--- In
cybalist@egroups.com, "John Croft" <jdcroft@...> wrote:
> For those interested in Non-IE elements in Scandinavia have a look
at
> the abstract of
>
> http://www.algonet.se/~elert/SVH4V2FG.html
I've looked through this document, but I'm not really impressed. He
thinks that a proto-uralic language or an IE baltic language was
spoken in Scandinavia before the arrival of the germanic tribes.
He doesn't really investigate the possibility of a totally unknown
language family existing in Scandinavia (or the entire Germanic
region). He finds traces of Uralic influence in Scandinavian
languages, but that's a natural consequence of being neighbors. The
Afro-Asiatic branch theory is interesting too, but it seems strange
that people from the semi-desert of the middle east would settle in
the cold Scandinavia. But again, stranger things have happened.
The only way to shed some light on this would be a large and
systematic genetic study. This way we could find the phylogenetic
relationships and see the contours of earlier language groups. If we
compare with pre-columbian America, there is really room for another
extinct language family in Europe. Siberia has many isolated
languages too.
The nationalism issue is important too. Norway and Sweden don't
really want to find that Scandinavia was originally populated by
Uralic peoples. This has to do with the Sami-people and their
status as an aboriginal people. Consequently no research is done. I'm
influenced by this myself and would prefer some unknown origin of my
ancestors. But I also feel that the history of my language and nation
is incomplete without knowledge of these pre-IE peoples.
> For a Finnish? paper on the same subject have a look at
>
> http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/lammi.html
>
> Based upon Cavalli-Sforza's clear destinction between Saami and
other
> Finno-Ugric speakers there seems to be a re-evaluation of the
Saami's
> place within the Finno-Ugric and/or Uralic family. This has led to
a
> realisation that the earliest found pit-traps (about 6,000 years
ago)
> are before the appearance of Finno-Ugric languages in surrounding
> groups, and the relatively late introduction of reindeer herding,
> together with an emphasis of Uralic features over time, suggests
that
> the non-Uralic features of Saami may be the remains of a substrate
> language.
>
> Culturally seetlement of the Saami area seems to have moved up the
> west coast of Norway from Mesolithic cultures located to the South
> who
> were non Uralic (There is not much evidence of Uralic in Germanic,
so
> it is unlikely that Germanic substrate was Uralic).
>
> Considering the sensitive nature of the Saami, Norwegian and
Finnish
> "nationalisms" the issue of Saami research is currently a bit of a
> "hot potato".
>
> Regards
>
> John