Piotr states:
>Baltic Perku:nas is routinely explained as *perkWu-h1n-o- 'he of the >oak'
>(thus also in the EIEC), [...]
I'm confused. Beg forgiveness but what is the suffix *-?n- (*-h1n-) for?
Much to my delight, Piotr unexpectedly theorizes
along linguistic lines:
>A new thought has just occurred to me. What do mountains have in >common
>with oaks? They are big.
Actually, I can think of another better commonality between oaks and
mountains than just simply that they are "big"...
They both happen to hold up the sky. Speaking just of historical mythology
in Europe and the Middle-East/Fertile Crescent, we know that there are two
main worldviews. Some mythologies view a great mountain as the center of the
universe (like Greek "Mount Olympus") and there are some that see a great
_tree_ (usually an oak but sometimes an ash) in the center of the universe
(as for example the "Tree" in Genesis or Norse Yggdrasil). These two
traditions are related by a common prehistoric belief (possibly, as I've
said, centred in the Balkans/West Anatolia area c.7-6000 BCE) where some
central object held up the great vault of the sky.
There were many other "central holy objects" used besides an oak or a
mountain such as a pin, pillar, Atlas, the ugly duckling, a biscotti :),
etc. and some probably derive from pre-existant native traditions before the
spread of these EuroAnatolian mythologies in their various forms. The
original Central Object appears to be the Tree and this helps to pinpoint
the geographical center of this Proto-Mythology.
Anyways, as an IE priest, one would certainly have alot of room for wordplay
here but it's important not just to make connections but to know why these
associations might exist. There are plenty of reasons to connect the storm
god with the World Oak/Ash Tree since they are both related often in later
IE traditions (eg: trees struck by lightning, blah, blah, blah) and even in
non-IE Asian traditions (the great Thunderbird "clawing" trees to get at the
mischievous Squirrel). There are even plenty of reasons to connect the storm
god with the variant of the World Mountain, a regional adaptation of the
original World Tree concept, as we find coincidentally confined to
mythologies of southern areas (MiddleEast, Greece, Sumer). However, it's
hard to justify a loose connection between just "big" and "storm" or to
split *PerkWnos into two seperate deities.
>Hittite parku- means 'high, tall'. I've seen it etymologised in >various
>ways, but why nor simply *prkW-�-, hence the noun *perkW-u- >'*tall tree,
>oak' and the Germanic "mountain" word (Gothic ferguni, >OE firgen). I
>wonder if there is any good evidence for the *kW at >all. What about
>reconstructing simply *prk-�-, *perk-u-s, >*perk-u:n(j)o-?
I will disagree. I can accept an oak or mountain connection with the storm
god but not a "tall" connection. The storm god wasn't any taller than any
other god of the pantheon and usually if anything it is *Yemos, the earth,
in all his variants that is praised for his panoramic size. I think we
should keep the *-kW- for now.
Piotr:
>I suspect *perk(W)u:nos (_not **perkWnos, Glen!_) was once a North
> >European oak/mountain deity who came to be confused with *perunos the
> >rock/thunder(?) deity and merged his functions with the latter's. The
> >merger of deities because of their similar-sounding names is nothing
> >unusual; it happened to the West Germanic counterparts of Frigg and
> >Freyja, for example.
Hmm, well even if we reconstruct a "oak/mountain" deity called *PerkWnos
(and not *Perku:nos), a kind of Central Object deified, I still have
skepticism. This would certainly seem to wreak havoc with the tightly
related proto-mythological systems that I have so far, but I'm not
frightened...
The Central Object according to the Norse was definitely an _ash_, not an
oak tree, called Yggdrasil. No central mountains in this worldview. In fact,
I would argue that the whole World Tree legend that was lent to a
EuroAnatolian protomythology was ultimately from the PreIE Europeans
(certainly not from the people of the steppe grasslands!) whom the Norse
must have come to live amongst.
So what evidence could there possibly be for this "North European
oak/mountain deity" as seperate from a similar named storm god? There is
Norse Fjorgyn, a giantess, the mother of Thor, the lightning and thunder
guy. Fjorgyn certainly has a connection with "storm". She's also a
"giantess" and the "earth" personified. I suppose earth and mountains can be
interchanged for convenience sake. We might very tentatively say that
Fjorgyn represents a "tall" mountain goddess *Perku:nos out of haste... but
then what happened to the "storm deity"? Does *Perku:nos represent BOTH
gods? But if so, our initial assumption that there are two seperate gods,
mountain and storm, erodes away.
Looking on Yahoo! there almost seem to be two similar gods existant. One
called Fjorgyn, earth goddess, mother of Thor, and the other Fjorgynn, a
weather god, father of Frigg. Even so, they both contain -g-. In the end,
however, it just seems to stem from differing interpretations of the few
references available showing that Frigg's parent (mother or father?) is
called Fjorgyn(n). It makes better sense that Frigg's parent is Earth
because Frigg is certainly a chthonic deity. Since Jord is also an earth
goddess and mother of Thor, it would all appear that Fjorgyn(n) is the
mother of both Thor and Frigg.
What exactly is your justification for two seperate gods, I wonder?
- gLeN
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com