Meanings
- especiallyuncountablearchaeologyThe occupation of land, especially if previously uncultivated.
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.
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 1562 more examples
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.
[1958 [1946], Frederick E. Zeuner, Dating The Past: An Introduction To Geochronology, fourth edition, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., pages 78-79Dyvik (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.
2025 July 31, Arjen Versloot, “Reconstructing the historical phonology of Old English”, in English Language and Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →DOI
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Cite this entry
landnam. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/landnam
“landnam.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/landnam. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “landnam,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/landnam.
Source: landnam on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.