If you've ever been to the Lake District, you've used the word fell. Fell-walking. Fell-running. "We're going up the fells this weekend." It's the only word Cumbria uses for its mountains. Most people don't think twice about it.
But fell isn't an English word. It's Old Norse.
Wasdale at sunset in autumn
Where the word comes from
Fell comes from the Old Norse fjall, meaning mountain - specifically, open high ground above the tree line. The word arrived in Cumbria around 925 AD, carried by Norse settlers who had originally come from western Norway. They didn't travel directly. They came via their colonies in Iceland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, eventually settling in the uplands of what we now call the Lake District.
These settlers left an extraordinary mark on the language of the region. Fell is just one of dozens of Norse words still in everyday use across Cumbria. A stream is a beck (from bekkr). A waterfall is a force (from foss). A small mountain lake is a tarn (from tjörn). A clearing in the forest is a thwaite (from þvēit). These aren't historical curiosities locked away in textbooks. They're on road signs, maps and in ordinary conversation, every single day.
The Norse influence is so dominant in the central Lake District that very few of the mountain and valley names come from Old English at all. While the lakes themselves often carry the Old English element "mere" (as in Windermere and Buttermere), the fells surrounding them are overwhelmingly Norse.
Icelandic Fjalls and Fjords
The same word, barely changed
What makes fell particularly striking is how little it has changed over eleven centuries. In modern Norwegian, the word is fjell. In Swedish, it's fjäll. In Icelandic, it's fjall - almost identical to the original Old Norse. The same root word, used to describe the same kind of landscape, still understood across Scandinavia and northern England more than a thousand years after the Vikings brought it here.
In Scandinavia, the word still carries its original meaning: open mountain landscape above the tree line. In Cumbria, the meaning shifted slightly over time. Originally, a fell referred to an area of uncultivated high ground used as common grazing - the open land above the farmsteads where sheep roamed freely. The fellgate, a word still used locally, marks the point where a village road meets the open mountain. Over time, the word expanded to refer to the mountains and hills themselves, which is how most people use it today.
The fells in numbers
Alfred Wainwright's famous seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, written over thirteen years from 1952 and published between 1955 and 1966, describes 214 individual fells within the Lake District National Park. These have become known simply as "the Wainwrights" and completing all 214 remains one of the most popular challenges in British hillwalking. Over two million copies of Wainwright's guides have been sold.
The fells range from Scafell Pike at 978 metres - England's highest mountain - to Castle Crag in Borrowdale at just 290 metres, Wainwright's only sub-1,000-foot summit. Wainwright chose his fells not by height or prominence but by character and interest, which is why the list includes modest tops that might otherwise be overlooked.
Fell running, the sport of racing across upland terrain, traces its origins directly to this landscape. Shepherds and mountain guides raced informally across the fells from at least the early 19th century, often as part of local agricultural shows and village sports days. The Guides' Race at Grasmere Sports, first held in 1868, is one of the oldest surviving fell races.
Why this word is personal to us
This one is personal to me. I'm half Icelandic. My ancestry traces directly back to Ingólfr Arnarson - the first permanent Norse settler of Iceland, who arrived around 874 AD and established his farmstead at what became Reykjavík. When I did a DNA test, it came back with a Cumbrian trace linked to Viking heritage.
The connection runs deeper than I expected. The same Norse people who named the fjalls in Iceland named the fells here in Cumbria. They arrived in the Lake District roughly fifty years after Ingólfr settled Iceland, following the same migration routes - Norway to Iceland to Ireland to the north-west coast of England. The language they brought survives in both places. Stand on a mountain in Iceland and you're standing on a fjall. Stand on a mountain in Cumbria and you're standing on a fell. Same word. Same people. Same landscape.
That connection between these two places is something I think about a lot. It's part of why we named an entire range of candles after the fells.
An Icelandic fjall on the North Atlantic coast
Our Fell Range
Our Fell Range is named after the mountains themselves. Each candle carries the name of a real Lake District fell, with a scent story inspired by the landscape and character of that mountain.
Scafell Pike - England's highest mountain at 978 metres. Majestic yet unforgiving, the challenging hike to the summit rewards with expansive Lake District and coastal views. Rich amber and vanilla blended with lavender and tonka bean.
Helvellyn - A mountain of many faces at 950 metres, with every route imaginable from gentle slopes to the famous Striding Edge scramble. Leather, patchouli and oudh wood.
Blencathra - The People's Mountain at 868 metres with six separate fell tops. Smooth, easy slopes through grassy meadows on one side, rocky complexities and Sharp Edge on the other. Green and aromatic with earthy top notes, patchouli and lily of the valley.
Catbells - The family fell overlooking Derwentwater and Keswick at 451 metres. Popular, accessible and crowd-pleasing. Bergamot, lemon thyme and lime with olive leaf and sandalwood.
Great Gable - A beacon of history and remembrance at 899 metres, overlooking the heart of the Lake District. Pink pepper and orange blossom with jasmine, coffee, patchouli, cedar and vanilla.
Haystacks - Wainwright's own favourite fell at 587 metres, at the south-eastern end of the Buttermere valley. What it lacks in elevation it makes up for with its large, undulating summit. Warm tobacco, sandalwood and vetiver with spicy cinnamon, oudh, jasmine and fresh hints of green apple and white pear. A nod to the man himself.
The Fell Range candles come in our grey glass jars with timber lids. Available in our 30-hour burn size - designed to fit in a rucksack after a day on the fells.
*All images in this post were taken by James Long in Iceland and Cumbria