Tarskavaig
human settlement in Sleat on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK
Tarskavaig (Tarsgabhaig in Scottish Gaelic) is a village on the west coast of Sleat on the Isle of Skye in the council area of Highland, Scotland. It sits in a glen which meets Tarskavaig Bay and lies opposite the Isles of Eigg, Rum and Canna. It is often said that Tarskavaig has the best view of the Cuillin in Skye and is home to the oldest sheep in the world.
Tarskavaig is a traditional crofting village, with a high number of Gaelic speakers, several families with children, and active crofters.
It has an SSSI related to the Tarskavaig Moine Thrust, which is located at Achnacloich. The crofting township of Achnacloich or Achadh na Cloiche (Scottish Gaelic: "Stonefield") is located on the outskirts of Tarskavaig by the Gillean Burn watercourse.
History
The small coastal crofting community of Tarskavaig is located within Lord MacDonald's old estate, on the Sleat peninsula of Skye.
The first Norwegian settlers arrived on Skye around 875 AD and with inter-marriage a Celtic-Norwegian population was quickly established. The name of the village reflects the long and mixed history of the village, being an Old Norse name, þorskavágr (or þorskavík), modern Norwegian Torskavåg (alternatively Torskavik), which translates as "Cod Bay" in English. This connection between the Vikings and the Gaels can be seen by the inclusion of tarsk as a loan word in Gaelic, from torsk in Norwegian.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tarskavaig” as human settlement in Sleat on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2237637. Authority coordinates are 57.113, -5.988. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tarskavaig” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.