Zgornji Otok lies along the road from Zapuže to Mošnje where the foothills of the Kamnik–Savinja Alps meet the Radovljica Basin. An intermittent stream runs through the village; during heavy rains it rises quickly and becomes a tributary of Dobruša Creek. The soil is very sandy.[3]
Name
The name Zgornji Otok (literally, 'upper Otok') is paired with that of neighboring Spodnji Otok (literally, 'lower Otok'), which stands about 8 meters (26 ft) lower in elevation. Together with Spodnji Otok, both villages were attested with the German name Werd in 1326, which, like Slovene Otok, means 'island'.[4] Like settlements with the semantically corresponding name Verd, the name refers not only to an island, but also to an elevated location next to a marsh or other wetland.[5]
Mass grave
Zgornji Otok is the site of a mass grave from the end of the Second World War. The Zgornji Otok Mass Grave (Slovene: Grobišče Zgornji Otok) is located on sunken ground in a meadow west of the settlement, a few meters east of the edge of the woods, at a site called Pod Koncami. It contains the remains of 14 Croatian soldiers killed on May 6, 1945.[6]
Notable people
Notable people that were born or lived in Zgornji Otok include:
^Leksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru, vol. 6: Kranjsko. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna. 1906. p. 148.
^ abSavnik, Roman (1968). Krajevni leksikon Slovenije, vol. 1. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije. p. 292.
^Kosi, Miha; Bizjak, Matjaž; Seručnik, Miha; Šilc, Jurij (2016). Historična topografija Kranjske (do 1500). Ljubljana: Založba ZRC. pp. 955, 1281.
^Snoj, Marko (2009). Etimološki slovar slovenskih zemljepisnih imen. Ljubljana: Modrijan. p. 452.
^Ferenc, Mitja (December 2009). "Grobišče Zgornji Otok". Geopedia (in Slovenian). Ljubljana: Služba za vojna grobišča, Ministrstvo za delo, družino in socialne zadeve. Retrieved October 6, 2023.
External links
Media related to Zgornji Otok at Wikimedia Commons