an inhabitative name. Instead it seems to be a name of the route along the western
Norwegian coast, towards Trøndelag and Hålogaland. This is the route (Norðwegh)
which Othere describes that he travelled from his home down to Kaupang, of which we
have a famous description from the 890 s (Bately and Anglert 2007 ). This name became
so identified with the land along the route that it gave its name to the country. Hence,
Norway goes back to a Proto-Nordic *Norð(r)vegr, originally ‘the north way (route)’,
where the fricative dental must have been lost early, reduced between two other conson-
ants, in the same way as for the adjective ON norrœnn ‘northerly’ (< norðrœnn). We may
compare it with ON vestrvegr ‘land to the west’, austrvegr ‘land to the east’ and suðrvegr
‘land to the south’ (which could be especially Germany or Italy) (Brink 2007 a: 66 ).
Place names become a very important source for reconstructing a prehistoric and
early medieval organisational and administrative structure (Andersson 1965 , 1982 ;
Brink 1996 , 1997 ). A basic societal entity in early Scandinavia was the bygd, which may
be translated as ‘settlement district’. A bygd was an often naturally demarcated settle-
ment district, comprising several hamlets and single farms with their arable land
and meadows, surrounded by forests. We can see that they were looked upon by their
neighbours as a unit, and therefore given a name related to some characteristic natural
feature in the district (a lake, river, mountain etc.) or a collective name of the people
(e.g. a compound with -ingar) living in the district. The place names also reveal that the
bygd was probably a social, judicial and cultic unit, since we are very often able to
Figure 6. 2 The settlement district of Ockelbo in Gästrikland, Sweden, a small, probably Viking Age
bygd around a lake *Okle (today Bysjön), with the centrally placed Vi ‘pagan cult site’, where the church
was erected. (Drawing: Stefan Brink.)
–– chapter 6 : Naming the land––