  We discuss meridians and longitudes in reduced Alexander modules of classical
and virtual links. When these elements are suitably defined, each link
component will have many meridians, but only one longitude. Enhancing the
reduced Alexander module by singling out these peripheral elements provides a
significantly stronger link invariant. In particular, the enhanced module
determines all linking numbers in a link; in contrast, the module alone does
not even detect how many linking numbers are $0$.
