tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote (Tue Oct 1, 2002 10:53 am):
<<Your idea of the relationship between "clerics" and the native population
of the Germanic-speaking areas, calqued on the relationship between European
settlers and native Americans, is wrong. For one thing, the Germanic-speakers
survived and couldn't care less what what some cleric trhought their rivers
should be called.>>
No, I don't think so. Actually, right from Theodoric onward, you see German
princes needing to find vindication in Classic authorities. And so you see
the patronized clerics of the court looking to the sources for precedent for
their namings as well as their geneaologies. The whole concept of a "Holy
Roman Empire" says that things were not quite what you describe. And, of
course, in many cases the clerics (call them scribes if you like) WERE
natives or at least Germanic speakers (like Ohtrid and Alcuin) and were the
only ones who could write out Doomsday Books and annals that inventoried or
mentioned place names -- and of course they would be writing in Latin and
learning the early names of places from Latin. This is precisely why --
incredibly -- Denmark is "Dacia" in Dudo.
I think you've missed the point of paralleling Native Americans with early
Germanics. Pre-literate people -- except if they are heavily involved in long
distance trade rather than relatively sedentary -- do not tend to give
uniform names to large geographical formations. For obvious reasons, they
tend to have local names for what are the local features of those formations.
They tend to call the local river something generic and not helpful like
"the river." This should be no surprise. Only administrative consolidation,
trade and writing begin to standardize names. And when that standardization
occurs, the name picked is often accidental. THIS IS A HISTORICAL FACT
REPEATED OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It is why America is called America. It is
anachronistic to think that there was some kind of National Geographic
Commission that formalized place names across Northern Europe before the
clerics/scribes came in and started to formally attach names to places that
were not already on the Roman maps. Or to accept the unsaid assumptions of
insidious neo-platonism and expect that such features had a "true name" and
that there was some kind of "universal informant" who could supply it.
Torsten also wrote:
<<The struggle between church and state, really a power struggle between
Romance and native forces (in England the Thomas Beckett affair) had exact
parallels in at least Germany (Canossa) and Denmark.>>
From Theodoric to Alfred to Charlemagne to William the Conquerer, the
importance of writing to governing and administrating is clearly understood
and that establishes the value of the cleric scribes to the court. Even when
these governments move to the vernacular, it is the same scribes who are
writing. The "struggle between church and state" or between "Roman" and
native tradition was the exception rather the rule for most of the middle
ages. One only needs to examine the details of the "Barbarian Conversions"
to see kings and bishops working hand in hand. On the other hand,
standardized place naming had more to do with the bookkeeping of government
rather than ideology, and the simpliest way to get at the "true name" of a
place (or a people) was in the Classical writers. That's how Jordanes turned
the Goths into the Getae.
Torsten also wrote:
<<As for Pliny's knowledge of the pronunciation of Germanic, all he'd have to
do was ask a house slave.>>
Right, I can see Pliny handing over a copy of Pytheas' book to a house slave
and asking him how he'd read Kodanos. We have no evidence that Pliny ever
had a Germanic house slave or that he ever spoke to a Germanic speaker. We
do have evidence that much of his information -- if not all -- was from Greek
and Latin written sources.
Torsten also wrote:
<<As for the Göta Älv opening to a large navigable basin including Lake
Vänern: Göta Älv was not navigable past the falls at Trollhättan until locks
were built in connection with the construction of the Göta Canal in the early
19th century.>>
You're at the wrong end of the Go:te River-- it only starts just before
Trollhättan -- which is also rich in pre-Viking Age archaeology. The river
itself has been navigible since ancient times. As far as Lake Vänern goes,
that was a simple portage, just like the portages that functioned for
millennia along the Danube. I saw somewhere that there were something like
900 horses used in transport from Vänern to Trollhättan sometime around the
15th Century. All this is no obstacle at all to the premise. The importance
of the Go:te Alv and its region commercially and historically and it's
course, size and position at the entrance to the Baltic is enough to make it
"famous".
Torsten also wrote:
<<You might as well have argued for the Guden å on the Jutland side,
navigable on a stretch of similar length.>>
Right. That makes sense too. There are a lot of candidates and I don't
think there are any "clear" winners for the Pliny's Guthalvs award.
Regards,
Steve Long