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

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 61336
Date: 2008-11-03

On 2008-11-03 21:00, Andrew Jarrette wrote:

> 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 recommend the "Anglo-Saxon England" series (Cambridge University
Press, 36 vols so far). Browse through several volumes and you will
learn enough social gossip to make the Angles, Saxons and Jutes as
familiar as your next-door neighbours. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of
Anglo-Saxon England is a good reference book, though of course it's
meant for the general reader.

> 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:>)?

Apart from Bede's latinised <Iut->, the <iu> spelling of the diphthong
occurs in the EWS Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Manuscript A, ca. AD 900),
which has dat. Iotum (twice) plus gen. Iutna and dat. Iutum (once each).
It's more or less contemporary with <Eota land> in the Bede translation.

By the way, I've just found this online: it seems to be at least partly
identical with Davis's article in ASE 35 (though I can't compare them
closely right now):

http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/5/Davis1.html

Piotr