The only true mountain on the Island, clearing the minimum qualifying height of 2,000 feet by a mere 36 feet. The Norse called it snow mountain. From the summit, on a clear day, you can see England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales simultaneously. The old saying goes that you can see seven kingdoms from Snaefell: Mann itself, the four surrounding countries, Heaven, and the Kingdom of Manannan. Snaefell receives seventy-five inches of rain in an average year, nearly twice what falls on most of lowland England.

The small island off the southern tip of the Isle of Man, sheltering the Sound from the southwest gales. A bird observatory and nature reserve. The Calf appears in the landscape as a constant companion to the southern parishes, visible from Port Erin and Port St Mary, separated by the treacherous Sound where the tidal race runs.

A hundred miles of coastline for an island thirty miles long and ten miles wide. The shoreline twists in and out of coves and bays, rises into cliffs, drops to beaches of sand or shingle or bare rock. The cliffs at Spanish Head still drop three hundred feet to the sea, as they did before the Vikings. The western coast takes the weather, prevailing winds from the southwest carrying moisture accumulated over hundreds of miles of open Atlantic. The geography made the running trade possible: close enough to all four coasts that a fast boat could make the crossing in a night, far enough that the revenue cruisers could not easily extend their reach.

The low-lying wetland areas of the northern plain, a distinctive landscape of willow carr, marsh, and bog. The curragh appears in folklore as the haunt of the Phynnodderee, who cut the lubber-lub herb in the rushy curragh. The wetlands supported a particular way of life and a particular ecology, different from the hill farms and the coastal parishes. The curragh landscape is one of the features that makes the northern plain distinct from the rest of the Island.

The glens run down from the interior to the coast: Dhoon Glen, Glen Maye, Glen Helen, Sulby. They carry streams that have been cutting their valleys since the ice age ended. The glens are part of the Island's character, sheltered valleys where the landscape softens after the exposed moorland of the uplands.

Over twelve hundred wells and springs were recorded on the first Ordnance Survey maps in the 1860s. The holy wells among them were still visited. Moore records the practice: the devotees would drop a small coin into the well, drink of the water, repeat a prayer mentioning their ailments, and then decorate the well or the tree overhanging it with flowers and votive offerings, usually rags. They believed that when the rags rotted, their ailments would be cured. These rites were observed within living memory when Moore was writing in 1891. The wells were usually found near old ecclesiastical sites. The early recluses built their keeills near springs, constructing wells for their own use and for baptising converts. The wells predated the keeills, and the keeills settled beside them. Christianity did not create the holy wells. It moved in next door. Chibbyr Lansh, on Gob-y-Vollee, consisted of three pools and was resorted to for the cure of sore eyes. The cure required the patient to come on Sunday, walk three times round each pool, and say in Manx: Ayns enym yn Ayr, as y Vac, as y Spyrryd Noo — "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" — then apply the water. A Christian prayer at a pre-Christian well, and nobody saw a contradiction. Gill, writing in 1929, placed the wells in a deeper framework: "Very ancient beliefs that both the Kingdom of the Dead and the Fairy Kingdom, two spheres which extensively intersect, were reached by a water-transit — a sea-strait, a lake or river, and sometimes a well." The wells were thresholds to the Otherworld. Lough Corrib, he noted, was said to have issued from the burial-place of Manannán mac Lir. Chibbyr Hidee, the Tide Well in the courtyard of Castle Rushen, was said to rise and fall with the tide. A magical cause was attributed to it, though the well sits close enough to the harbour that a natural explanation exists. Two tidal wells on the Island carried supernatural associations — Chibbyr Hidee and Ballig Well at Conchan. The seasonal visiting of wells on hilltops took place on the first Sunday in August. Springs on South Barrule, Slieu Dhoo, Slieu Curn, Snaefell, and Maughold Head were all visited. The scenes at Maughold were described as "essentially non-Christian." The Church denounced the annual ascent of Snaefell, but the people went anyway. Gill connects these August pilgrimages to the same tradition as the Midsummer rush tribute on South Barrule, noting that the two customs represent "two ancient and concurrent systems of year-division."

The sea is the thing. It always was. An islander might go a lifetime without climbing Snaefell, but nobody could ignore the water. It was visible from almost anywhere on the island, audible from everywhere on a windy night, and it shaped every aspect of Manx life. The Irish Sea can be millpond-smooth in the morning and dangerous by afternoon, and the fishermen who made their living from it learned its moods through generations of accumulated experience. Every coastal parish had its stories of boats that did not come back. Somewhere out in that water, if the old stories can be believed, lies the Kingdom of Manannan mac Lir.

A rare breed of sheep native to the Isle of Man, with brown wool and multiple horns. When George Moore was asked to buy twenty Loghtan sheep for Lord Barnard of Durham, the animals were shipped to Whitehaven and refused entry by Customs. The Isle of Man was foreign territory for tariff purposes. Five days later, when the sheep were finally put back ashore at Ramsey, nearly half were dead or dying of starvation. Twenty sheep, legally bought, legally shipped, killed by a system that treated the Island as simultaneously too foreign to trade with freely and too close to leave alone.

The tailless cat native to the Isle of Man, one of the most recognisable symbols of the Island worldwide. The breed's origin is debated but the cats have been documented on the Island for centuries. Various folk explanations exist for the missing tail, including that the cat was late boarding Noah's Ark and the door closed on its tail. The Manx cat is a living emblem of the Island's distinctiveness, a creature that exists nowhere else in the same form.

The waters surrounding the Isle of Man support a rich marine ecosystem. The basking sharks that visit in summer, the seal colonies, the seabird populations on the Calf of Man, and the marine life of the Irish Sea are all part of the Island's natural heritage. The sea was not just a barrier or a highway but a living environment that Manx people depended on for food, for transport, and for their understanding of the world they lived in. Manannan's kingdom was not empty.