From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 5776
Date: 2001-01-25
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 2:43 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Poets, linguists and countrymen. Lend me your
ears...
>
> 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-ú-, 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-ú-, *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
>
>
>
>