Re: Non-IE elements in Scandinavian

Hi Thomas

You wrote

> As a speaker of Norwegian, German and English, I have noticed that
> Norwegian (and the other north-germanic languages) have a wealth of
> words which don't exist in other languages. Certainly any language
> will have unique words, but there are just too many to be a
> coincidence.
>
> My theory is that when IE settlers came to Scandinavia, they had to
> live in peace and harmony with the aboriginal population because of
> the harsh climate here. To survive, they had to learn new skills
> from the natives. For a long period of time they lived side by

side,

> and the Indo-europeans took up a large number of native words.

Since

> very few words in modern Norwegian bear any resemblance to Uralic
> words, I doubt the pre-IE language was Uralic.
>
> What kind of language did they have? Would it be possible to get a
> glimpse of this (or these) ancient language(s) by searching modern
> Scandinavian languages and Icelandic for non-IE elements?
>
> Examples of unique Sc. words: fjell = mountain, jente = girl, hav =
> ocean, furu = pine, ekorn = squirrel, ørret = trout, tjern =

pond,

> rar = strange/funny, nes = tiny peninsula, skog = forest

Interesting observation.

I have seen a paper on the net drawing attention to the interesting
fact that aparently the Saami also have a high proportion of words
that are not Uralic, in origin suggesting s substrate language. Some
have suggested that the language of the Ertebolle culture of Denmark
and North Germany (Derived from the late Ice Age Swidderian groups)
was the language of the first farmers of Scandinavia. There is a
spread of coastal fisherfolk stretching north with the warming of
climates in the Sub-Atlantic phase, leading to eventual settlement in
the arctic as Sammi people.

Regards

John