Re: Pliny's "Guthalus"

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

> --- Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
> wrote:
> > Dear Steve, Pliny Latinised all those rivernames.
> > <-us>, <-is> and <-a> are _Latin_ endings,
> > equivalent (roughly) to Germanic *-az (the usual
> > ending of Germanic masculines), *-iz and *-o:
> > (strong feminine declension). *gutxalsaz would have
> > been Latinised as *Guthalsus, which, although not a
> > perfect prototype for the Plinian form (as I
> > admitted) is still a damn sight better than *Gauta
> > Albiz 'The Gautish Elbe' (it might have been
> > Latinised as *Gauto:rum Albis, *Gautalbis or the
> > like). Note that Modern Swedish älv (don't forget
> > the umlaut; it does make a difference, and <alv> is
> > a different Swedish word) is historically the same
> > as continental <Elbe> *albiz, which is Pliny's Albis
> > in the exact same sentence in which Guthalus occurs.
>
> ******GK: Note also that Pliny knew very little about
> the areas to the north of the North Sea-Baltic
> continuum. The big island of "Scatinavia" inhabited by
> the Hillaeviones in fifty villages ("so they say") and
> beyond these the land of the equine-footed people
> ("Hippopodes"). The river list of Historia Naturalis
> IV.100 roughly parallels the people list of IV.99, so
> we must seek the "Guthalus" in the land of the
> "Vandili". Only the Oder fits. If you check out
> Ptolemy [II.10]you will find that his knowledge of
> Scandinavia is just slightly less thin than Pliny's
> ("Scandia" here is a big island north of the mouth of
> the Vistula, inhabited by seven peoples, incl. the
> Finni and Gutae, but with no river names mentioned at
> all). And do not forget Solinus (a 3rd c. source) with
> his west-->east continuum of "amnes clarissimi":
> Alba-Guthalus-Vistula. Even those investigators who
> thought that "Guthalus" might be "Goet(a)lv" looked
> for it on the southern shores of the Baltic, usually
> opting for the Oder.******
>
>
>

Just found this in Saxo (14. 25. 16): Gudacra amnis. The notes in
this edition said:
"(Goderak), river in Mecklenburg (= Warnow)". Where he gets /goderak/
from, I don't know, it sounds Dutch to me (there are many
other "Dutch map names" in this part of the world, but /rak/
is "navigable channel" (cf. Skagerrak and I believe there is a
Langerak in the Waal delta), which means it might be a translation of
Goth-a:ll-, /áll/, West Nordic "navigable channel". At the mouth of
the Warnow are Rostock and Warnemünde. The Warnians used to live
there.

Torsten