Samosir Island is a large volcanic island in Lake Toba, located in the north of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Administratively, Samosir Island is governed as six of the nine districts within Samosir Regency. The lake and island were formed after the eruption of a super volcano some 75,000 years ago. The island was originally connected to the surrounding caldera wall by a small isthmus, which was cut through to aid navigation.
The island measures 45 by 20 km, and originally was a peninsula. It only became a peninsula after the Dutch arrived and dug a canal across the small piece of land of 200 metres in 1906. This action seemed to have a lot to do among the local population, because they thought the island would slip away towards the middle of the lake and simply dissappear. The eastern coast of the island rises steeply from a small bank towards a central plateau with an altitude of 780 metres. This gradually descends towards the southern and western coast of the island and is scattered with small villages which dangerously lean against the rock, and cross ravains. The Samosir plateau mainly is clear rock, with some scattered forests, swamps and a small lake.
There is a road parallel with the shores of the island, but this can be bad at certain points, with a number of bad bridges in the southwestern corner. From Pangururan, the kecamatan-centre at the western side, a bridge connects the island with mainland Sumatera. The road ascends to an altitude of 1800 metres after that. Here, the village of Tele offers a good view over the lake and the island. During the northeastern monsoon (September until January), a strong wind usually arrived from the high altitudes, the alogo bolong or 'big wind'. This produces waves of over one metre high, which can made traffic over water very hard.
Local ferries, most of the time overloaded with freight and people, can be lost during these storms. Earlier the Batak used big tree-trunk canoos (solu) made of a single tree to cross the lake. Noaways only very small canoos are used. F.M. Schnitget, author of 'Forgotten Kingdoms in Sumatera', visited Samosir in the 1930's and described the adathouses, stone graves and coffins of no less than 26 villages. Looking for these villages is hard, because many of the names have been changed since them; others were abandoned and some of the stone sarcofagusses were removed from their original location. Outside the paved roads time and patience are an important factor to find the graves. But for many people a visit to Samosir is no more than a quiet ferry fare to Tomok, where the most famous of all Toba Bakat sarcofasussus are just on a few minutes away from the pier.
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