Re: Asian migration to Scandinavia

At 6:30:21 AM on Tuesday, September 2, 2008, tgpedersen
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@... s.com, James Dow Allen
> <jamesdowallen@ ...> wrote:

>> Obviously the 5th century migration is too late
>> to explain North Germanic, let alone Germanic.
>> How early is the name Odin/Wodan attested?

> 1080, apparently.
> http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Odin

One can easily do a bit better than that: he's mentioned in
'Hákonarmál' by the 10th century skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir
Finns son and in the slightly earlier 'Eiríksmál'. From
~950 there's <wodnes doe3e> in the Lindisfarne Gospels, and
from the late 10th c. the charter Sawyer 1380 mentions a
place <Wodnesfeld> (now <Wednesfield> (Staffs.)). I
shouldn't be at all surprised if one could do better with a
bit more work.

Brian