Talk:Halmstad
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I have removed the following text as it seems to me to be very speculative and not verifiable:
- The original Halmstad was the capital of ancient Halland. The king's mansion may have been located there, but if the identification of the Ahelmil people of Scandza mentioned by Jordanes with Halmstad is correct, the town was not named after the mansion. The ancient name must be dated no later than the 6th century AD, before any distinction between Norway, Sweden and Denmark or their languages.
- Halmstad is easily segmented Halm-stad, but in the 6th century the stad, or "city", probably did not exist. Either the region or the people must have been named halm. If Ahelmil is accordingly segmented A-helm-il, the meaning might well be "people on the harvest lands." Rural Halland is rolling cropland, noted for its agricultural produce.
- Halm in the Scandinavian languages still means "straw, stubble", but prior to then, when the language was either ancestral to or closely related to the ancestor of English, it could have had the same meaning as Old English healm, ancestor of our haulm or halm, except that then it could also mean thatched roof and harvest land (from the stubble remaining after harvest). The a- is perhaps the same as Old Norse a, a form of on. Jordanes' name, being descriptive, thus need not conflict with other ethnic names assigned the people of the region by other sources.
- The tribal chief from which the later Viking kings came probably would have lived on the richest land. Halmstad was removed upstream from the danger of predation; in fact, the Battle of the Nissan River was fought at the mouth of it in 1062 to liberate Halland from Norway. During more peaceful times the region profited by having the town closer to the Kattegat. It rose to prominance there.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gunnar Larsson (talk • contribs)
