(snip)
Himmelbjerg. And Ødegaard means "deserted farm" in Danish.
> > Is this why you have this detailed knowledge of
Danish
> > topography?
> >
> > Torsten
-------
Mark wrote: >
> My knowledge of Denmark is not that detailed, but
describing it as
a
> sand-dune is not inaccurate. Denmark is mostly flat,
quite sandy,
and
> well-breezed. Dairy country.
>
> Heaven-mount, Himmelbjerg, is about 200 meters/600
feet. A splendid
> prospect, but by no definition save a Danish one is
it a 'mountain'.
>
> Your translation of my last name is polite.
'Abandoned farm' is
> better. 'Junkyard' comes closer, tho' in English this
always refers
> to where ugly wrecked cars are strewn. The Norse
sense is a junky
> wrecked farmstead.
Torsten wrote:
Your description is inaccurate. And politeness is
second nature to
me. At least until I run out of arguments.
Torsten
The norse sense is not junky/wrecked farmstead.
Ødegard is an expression which came in use after great pest called the
black death 1349-50, killing between 1/2 and 2/3 of the population in
Norway and the rest of Scandinavia. The result of this was lack of
people to run the farms situated all over the country. A lot of
farmsteads simply lost their inhabitant, and the farm was left "øde".
Øde is a word in use even to day, and means "remote with no people
there". The word gard/gård means farm. "Ødegard" or "Ødegård means
"abandoned farm" or "not populated farm".
Your name indicates that an anchestor of yours moved in to such a farm
and started to run it. If that happened a hundred years after it
became an ødegard in the first place, it sure would look junky!
By the way, Mark. Do you know aprox. where your anchestors lived
before migrating to the US?
Morten