This article is about the border river in Denmark. For the tributary of the Wümme in north Germany, see Wiedau.
The Vidå or, with the definite article, Vidåen (German: Wiedau, North FrisianWiduu) is a creek in the Jutland region of Denmark. The creek starts east of Tønder and flows around sixty-nine kilometres to the west, ending in the North Sea near Højer.[1] In places the Vidå marks the border between Denmark and Germany (through the Rudbøl Sø).[citation needed]
The name of the river is first attested as such in 1648 as Wieday and in 1781 as Widaae and Hvidaae. However, the river gave its name to a Propstei (church or monastery led by a provost) which held North Friesland and whose name is attested in 1240 in the form de Withæ a and 1352 as in ... Withaa. It also produced the district name Wiedingharde (North Friesland, Duchy of Schleswig), first attested in 1511 as Wyding herde, meaning "administrative district of the people on the Wieday". Albrecht Greule, surveying earlier scholarship, tentatively interpreted the name to mean "pasture" (Weide).[1] This is consistent with Morten Søvsø's characterisation of the river: "the Tønder Marsh around the major watercourse of the Vid River (Vidåen) cuts deep into the land, and once offered extensive pasturelands for the farmers of the marsh".[2]
The river-name has also been thought to be found in the ethnonymWiþmyrgingas, which appears in the Old English poem Widsith.[3]
References
^ abAlbrecht Greule, Deutsches Gewässernamenbuch: Etymologie der Gewässernamen und der zugehörigen Gebiets-, Siedlungs- und Flurnamen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), p. 590 (s.v. 2Wiedau); ISBN9783110338591, ISBN3110338599.
^Morten Søvsø, Ribe 700-1050: From Emporium to Civitas in Southern Scandinavia (Aarhus University Press, 2020), p. 101 (§4.3.5.1); ISBN9788793423558, ISBN8793423551.
^Malone, Kemp (1962). Widsith. Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen. p. 211.