A map of Scotland, in bags
When we started making bags at the Barras market in 2010, we needed names for them. We could have gone the way most gear brands do, model numbers, invented words, something that sounds vaguely technical. Instead we looked at the map.
Most Trakke bags are named after real places in Scotland. A loch with a legend attached, an island with eighteen residents, the village where the real Robinson Crusoe was born. A few aren't places at all, just good Scots words that say exactly what the bag is for. Here's the story behind each one.
Canna, the island with an honesty shop
Canna is the westernmost of the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides, four miles long, a mile wide, and home to around twenty people. There are no cars. The island's one shop stays open around the clock on an honesty system: you write down what you've taken and pay in the box.
The island has been inhabited for thousands of years, and over a thousand sites of historical interest have been recorded on it. In 1938 it was bought by John Lorne Campbell, a Gaelic scholar, and his wife Margaret Fay Shaw, a photographer and folklorist from Pittsburgh. They spent the rest of their lives there recording Hebridean songs and stories, building one of the most important Gaelic archives in existence, then gifted the whole island to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981. Over 20,000 seabirds breed there every year, including puffins.
Our Canna backpack is the everyday one. Small island, big character.
Arkaig, the loch with buried gold
Loch Arkaig sits in Lochaber, west of the Great Glen, twelve miles long and deep. And somewhere near it, according to three centuries of stories, there may still be gold.
In 1746, Spain sent caskets of gold coins to fund the Jacobite rising. The ships arrived days after the defeat at Culloden, too late. Six caskets were carried to Loch Arkaig and hidden. What happened next is a tangle of secret custodians, accusations of embezzlement, and a trail that eventually goes cold. The last Jacobite ever executed, Dr Archibald Cameron, had come back to Scotland in 1753 partly to recover it. Clan Cameron records mention gold coins turning up in the woods nearby in the 1850s. The rest has never been found.
The Arkaig backpack is the rugged one, flap front, quick release buckles. Named after a place that keeps its secrets.
Storr, the rock everyone knows
The Old Man of Storr is a pinnacle of rock on the Trotternish ridge on Skye, left standing by an ancient landslide. It's one of the most photographed landscapes in Scotland, and if you've seen one image of Skye, it was probably this one.
Fitting, then, that Storr is our travel range, the bag built for going places.
Breac, the speckled one
Not a place this time. Breac is Gaelic for speckled or dappled, and it's also the word for trout, named for the flecks on its back. The word turns up all over Highland maps, attached to anything patterned or mottled. A good name for a limited edition bag with a character of its own.
Wester, where the mountains meet the sea
Wester Ross, in the northwest Highlands, is one of the emptiest and most dramatic corners of Scotland, where the mountains run straight down into sea lochs. Our roll-top carries its name.
Largo, birthplace of a castaway
Lower Largo is a small fishing village on the Fife coast. In 1676 it produced Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who was later marooned alone on a Pacific island for four years and four months. His survival story inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Not bad for a village you could walk through in ten minutes.
The Largo sling carries the essentials, which Selkirk would have appreciated.
Kelso, the Borders market town
Kelso sits where the River Teviot meets the Tweed, in the Scottish Borders, a cobbled market town with a ruined abbey. Sir Walter Scott went to school there. The Kelso sling is the compact daily carry, phone, keys, wallet, done.
Gigha and Eigg, the small islands
Two more Hebridean islands, two small bags. Gigha lies off the Kintyre coast, sometimes called God's Island. Eigg is Canna's neighbour in the Small Isles, famous for its community buyout in 1997, when the islanders clubbed together and bought the island themselves. Small places that punch above their weight, like the slings named after them.
Bairn, Messages and the rest
Some names aren't on a map at all. Bairn is Scots for a child, our smallest messenger. Messages is Scots for the shopping: going for the messages means heading out for groceries, which is precisely what the Messages Tote was built for. The Merchant Tote sits alongside it, a nod to trade and the everyday business of carrying things. And Banana? No story here. It's shaped like one.
Why it matters
A name from a map comes with an obligation. If you're going to put Canna or Arkaig on a bag, the bag has to be worth the place, made properly, built to be repaired and reproofed and carried for decades. That's the deal we made when we started naming bags this way, and it's the one we still keep.
