The Isle of Lewis (Leòdhas) is an island in the Outer Hebrides, which is home to most of the Norse-speaking population of the Lordship of the Isles. The visitor may at first be struck by the lack of forests - thousands of years ago, the forest was torched to make way for the red deer that still graze here.

The houses of ancient herdsmen who settled here rather than following the herds, between five thousand and two thousand years ago, are still occupied by many families - they are built in the same style as the Pictish brochs that still stand despite also being millenia old. These homes are unlike the modern architecture of the Gael in that they are connected by trenches and are are partly submerged in the ground (imagine Skarra Brae, on Orkney, with the roofs of the houses and the upper half of the walls above the grass).

The brochs, which are Pictish defensive fortifications over ten meters in height and tapered at the top, with little windows but an interior circular area which is open to the air, are also still occupied, although the Iron Age buildings around them have been mostly, if not entirely, replaced by modern constructions which have been built with recycled material.

Other types of house include crannogs, artificial islands upon which wooden houses, supported by stilts, are built, often amongst entire settlements.

The island is inhabited by about thirty thousand people, who are fed by the hunting of whales and seals, and also by the deer herds that have been on the island for nine thousand years.

Places of interest include Dun Carloway broch, the occupied Iron Age village on Great Bernera, and some of the many stone circles that are scattered across the entire island.

The seat of political power is Dùn Èistean, a castle built on a sea stack that is home to Clan Morrison, powerful allies of the Lordship of the Isles, at the northern end of the Isle of Lewis. This clan also controls the many duns (a type of fort) on the island.