Gruinard Island is a small, oval-shaped Scottish island approximately 2 kilometres long by 1 km wide, located in Gruinard Bay, about halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. At its closest point to the mainland, it is about 1 km offshore. In 1942, the island became a sacrifice zone, and was dangerous for all mammals after military experiments with the anthrax bacterium, until it was decontaminated in 1990.

Description of the Western Isles of Scotland is the oldest known account of the Hebrides and the Islands of the Clyde, two chains of islands off the west coast of Scotland. The author was Donald Monro, a clergyman who used the title of "Dean of the Isles" and who lived through the Scottish Reformation. Monro wrote the original manuscript in 1549, although it was not published in any form until 1582 and was not widely available to the public in its original form until 1774. A more complete version, based on a late 17th-century manuscript written by Sir Robert Sibbald, was first published as late as 1961. Monro wrote in Scots and some of the descriptions are difficult for modern readers to render into English. Although Monro was criticised for publishing folklore and for omitting detail about the affairs of the churches in his diocese, Monro's Description is a valuable historical account and has reappeared in part or in whole in numerous publications, remaining one of the most widely quoted publications about the western islands of Scotland.