The Vidå or, with the definite article, Vidåen (, North Frisian ''Widuu'') is a creek in the

Jutland Jutland (; , ''Jyske Halvø'' or ''Cimbriske Halvø''; , ''Kimbrische Halbinsel'' or ''Jütische Halbinsel'') is a peninsula of Northern Europe that forms the continental portion of Denmark and part of northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). It ...

region of

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

. The creek starts east of

Tønder Tønder (; ) is a town in the Region of Southern Denmark. With a population of 7,477 (as of 1 January 2025), it is the main town and the administrative seat of the Tønder Municipality. History The first mention of Tønder might have been in th ...

and flows around sixty-nine kilometres to the west, ending in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

near Højer.Albrecht Greule, ''Deutsches Gewässernamenbuch: Etymologie der Gewässernamen und der zugehörigen Gebiets-, Siedlungs- und Flurnamen'' (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), p. 590 (s.v. ²Wiedau); , . In places the Vidå marks the border between Denmark and Germany (''through the Rudbøl Sø''). South of the river live the North Frisians.

Name

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 (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 The Duchy of Schleswig (; ; ; ; ; ) was a duchy in Southern Jutland () covering the area between about 60 km (35 miles) north and 70 km (45 mi) south of the current border between Germany and Denmark. The territory has been div ...

), 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" (). 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". The river-name has also been thought to be found in the

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

''Wiþmyrgingas'', which appears in the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

poem ''

Widsith "Widsith" (, "far-traveller", lit. "wide-journey"), also known as "The Traveller's Song", is an Old English poem of 143 lines. It survives only in the '' Exeter Book'' (''pages 84v–87r''), a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the la ...

''.Malone, Kemp (1962). ''Widsith''. Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen. p. 211.

References

Rivers of Jutland Denmark–Germany border International rivers of Europe {{SchleswigHolstein-river-stub