Re: [tied] Re: Language - Area - Routes

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 6044
Date: 2001-02-11

The Rugians followed the Vandals and the Langobards into the Vienna Basin and Pannonia, so that Lower Austria came to be known as Rugiland. They were pacified by Odoacer (or should we call him Audawaker) in 487 and were last heard of moving to Italy (some were also resettled by Romans in Thrace), where their remnants soon merged with other populations, losing their separate identity. What's intriguing about the Rugians is the possibility that they had migrated from what is now Rogaland County in SW Norway (the Stavanger area) about the 2nd c. BC -- anticipating, like the Herulians, the later movements of the Danes (who BTW conquered Rügen, then occupied by Slavs, in 1168, cf. the destruction of the temple of Sventovit described by Saxo G.). This would explain Jordanes's placement of the "Rugi" -- the source population -- in the neighbourhood of Scandza (he probably meant Scania rather than all of the Scandinavian Peninsula) and of the "Ulmerugi" -- the Rugians of the island of Rügen and West Pomerania -- near the landing-site of King Amal. Their original language would then have been a variety of common Northwest Germanic, much closer to Early Runic (and in particular to dialects ancestral to Danish, which should please Torsten) than to Gothic.
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: S.Tarasovas@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 10:54 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Language - Area - Routes

If I remeber correctly, the theories I've read have it that Rugians merged to the part of future East Slavs some centuries earlier (even may be before they reached their historically attested territory)  than Scandinavians, whose influence was strong and obvious.

One of the books stated there were more than one 'Rugiland' in the early medieval Europe. I've personally read in an independent source Rugi's that presence is attested in Pannonia.

It's 'retaining of a separate name and identity', not the language, which the theory considers to be supported by narrative and archaelogical (funeral rites) evidence. I'll collect the necessary facts and will ask your permission to continue the thread.