Re: Scandinavia and the Germanic tribes such as Goths, Vandals, Angl

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> Craig R. Davis (Anglo-Saxon England 35, 2006) argues that the Alfredian
> translator knew very well the precise equivalent of Bede's <Iut-> in

his

> dialect but identified the Jutes with the Geats deliberately, in
> accordance with the political preferences of the time. At the end of

the

> 8th c. Gothic connections became fashionable in Britain, and since the
> Geats had by that time become identified with the Goths among learned
> people, Geat began to displace Woden as the most desired ancestor in
> Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies. Alfred himself traced his descent

back to

> the Jutish kings of the Isle of Wight through his maternal grandfather
> Oslac, and Alfred's mother, in particular, seems to have been very

proud

> of her ancestry. The identification of the Jutes with the "Gothic"
> Geats, with a little help from late OE phonetics, certainly pleased the
> king. The romantic aura radiated by the Goths seems to have a charmed
> life of its own: it has now cast a spell upon Torsten's mind.
>
> Piotr
>

Where does one find the literature that discusses these aspects of OE
society (ancestry, identity, fashionability, romantic aura, etc.)? I
would very much like to find it.

I accept your defense of the idea of the OE word for "Jutes" lacking
an initial consonant /j/, but the spellings with <Iu-> still make me a
little suspicious. Are these in very early texts, with the very early
spelling of the later <i:o>, which itself became generally <e:o> (and
in West Saxon also <i:e>, later <y:>)?

What explains the initial /j/ in the Scandinavian and Finnish words
for "Jutes"? Is it the regular Swedish reflex of *eu, i.e. <ju>? But
that doesn't explain Danish <Jylland, Jysk>, does it?

Andrew