Possible Christian Place-names in Medieval Iceland

Place-names can tell us much about a country’s history and landscape. The present article examines Icelandic place-names with possible Christian content that are attested before the Reformation (1550), and lists all such names, with the exception of ambiguous ones containing the elements ‘helg-’ and ‘kross-’, which are too numerous to incorporate. In addition to providing evidence that a place-name might derive from association with a church or its patron saint, the documentation indicates the length of time it may take for a new place-name to be adopted (several centuries), and the fact that more than one place-name could apply to the same location.