--- In
cybalist@egroups.com, "Steve Woodson" <wood2@...> wrote:
> It's my understanding that the Danes didn't enter the
historical record until the 5th century when they replaced the Jutes
(who had settled in Britian) in Jutland. By this time the Iranians
had long ceased to be the dominant people of the Pontic steppe. Does
anyone know of an earlier mention of them? Also, just because
they're not mentioned (in any of my books) doesn"t mean they didn't
exist, of course.
Not unless you want to count Pytheas' "Tanais" at the end of his
journey of the ocean as a reference to Danes. I keep forgetting
whether it was Prokopios or Jordanes who wrote (and I quote from
memory): "The Danes who are of Swedish stock, drove the Heruleans
from their settlements".
We Danes of course don't like to hear that we are not autochthonous.
I read a book by a Danish writer where he tried to explain away this
sentences such that the Danes had driven the Heruleans away from the
Danes' own settlements, the Heruleans thus being the foreigners.
I think I can rescue it thus:
The writer does not say that the Danes migrated out of Sweden on that
particular occasion. Perhaps he is just explaining to his less world-
wise audience what kind of people the Danes were, since they must
have known the Swedes (Sweden being the closest to the Russian river
systems and therefore those that arrived in Byzantium in the largest
numbers).
There has been some controversy as to whether the Heruleans were a
people or a class. The word itself is found in titles (Da. jarl, En.
earl). In runic inscriptions the inscriber sometimes presents himself
as "I, the Herulean ..." (ek erilaz ...). When they were driven from
Denmark, they roamed Europe, picking fights with other tribes (when
they met the Langobards they challenged them to a fight. The
Langobards answered that the Heruleans had recently fought them and
prevailed so why now again? The Heruleans insisted. The Langobards
prevailed.) After being beaten, the Heruleans fled, back to Denmark.
The Danes helped them accross the ocean (to Sweden). Rudbeck (the
Swedish 17th century, shall we say, mythologist) came up with a
history that the Heruleans settled in Värend, in Småland (Sweden),
full of hatred of the Danes. I believe a Swedish king then exempted
then of taxes, on the basis of that story.
Contemporary writers say of the Heruleans that they were an extremely
copnservative tribe with extremely unpleasant views on preserving the
old traditions (sacrifice etc). They have also been credited with the
invention of Runes..
My own opinion is that the Heruleans were both a people and a social
class. At the same time they are driven out you find a lot a bog
corpses in Denmark and Northern Germany. I think this was a Rwanda
thing.
As for the Jutes, it is true that the general opinion in Anglophonia
is that they left Jutland (Denmark??) for England. But, as I related
in an earlier posting, there is a sharp linguistic "fault line" in
Jutland today, running North west-South east. South west you have (as
I wrote) w and hw- ("American" wh-) vs. Danish v, "thick" l, a single
gender vs. two (three in island dialects), loss of final vowel vs.
schwa (-a preserved in eastern dialects), a "I" vs jeg ("breaking", e-
-> je in the rest of Scandinavia), independent definite article æ vs
enclitic -en, -et. Folklore has it West Jutland fishermen can carry
on conversations with their English counterparts. Most Copenhagen
people find the dialect extremely difficult.
The Jutes, as the Saxons, left some behind. They didn't all emigrate.
Torsten