Arthur's Seat (Edinburgh)
| Arthur's Seat | ||
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| height | 251 m ASL | |
| location | Edinburgh , Scotland | |
| Notch height | 186 m | |
| Coordinates | 55 ° 56 '39 " N , 3 ° 9' 43" W | |
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Arthur's Seat is the 251 m high local mountain of the Scottish capital Edinburgh .
location
Arthur's Seat is about 1.5 km east of the actual city center, but is completely surrounded by the residential area of the city of Edinburgh and its suburbs. It is part of Holyrood Park with the royal residential palace Holyrood Palace . Its summit offers sweeping views across Edinburgh to the bridge over the Firth of Forth , the Southern Uplands , East Lothian and the Southern Highlands .
geology
Arthur's Seat is of volcanic origin. Very similar to the neighboring rock on which Edinburgh Castle sits enthroned, it forms a solidified lava dome that is dated to the Carboniferous Age. In some parts of the mountain this is visible through exposed basalt rock layers , especially on a rock formation in front of the city, the Salisbury Crags, and on the so-called Samson's Ribs, the "ribs of Samson ", on the east side of the mountain - tower here basalt columns, some meters high. Between the summit of Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags runs a small valley that was rounded by a glacier in the Quaternary , so that today the fairly easy normal route to the summit of Arthur's Seat runs through part of it. There are also various, sometimes very demanding, routes to the summit that require extensive equipment and experience.
Another neighboring lava dome is the North Berwick Law , about 30 km to the east, which is easily visible from the summit when the weather is clear.
Naming
The origin of the name Arthur's Seat can no longer be determined with certainty. There was never an official Gaelic name for the mountain, but the writer William Maitland suspected that the name is an Anglicitation of the Gaelic Àrd-na-Said , which can roughly be translated as "peak of the arrows". However, there is no interpretation of the name in relation to the mountain, nor is there any other evidence. Another variant of the historian John Milne is Àrd-thir Suidhe, which is translated to “place on high ground” after rearranging the word order according to Gaelic grammar. According to the shape of the mountain, this would make more sense, but there are no other historical sources to support this interpretation either.
swell
- ↑ James Grant: Old and New Edinburgh (accessed October 30, 2010).
- ↑ archive.org: Gaelic place names of the Lothians , accessed on February 21, 2011
