The legend of Ardemil

THE LEGEND OF ARDEMIL

It is the most poetic legend and maybe the oldest one in our area. Our school is located in Ardemil, a small village in Ordes (A Coruña, Galicia). It was here where a legendary fight took place during Medieval times, and we can also state that maybe one of the campaigns of the Spanish Reconquest started here.

We can quote Celso de Baión in his book Os nomes da Terra: 'A Muslim troop arrived to Galicia and they were doing as much harm as they could. Galician people got ready to receive them like they deserved. They were very well armed and felt strong due to hatred, fought against the Muslims and managed to defeat them. Only one thousand of the Muslim's troop withstood the battle and took a small village, whose name no one remembers. Galician people sieged the place, (the Christian had all left before the battle) and the village was set on fire. It was burnt to ashes, with one thousand Muslims in it. After everything had finished, local people came back to live in the village, which lost its original name in favor of Ardemil (Arde means burn, and mil means one thousand in Spanish, so the name literally means 'one thousand burn'), since there one thousand Muslims (mouros) from the story burned. Poor people’.

Of course, no one has ever found the remains of this battle and we don’t need to. We don’t have another clear explanation about the origin of the name Ardemil, but it may have a Suevi origin, meaning something like ‘Ardemiro's Lands’.