From: Steve Woodson
Message: 3863
Date: 2000-09-19
>Thomas,
> --- 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