A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
eider
The eider is a large, heavy sea duck of northern coasts, the drake in sharp black and white with a green nape and a long wedge-shaped bill running straight into the forehead. It dives for mussels and swallows them whole, shell and all, and grinds them in a muscular gizzard. The female lines her nest with down plucked from her own breast, which is among the best insulating material there is.
Etymology
English took the word from Icelandic and Old Norse, where it named this duck and nothing else, and it arrived along with the trade in the down. The bird’s name in English is therefore a northern word that came south attached to a commodity, the same way eiderdown did, and the second half of that compound is simply the ordinary English word for fine feathers.
Notes
Eiderdown is still collected in Iceland. The down is taken from the nest after the ducklings have left, or in small amounts during incubation and replaced with hay, and the colonies are protected and encouraged because the farm depends on the birds coming back. It takes the down of around sixty nests to fill a single duvet.