Place names in and around Gjellestad

Abstract

This article looks at the place-names in the vicinity of the Gjellestad boat burial. The boat burial is at Gjellestad, in the parish of Berg (see Figure 1). However, since it is near the parish boundary, we have also included two settlements from Ingedal parish, namely Slang and Døle. From Berg parish we look at the settlement names of Alkerød, Flingtorp, Fossby, Gjellestad, Huseby, Hjelmungen, Søtorp, Torpum and Vik. Several of these settlements are conglomerate farms, navnegard, which consist of two or more individually attested cadastral units but share the same name and border with each other – it is thus common in retrogressive and onomastic studies to see the individual units as one conglomerated unit, although there is not necessarily any historical proof of such a unit. The settlements in question are Gjellestad, Huseby, Hjelmungen, Slang and Vik. Formally, it is possible to analyse both conglomerate farms and individual cadastral farms in the same study (as long the difference is made explicitly clear), as will be done here. The remainder consist of a single cadastral unit, or farm: gard is the Norwegian term. A cadastral unit may be further subdivided into individual holdings, bruk. Over the following paragraphs we will try to explain the etymology of the individual settlement names and see them in a larger national perspective using cadastral information, tax valuations and land usage as parameters. We will also attempt a relative dating of the settlements using linguistic criteria, as well as data from the digital cadastre (historical and current) and digital elevation models.