The name Skive was first mentioned in writing in King Valdemar’s Jordebog in 1231, but with a completely different spelling than in later times. At the same time, it was not yet the name of Skive town, but instead the name of the royal farm Skivegård.
King Valdemar’s land register
King Valdemar 2. Sejr had his land register compiled in 1231 as a record of all his land holdings throughout the kingdom. His largest possession in the Skive region was Skivegård, later called Skivehus and Gammel Skivehus.
The farm was called Skiuægarthæ in medieval Danish. The name refers to an area of land enclosed by split planks. This is possibly an enclosure of Skivegård’s land. These split or “sliced” planks later became the reason why the nearby town was named Skive.
Research into the origin of the name
Archivist Svend Aakjær (son of Jeppe Aakjær) has researched the origins of the name Skive. In a chronicle in Skive Folkeblad in 1920, he took issue with teacher N. P. Bjerregaard, who believed that Skiuægarthæ came from skidgard or skíðgarðr.
However, Aakjær could not reconcile himself to the idea that the less pleasant word skid was the origin of the name Skive. Instead, his interpretation was that the name came from skifa, which in Old Norse means cut off piece, such as the aforementioned split planks, and is also related to the Latin word scipio.
Spellings and pronunciations
Over 800 years, the Skibonites have pronounced the city name in at least 11 different ways:
- Skyuæ
- Skiuæ (cf. King Valdemar’s Jordebog 1231).
- Skiffue
- Skyffue
- Schiuffue
- Skifve
- Schiue
- Skiue
- Skywe
- Skive
- Skive
Sources
- Danmarks stednavne, database, University of Copenhagen.
- Trap Danmark, article about Skive, 2019.
- Aakjær, Svend: “Skive og Skidt”, Skive Folkeblad September 16, 1920 page 2.