E-Ching wrote:

>What clinches it for me is that the Proto-Germanic tribes used
>to be neighbours of the Finns, long before they split up to become

Saxons

>and Norse and Goths, etc., and the Finns borrowed quite a few words

from

>Proto-Germanic at that time. One of them is the stem _vark-_ 'thief'
>(_varas_ in the nominative).

Hi there,
BTW it seems to be an interesting (though off-topic) discussion.
Does someone know more Finnish loanwords?
I know _jukko_ "yoke", but certainly I don't know the Norse word (since
Old Norse dictionaries are hardly available here in Russia).
I might also have a go and tyr to say that _Joulupukki_ (the Finnish
Santa Claus) is also two loans:
_Joulu_ looks like jól (o with an accent mark, just in case)
_pukki_ standalone means "goat" - certainly the cognate of the English
"buck".
Any ideas?
Cut it if it's offtopic ;-)
Pavel