--- In
cybalist@egroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> And don't forget the River Tanew (a tributary of the San) very near
the core area of early Gothic settlement in SE Poland. The name could
easily derive from *da:nu- via Grimm's Law and some noun-class
adjustment as it passed from some pre-Germanic IE language to
Germanic and then to Slavic.
My favourite dating for the last stages of Grimm's Law (maybe the
spirantisation of aspirated *pH, *tH, *kH) is about 200 BC, when the
Germani were securely established in S Poland and were already making
inroads into Ukraine, but had not dispersed too wide for a common
innovation (or at least a parallel tendency, like palatal umlaut more
recently) to operate throughout Germanic-speaking Europe. These
things (and the earliest Germanic conquests) have already been
discussed on Cybalist; if you try obvious keywords such
as "Bastarnae" or "Sciri", the e-group search engine will take you
there.
>
> But I still fail to see how these early events could have led to
the naming the Danes as *dani- BECAUSE they were "river folk". Both
Germani and Slavs had very different general words for "river", and
if a specific river-name was involved (such as the Don), I can't
imagine the "Don River folk" becoming the historical Danes in faraway
Jutland.
>
> Piotr
>
>
Aha! I was looking for a "portage" place, for dragging stuff from a
Baltic river system to a Mediterranean/Black Sea river system. Better
get out the Map of Europe. For some time I have suspected that an
important part of my country's history might be in a provincial
museum somewhere in what was once Poland-Lithuania (those
same "portages" must have been used then, or?).
If there is a naming such as "river folk" (and I have noticed that
the same designation has been used for the Etruscans elsewhere in
this forum, although I'm not quite up to understanding the details in
the proposals), that meaning would be of "trader" or traveller, a
people who moves stuff along the river, as opposed to a people living
a settled life along the river. Such two peoples will always have
conflicting interests; I remember reading about a Russian bylina in
which the hero goes out to prove himself by stopping treacherous
foreigners on the passing road. This tradition of suspicion
towards "the routes" as I see it has left some trails also in later
Russian attitudes.
If my memory serves me right, one of the IE groups that preserves
*danu- (occurring not just in "Don" but in "Dniepr" and "Dniestr"
too) is Indo-Iranian, and they were present in the vicinity.
You assume that by "Tanais" Pytheas means Jutland. But there are
major dialect "fault lines" between Southern and Western Jutland on
one side and Northern and Eastern Jutland and the Danish islands on
the other side, where the former dialects distinguishes themselves
from all other North Germanic dialects in the direction of West
Germanic (separate preceding definite article vs. postclitic article,
possible retention of *w- before o and u, retention of w and hw vs.
v). With most Danish linguists, you won't get them to admit this
under torture, since in 1864, in the war over Schleswig, Grimm
declared this to be proof that the Jutes were really West Germanic,
hence Germans, although ignorant of this fortunate fact, and
therefore the German troops should annex Jutland, for the good of the
inhabitants. The political leadership in Germany didn't buy that,
fortunately for us. Etc etc. Later Danish historians (Axel Olrik)
have declared that the Jutes are the only prently
identifiable "other" tribe in Denmark. There seems to have been an
opposition Jutes/Danes. Therefore I believe Pytheas meant the Danish
Islands.
Now what does a "river people" or "trade people" want to do on
a "remote" (from what? he asked) island? Such a people want one thing
for themselves: control of the access routes, both for security and
for forcing other traders to lay by and pay for the services they
force upon them. Islands are great for that: Lemnos. Fortified cities
near only access routes are great for that: Troy. And the whole
raison d'etre of Denmark is just that; in the late 1400, after the
Hanse introduced large ships in the Baltic, ships which didn't need
the services of those lands they passed, and after Denmark had been
bankrupt and pawned to Holstein counts and nearly ceased to exist, we
introduced the Øresund (Sound) toll which we enforced by force of
arms with no good reason until 1857. Did Troy and Lemnos pursue a
similar policy and is this the reason for the wars between them? Most
wars Denmark has been involved have been over exactly that policy.
I am now getting closer to my scandalous opinion, which I will phrase
as a question: Did the Trojans settle in Scandinavia after being
driven out of Troy? (Now I am back to my original -int-, -unt-, -s-
question.) Unfortunately, Olof Rudbeck, in the 1600's had a similar
idea, to bolster the reputation of his successful fatherland, and
everybody knows today (especially in Sweden) that he was a clown I
mean, for one thing, everybody knows that Troy never existed ;-)!
Torsten