Naddoddur

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This 1982 postage stamp from Postverk Føroya illustrates the Viking conquest in the west. However, the arrows are a bit misleading because Iceland was not discovered directly from the Faroe Islands, but from Naddoddur by chance from Norway. It is true, however, that the Faroe Islands have been a stopover for the Vikings who colonized Iceland ever since.

Naddoddur (* before 850 in Agder / Norway ) was one of the first settlers on the Faroe Islands . According to tradition, he discovered Iceland .

According to the Icelandic Landnámabók , he was a Norwegian refugee who found his new home in the Faroe Islands. So that happened to the first wave of land grabbing , of which Grímur Kamban is considered to be the pioneer .

One day (around 850) he is said to have come back from a trip to Norway to the Faroe Islands in a storm that threw him and his people off course. The coast which they then saw turned out to be a great land. They went ashore in Reyðarfjörður , climbed a mountain and looked for people, but the land seemed uninhabited. When they set sail again in autumn to go to the Faroe Islands, it began to snow heavily. So he named the land Snæland (Snow Country ). Only later did it become Ísland (Ice Land).

When he returned to the Faroe Islands, news of the new land in the northwest spread like wildfire and over the next few years around 1,000 people moved there, including Naddod's three sons Brynjolvur, Mar and Beinir.

Naddoddur may also be the father of Ann Naddodsdóttir , who may have been the mother of Beinir and Brestir , and thus the grandmother of Sigmundur Brestisson and Tóri Beinirsson , central characters in the Faroese saga .

Some scholars believe that Naddoddur was the first European to come to North America , 150 years before Leif Eriksson .

Surname

Naddoddur is one of the Faroese names that only exist in the Faroe Islands. It is composed as follows: nadd-oddur . Oddur means top and is a Faroese given name on its own. The prefix nadd also means point in Faroese (naddi), but also spear in Old Norse . Naddoddur could therefore be translated as spearhead, but probably more with "Speer-Oddur", especially since his brother was called Øksna-Thor, so "Ax-Thor".

The name is inflected in Faroese as follows:

Other spellings of the historical Naddoddur are (in the nominative):

  • Naddoddr (Old Norse)
  • Naddoður ( Icelandic )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Naddoddur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Settlers in the Faroe Islands
DATE OF BIRTH before 850
PLACE OF BIRTH Agder , Norway
DATE OF DEATH 9th century or 10th century