that "clearing" of some sort is at the root of the word.
I can't wait to get to the islands someday. I hear there is a great music festival there,perhaps I can bring my whole group over as we perform allover Canada and the US. www.rantmaggierant.com