Bragar Whalebone Arch

The huge Bragar whalebone arch is readily seen when going through the village. It was fashioned from the jaw of a huge blue whale which beached below the village in September 1920. Ironically, it stranded in an inlet called the Whale's Inlet in Gaelic, probably from an earlier grounding.

The 25 metre-long creature had been hunted by a whaler boat and soon died as the large harpoon rammed in its back had struck a fatal blow.

Two small boats towed her on the tide to the wider Bragar bay where it lay decomposing as dithering officials pondered what to do. Villagers eventually stripped the whale to its skeleton making good use of its mass of blubber as oil and disinfectant.

A year after the beaching, the harpoon suddenly exploded in a local barn as it was being handled by villagers. The weapon along with the giant jawbone had been hauled up off the shore to the house of local postmaster Murdo Morrison to form the towering archway.

Decades of weathering has deteriorated the whalebone requiring an extensive rescue operation in 2000 to apply a fibreglass gel coating to protect it from rapid decay.