Samphrey ( sco, Samphrey; non, Sandfriðarey) is an uninhabited island in the

Shetland Islands Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the n ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

. One of

Fair Isle Fair Isle (; sco, Fair Isle; non, Friðarey; gd, Fara) is an island in Shetland, in northern Scotland. It lies about halfway between mainland Shetland and Orkney. It is known for its bird observatory and a traditional style of knitting. Th ...

's old names is "Friðarey" which is of similar origin. It is situated in the southern end of

Yell Sound Yell Sound is the strait running between Yell and Mainland, Shetland, Scotland. It is the boundary between the Mainland and the North Isles and it contains many small islands. Sullom Voe, on the shores of which is a substantial oil terminal, is ...

, between the

Mainland, Shetland The Mainland is the main island of Shetland, Scotland. The island contains Shetland's only burgh, Lerwick, and is the centre of Shetland's ferry and air connections. Geography It has an area of , making it the third-largest Scottish island and ...

at Mossbank and the island of

Yell A yell is a loud vocalization; see screaming. Yell may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Yell, Shetland, one of the North Isles of the Shetland archipelago, Scotland * Yell Sound, Shetland, Scotland United States * Yell, Tennessee, an unin ...

. On the O-S 1:50,000 map it covers an area of about 66 ha (including the once separate island of Bunglan). It is in the parish of

Delting Delting is a civil parish and community council area on Mainland, Shetland, Scotland. It includes the Sullom Voe oil terminal and its main settlements are Brae, Mossbank and Voe. The parish, as described in 1882–1884, included the islands of ...

. To the north west of Samphrey is Bunglan, which was once an island in its own right, but has become silted up by two

tombolo A tombolo is a sandy or shingle isthmus. A tombolo, from the Italian ', meaning 'pillow' or 'cushion', and sometimes translated incorrectly as '' ayre'' (an ayre is a shingle beach of any kind), is a deposition landform by which an island bec ...

s, which now connect it to Samphrey. There is a small loch between Bunglan and Samphrey proper, which can just about be seen on the aerial picture. Blaeu's ''

Atlas Maior The ''Atlas Maior'' is the final version of Joan Blaeu's atlas, published in Amsterdam between 1662 and 1672, in Latin (11 volumes), French (12 volumes), Dutch (9 volumes), German (10 volumes) and Spanish (10 volumes), containing 594 maps and ...

'' calls the island "Sancterre" (Holy Land) in the 17th century, lending the island another intriguing etymology.

References

Uninhabited islands of Shetland Tombolos {{Shetland-geo-stub