Qwghlm

Qwghlm is a fictional location, featured in the books Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. Qwghlm consists of a pair of islands, Inner Qwghlm and Outer Qwghlm, off the northwestern coast of Great Britain that has become a victim of English imperialism. The islands are geographically similar to the Outer Hebrides

Inner Qwghlm is "hardly an island", being joined to Britain by a sandbar that comes and goes with the tide. By the time of World War II (as depicted in Cryptonomicon), this sandbar has been "beefed up with a causeway that carries a road and the railway line." Outer Qwghlm is about 20 miles off the coast.

Qwghlm has its own language, Qwghlmian, which has a Runic alphabet. It is highly pithy with few vowels. Inner and Outer Qwghlm have their own separate dialects. Although the Romanised version resembles Welsh, it is a language isolate, i.e. it has no relation with any other known language (in this sense it has been compared to Basque).

Qwghlm's status as a sovereign nation is not fully clear, though it was never conquered by the Roman Empire, unlike the rest of Britain. By the time of the Baroque Cycle it is a duchy of the United Kingdom. Cryptonomicon hints it has the status of Crown dependency, like the Isle of Man.

Eliza, a main character from The Baroque Cycle, is a native of Qwghlm.

External link

• Qwghlm page at The Metaweb.