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Journal article
Hidden by Mist and Waves: Surviving Stories About Land Submergence from the Isle of Man (Irish Sea) are Thousands of Years Old
Geoheritage, Vol.17(2), pp.1-12
2025
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
The largest island in the Irish Sea (northwest Europe) is the Isle of Man that became an island around 9000 years ago when land connections with Cumbria (northwest England) and Galloway (southern Scotland) were submerged by rising sea level. The Isle of Man is likely to have been occupied by people at this time so they (and their Manx descendants) witnessed both islandization and the subsequent size reduction of the island. As with similar studies of other places in the world, this study argues that many of the numerous Manx stories (oral traditions) recalling land submergence originated with people’s observations of the effects of rising sea level on coastal-land loss. Also similar are the cognitive devices (like periodic island reappearance and the sounds and glimpses of submerged lands) that people often used to sustain the memories of these events in pre-literate (oral) contexts. This study estimates minimum ages for the oldest Manx stories (those recalling the submergence of ‘land bridges’) by comparing the geographies they encode to precisely-calibrated reconstructions of past sea-level change in this region. In this way, it appears that these stories are more than 8000 years old, similar in age to comparable oral traditions from elsewhere in the world.
Details
- Title
- Hidden by Mist and Waves: Surviving Stories About Land Submergence from the Isle of Man (Irish Sea) are Thousands of Years Old
- Authors
- Patrick D. Nunn (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and Society
- Publication details
- Geoheritage, Vol.17(2), pp.1-12
- Publisher
- Springer
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1007/s12371-025-01139-9
- ISSN
- 1867-2485; 1867-2477
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Grant note
- University of the Sunshine Coast
- Organisation Unit
- Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research; School of Law and Society
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991129937202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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