From: tgpedersen
Message: 64847
Date: 2009-08-19
> > > If it was the Germani waiting for 'employment' in someone'sNot that 'civilian' meaning. I think they built themselves 'tu:n's, fortified camps, in order to be safe in the night for those other hopeful invaders.
> > > private army, what would that have to do with the increased
> > > frequency of place names in -tu:n in this region?
> >
> > A lot of young males waiting for employment in a violent
> > enterprise. Securing your accommodation would be a good idea.
>
>
> Are you saying that these Germani found accomodation in tu:ns,
> which I would assume here had its Old Icelandic meaning of
> 'homestead, farmstead, or enclosure with a house in it'?
> Then they named the settlements where they lived after these tu:nsI noticed something interesting in Udolph's long list of -tun names. In England there are tons of -tun's with a first element in P-, ie. a non-Germanic element. In the French-Belgian area there are only a few, all but one with the first *panning- (Udolph says *pin-, which makes no sense), as in > "penny" etc (but why?). Everywhere else (Scandinavia, Germany) not a single P- in sight. Now if those would-be invader apprentices had found accommodation in pre-existing tu:n's in the then non-Germanic-speaking French-Belgian area, the names would have contained many first elements in p-. They don't.
> where they found accomodation? Or am I completely misreading you?
> >Courtyard.
> > > Note also that the map shows a localized high density of such
> > > place-names in the Picardy/West Flanders region. As a
> > > place-name element in Sweden or Picardy/West Flanders, do you
> > > think it meant 'village' or some kind of 'enclosure', or
> > > 'farmstead', 'homestead', or could it have actually meant
> > > 'fence, hedge, enclosing barrier'?
> > > (See below)
> >
> > I just came up with this one to explain what the Mälar valley has
> > to do with it:
> > There is an old theory that the then important town of Sigtuna
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigtuna
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Sigtuna
> > is a translation of Celtic Segodunum. The present conviction is
> > that it's from *si:k- "humid ground, etc" and the 'civilian'
> > meaning of *tu:n.
>
> What is the 'civilian' meaning of *tu:n?
> What is its 'military' meaning?Defended area.
> Supposing (like I do) that the invasion of Svear to Svealand wasYes.
> the last territorial expansion before the conquest of England, the
> equation Sig-tuna = Sego-dunum in people's minds might have changed
> the meaning of tu:n at the next conquest.
>
> That makes sense, as the origin of the change in meaning of tu:n,
> but by 'next conquest' do you mean the conquest of England?
> Of course this conquest didn't originate in Sweden but it soundsAs you can see from sagas etc, they were pretty well aware of what happened around them.
> like you're saying that the change of meaning that tu:n underwent
> in England can be traced back to Sweden, specifically Sigtuna.
> >I think it does. The problem is the word is obsolete in Denmark, not even people in villages use it anymore, so I can't get more precise.
> > > In any case, what is meant by 'space between the houses in a
> > > village'? This suggests yard-space (where side-yards meet
> > > between houses) to me.
> >
> > I don't think I even know what a side yard is.
>
> My apologies! Sometimes I can't seem to think of the right way of
> expressing myself. I meant "where the sides of the yards meet
> between houses". "side-yard" was my quick invention for something
> that was eluding me.
>
> > In this part of the world, farms used to be built as three or
> > four longish buildings set at right angles around a courtyard.
>
> Does this mean that by 'space between the houses in a village' you
> mean something like the above typical courtyard of a farm,
> surrounded by three or four buildings forming a square or
> open-ended square?
> > I've seen 'tun' defined in some Sw. dial. as a cattle pathOK.
> > between houses.
> > Here's Hellquist
> > http://runeberg.org/svetym/1115.html
> > I've looked at de Vries' definition, but I'm not impressed by it,
> > so I'll leave it out.
> >
> > > Or are you talking about old in-earth settlements
> > > with stone walls, which would have a space or corridor between
> > > individual house sites (bounded by these stone walls)?
> >
> > What's an in-earth settlement?
>
> Again I apologize for my illiteracy. I was thinking of those very
> old settlements that had houses with a stone foundation in the
> earth, and which did not rise very high above ground level, and
> which were made partly of piled stones and partly of thatch or
> similar, with property boundaries marked out by stone walls. I had
> in mind the Viking settlements at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland,
> which I've seen on TV, and similar old settlements in the Orkney
> and Shetland islands, etc.
>Well, umm, yes. As I said, it's a dead word in the language, so I can't really tell.
> > Within the village, houses usually didn't have private space
> around them, I believe. That came with the agricultural reforms of
> the late 18th cent., when houses were moved out of their village to
> individual cultivation areas.
>
> So if the villages were laid out like the farms, they had a common
> space between them in the form of a courtyard? And this was the
> tu:n?
> Or do you mean that tu:n in Sweden mainly referred to thatIn some Swedish dialects, yes.
> cattle-path between houses?
> > Then what about Sigtuna et al.?If there's any truth to the Heimskringla story in
>I've been wondering myself. But I have no contact with the old branch of that family.
> Maybe your grandfather's name was of German origin?