East Loch Tarbert, Argyll is a small sea loch on the eastern side of the Kintyre Peninsula, in Argyll and Bute, west of Scotland. It is a part of the much larger Loch Fyne. The village of Tarbert is distributed along the shores of the loch. East Loch Tarbert is separated from West Loch Tarbert by an isthmus, that is only 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) long.
According to Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, had his longship dragged across this isthmus as part of a campaign to increase his possessions in the Hebrides. He made an arrangement with King Malcolm III of Scotland that he could take possession of land on the west coast around which a ship could sail. Magnus declared that Kintyre had "better land than the best of the Hebrides", and by taking command of his ship's tiller and "sailing" across the isthmus he was able to claim the entire peninsula, which remained under Norse rule for more than a dozen years as a result.
