Re: Digest Number 1239: re: "hogget"

See
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/programmes/natcon/natcon_1.htm
for a summary of North European swidden agriculture. The real
experts were the Finns. The Finno-Karelians started north in the early
medieval period and reached the limit of agriculture in a few
centuries. The King of Sweden then transferred a considerable
population to areas on the Sweden-Norway border where they again soon
reached the population limit the country could support. So in the
1630's he sent a number to New Sweden on the Delaware. The colony
didn't last long, it was taken over by the Dutch and then the British.
However, there is convincing evidence that the Westward expansion of
British America esssentially depended on Finnish techniques of burn
the woods, build a log cabin (with very characteristic construction
techniques) plant a crop, exhaust the soil in a few years, and move on.
How about deriving "swidden" from "Sweden" (or vice versa)? Isn't
that what etymology is all about? STOP, I'm joking -- don't correct me!
Dan Milton
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>"
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> > >
> > > > "swidden"
> > >
> > > > Another odd word I'd like to know about is "swidden",
> > > > often used by anthropologists as a synonym for "slash and
> > > > burn agriculture", and to all appearances an English word,
> > > > but not in the Compact or Concise OED, Am Herit Dict or
> > > > Amer.Coll.Dict. It's a perfectly good Norse word (Sw:
> > > > "svida", to burn (the surface of something), OSw svitha,
> > > > Isl svitha (but with different "th"s). But how did it
> > > > become a technical term in anthropology, and why (or where
> > > > from) was it adopted in such an English form?
> >
> > Danish has 'svedjebrug' ('brug' in this constrained sense =
> > procedure, way of going about things, cf. German 'Gebrauch'). The
> > word sounds like a loan to me (Swedish or ON). I'll look it up.
>
> Ordbog over det danske sprog:
>
> svedje
> (fr. Sw. 'svedja', der. from Sw. 'sveda' or 'svida'...; former only
> of matters Nw. (and Sw.), more recently as archaeol. and ethnogr.
> term)
> agricultural land cleared and made fertile by burning forest.
>
> Earliest quote for 'svedjebrug' is undated, by the historian Johs.
> Brøndsted, 1890-1965.
>
> Older forms exist: 'sveebrænding' ('svee' from Nw.), quote from
> 1760; 'svie-ild' 1746; 'svee-land', 1761.
>
>
> > Torsten