landnam

Borrowed from Danish landnam, from Old Norse landnám. Compare Dutch landname and German Landnahme.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlandnam/, /ˈlandnɑːm/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈlændnɑm/, /ˈlɑndnɑm/

landnam (uncountable)

1. (especially archaeology) The occupation of land, especially if previously uncultivated.
   • [1958 [1946], Frederick E. Zeuner, Dating The Past: An Introduction To Geochronology, fourth edition, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., pages 78-79:

     Iversen holds that these changes indicate the arrival of farmers, the phase of Landnam or land occupation, that the charcoal comes from clearance fires; that herbaceous pollen suggests the opening-up of the land; cereals, fields; the plantains, weeds; and birch and hazel, regeneration of the forests after the exhaustion of the plot.]

   • 1997, Stephen J. Pyne, “Controlled Combustion: Fire in Central Europe”, in Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told Through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World, Seattle: University of Washington Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 156:

     On marginal landscapes and during unsettled times, the initial impact of landnam might lade away, and a new landnam would have to restart the sequence.

   • 2025 July 31, Arjen Versloot, “Reconstructing the historical phonology of Old English”, in English Language and Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →DOI:

     Dyvik (Dyvik 1978: 34–5), who revised older theories about breaking and back mutation in North Germanic, assumed a common basis for the tendency towards breaking in pre-stages of Old English and Old Norse, which he dated very early, to the times before the landnam of the Anglo-Saxons.

By surface analysis, land +‎ nam. Learned borrowing from Old Norse landnám.

landnam n (indeclinable)

1. land taking; settlement (of unoccupied land)

• landnamsmand
• landnamstid

• “landnam” in Den Danske Ordbog
• “landnam” in Ordbog over det danske Sprog