Tarskavaig as a village proper dates from 1811. Lord MacDonald, the local landowner, laid it out in thirty-one small crofts to exploit the resources of the sea and the marginal coastal land that nobody else was using. The plots were never large enough to feed a family. Tenants had to earn cash from kelping and fishing just to pay the rent. The economy depended on five activities - black cattle, potatoes, fishing, kelping, sheep - and during the 19th century all five failed or declined, one after another. The 'Year of Destitution' in 1837 was the turning point. The population had peaked at 250 that year; from then it fell steadily. When the potato blight reached Skye in 1846, a year after Ireland's catastrophe, more than 80% of the local diet came from the failing crop. Families survived only by finding work in the south.

Gaelic held on in Tarskavaig long after it had faded elsewhere on Skye. In 1891, 97.6% of the village spoke Gaelic; in 1901, 95.2%, with about 19% of inhabitants speaking only Gaelic and no English. The parish averages of around 89% looked feeble by comparison. Even at the 2001 census, 54% of Tarskavaig spoke the language - against an island average of 31%. Part of the credit goes to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic college founded at Ostaig in 1973 just along the peninsula, which has anchored a renaissance of teaching, broadcasting and publishing in Gaelic across the Highlands. The first school in the village had opened in 1815 in croft 11 - a small building with a rusty red tin roof that still stands in the middle of the village.

Just thirteen miles north of Tarskavaig, on a peninsula called Rubha an Dunain, archaeologists recovered a clinker-built faering timber from a small loch in 2000. Carbon dating put it around AD 1100. Subsequent excavations revealed stone-built quays, a system of sluices to maintain the water level, and an artificial canal to the sea - a complete medieval harbour complex. The discovery suggests the Vikings used the coast in front of Tarskavaig as a maritime corridor for centuries, repairing and outfitting galleys in sheltered inland waters before slipping out at high tide. The connection is not just etymological. The same boats that gave Cod Bay its name probably moored within sight of the glen on their way around the Cuillin.

From Tarskavaig Point on a clear evening, the Black Cuillin lift across the water in a saw-toothed line that geologists call the Cuillin Ridge and climbers call something less polite. The ridge is the eroded remains of a Tertiary volcanic complex, the most concentrated mountain wilderness in Britain, and it is at its best from this angle - across enough sea to give it scale, with the lower red granite hills setting off the dark gabbro behind. South across Gauscavaig Bay the ruins of Dunscaith Castle catch the light. It was the principal seat of the MacDonalds of Sleat in the 15th century, before the chief moved to Armadale. Now there is mostly just grass and stone and the long wash of the tide against rock that has watched the same view for a very long time.