- torp and -ryd, -röd are common for medieval settlements, whereas we find names ending
in -boda and -böle in northern Sweden from this period. In Norway the major element
from this period of settlement expansion is -rud. In these twelfth- and thirteenth-
century settlement names normally the first element is a man’s name (perhaps the one
who first cleared the land).
These ‘medieval’ place-name elements often denoted a clearance or swidden, as in - ryd, -rud, -rød/-röd (< ruð-/rauð-), -rönning (< rauðning-), -sved (< swið-), -fall (‘chopped-
down forest’) etc. In other cases the names denoted the new farm or croft, which was
often a single farm in the forest, such as -boda (-boþar ‘sheds, barns’) and -böle (< bo ̄l-ia-
‘farm’). The element -torp (< þorp) has probably a special background (cf. Hellberg
1954 ). It is found all over southern Scandinavia (including southern Norway). It is
somewhat problematic, since a few of these names are obviously not from the Middle
Ages, but are really ancient, hence should be placed among place-name elements such
as -lev/-löv, -heim and -vin. The etymology of this ancient torp is not clear. The medieval
element torp, however, must be seen in a context of the huge colonisation in northern
Europe during the high Middle Ages, within a new ‘feudal’ agrarian system with a
‘manor’ and dependent tenant farms within an estate. In Germany these tenant farms
often had the name dorf (< þorp), and the word for such a dependent farm was spread
with the new colonising strategy to Scandinavia. Early on, the element torp must have
developed into a meaning of secondary farm, a farm detached from a hamlet etc., hence
not always denoting a tenant farm within an estate.
DISTRICT NAMES AND THE NAMES OF
THE COUNTRIESThe names of the Scandinavian countries are – apart from Iceland and Greenland – much
older than the Viking Age. Denmark (Danmark) contains the word mark ‘dividing forest’
and the name of the people Danir. Traditionally the name is understood as a pars-pro-toto
name, originally denoting the forest that divided the people from the Saxons in southern
Schleswig. The meaning of the name of the inhabitants, Danir, is obscure and still much
debated.
Sweden is a compound of svear and þjóð ‘people’, hence originally meaning ‘the svea
people’. The name of the Swedes (Svear) has been interpreted as an autonym, a self-
praising name ‘we ourselves’. The ethnonym occurs in Svíaríki ‘the ríki of the svear’,
which can be found in the present-day name of the nation in Scandinavian languages,
Sverige, and Svíþjóð (an old stem composition), which is used as the basis for the name
of the Swedish nation in English (Sweden), German (Schweden) and French (Suède). The
name of the people, Svíþjóð, was commonly transferred to the area where the Svíar lived,
and there is a consensus today that from early on and into the transitional period
between prehistory and history in Scandinavia (around the eleventh century), Svíþjóð
is to be identified and located to the region around Lake Mälaren in eastern central
Sweden, comprising the provinces of Uppland, Södermanland ‘land of the people living to
the south’ and Västmanland ‘land of the people living to the west’. Probably Svíþjóð was
identified with this core area of the Svíar, whereas Svíaríki and Svíaveldi were used for an
extended Svía state (ríki), later on comprising regions obviously not originally under
Svía control, such as the region of the Götar (Andersson 2004 ; Brink forthcoming).
Norway (Norge, Noreg) is different from the other two, since it does not contain
–– Stefan Brink––