>
>
> I have one problem with that: What would those people cast iron
for? All iron then was wrought iron, it passed through the hands of a
smith. I suspect the meaning "cast" is late, it is used today in that
sense in German and Swedish (both nations with plenty of iron ore);
in Danish (we have no iron ore except low grade stuff found in
bogs) /gyde/ means "spawn" (of fish) and nothing else
(except /udgyde/ "pour forth" -> "talk nonsense").
--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
> I wasn't thinking of cast iron, actually. When the *geut- verb was
used in early Germanic as a metalworking term, the reference was of
course to easily fusible metals like bronze and lead. By the way, I
quoted OE words from memory, but now I have checked them up in
Bosworth & Toller's dictionary. They give <le:ad-gota> 'lead-
founder', which means that the 'founder' and 'Goth' words were
homonymous in Old English: gota < *gut-o:n-. The question is how
plausible it would be for a Germanic tribal name to be of a
occupational kind. Comments welcome.
>
> Piotr
>
You're probably right. I saw on the cable channel DK4 (they alone
bring the archaeology news now, since the national TV channel
discontinued such news, apparently they're worried it might create
artificial divisions between the aboriginals and our new fellow
countrymen) that near the late Roman Iron Age power center (large
longhouse excavated, lots of gold finds) of Gudme (note the name,
older Gudum, traditionally etymologized as Gud "god" + heim-) on
south east Fyn (controlling also the coast-hugging trafic in the
strait between Fyn and Langeland) were recently found plenty of
bronze fingers, toes, and a penis, apparently scrap metal from Roman
statues. How this metal was scrapped and obtained is anyone's guess.
Torsten