Great Orme

The Great Orme is a prominent limestone headland on the north coast of Wales, next to the town of Llandudno. It is referred to as Cyngreawdr Fynydd in a poem by the 12th-century poet Gwalchmai ap Meilyr. Its English name derives from the Viking word for sea serpent, which it is said to resemble. The Great Orme was a major source of copper from the start of the British Islands' Bronze Age in approximately 2400BC. It is echoed by the Little Orme, a smaller very similar limestone headland on the eastern side of Llandudno Bay in the parish of Llanrhos.EtymologyBoth the Great and Little Ormes have been etymologically linked to the Old Norse words urm or orm that mean sea serpent (the English word worm is transliterated from the same term). The Great Orme being the head, with its body being the land between the Great and Little Ormes. The Vikings left no written texts of their time in North Wales raiding the area which lacks evidence to date of any settlements, unlike the evidence on the Wirral Peninsula narrowly east of the border of Wales. Still some Norse names remain in use within the former Kingdom of Gwynedd (such as Point of Ayr near Talacre).