odals

Noun (1)

odal (countable and uncountable, plural odals)

1. (historical) Among the early and medieval Teutonic peoples, especially Scandinavians, the heritable land held by the various odalmen constituting a family or kindred of freeborn tribesmen.
   • At the time of the laws owners of odal had, it appears, certain powers of selling their odal, but even then it was not an uncontrolled right of a man to do what he would with his own.1902, Frederic Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, Longmans, Green and Co., page 273
2. The ownership and claim of such land.
   • Generations of ancestors may have given an extended family the right to the land, in the same way that later Norse settlers obtained an odal right to the land they farmed.2000, Liv Kjørsvik Schei, The Islands of Orkney, Colin Baxter, →ISBN, page 15
3. A rune in the Elder Futhark, ᛟ, associated with ancestral land.

Noun (2)

odal

1. (capitalized, obsolete, often) A large liana native to India and Southeastern Asia, Sarcostigma kleinii, used to produce therapeutic seed oil.
   • Extract the oil from the seeds of Odal (Sarcostigma kleinii) and apply on the affected part of the body.1998, K. Jose Boban, Tribal Ethnomedicine: Continuity and Change, page 235

See all 6 meanings of odal