Piotr and Pavel wrote:

>There are scores of old Germanic loans in Finnish, many of them
>beautifully archaic and evidently dating back to a chronological layer
>identifiable as Proto-Germanic, e.g. kuningas < *kuningaz 'prince', rengas
>< *xrengaz 'ring', laiva < *flauja- 'ship', etc. Finnish is rather
>conservative in terms of phonological development, so those loans are
>conserved like flies in amber, and their Finnish form is sometimes more
>archaic than what you can find in any historically documented Germanic
>language.
>
>Piotr

Nice Baltic image: "flies in amber" !

Do you know how many words we are talking about ? (order of magnitude)
If you were to make up a list, would it be exhausted in a single mail ?

Personally I have never looked too deeply into this question of Finnish,
because the Finnish language is soo different from the other European
languages, and is supposed to be soo difficult to learn, that very few
people make the effort. Far more people have actually tried to learn
languages like Russian, and I suppose those who got a chance to live
there are also more or less fluent. But Finnish is, I think, even
more difficult than Russian !

Of course, there is the same phenomenon with respect to the Saamic
language(s): e.g.. the Saamic god "Horgallis" is supposed to derived
from ON "Torekall".

Come to think of it: I may be able to answer my own question.
In fact, I now recall that the Brill dictionaries publish
lists of such borrowings to and from the various neighboring
languages. (but I had temporarily forgotten about this,
since I have until now classified Finnish as "too difficult
to deal with")

Looking it up, I find, then, 426 (for hundred and twenty
six) borrowings from North Germanic into Finnish. The list
includes such well known words as:

(extract from list)

arðr
austr
bátr
barn
blót
bukkr
dreki
dróttinn
dvergr
embætti
flugdréki
frjádagr
hjálmr
hraunn
hvalr
jól
kaup
kefli
kellari
ketill
kjalki
Laufey
laugardagr
laukr
leikr (1)
markaðr
merr
nafarr
nagli
nál (1)
naut
ríkr
rugr
ryðja
sápa
sárr
saumr
saxar
segl
serkr (1)
signa
síld
silki
snoeri
sokkr
stofa
stokkr
stríð
stro,nd
stýri
sveinn
svinnr
tak
teikn
teinn
tjald
torf
torg
troll
trumba
tún
Týr
týsdagr
þollr
Þórr
þorskr
vaðr
vín
vindr
vo,ttr
o,ndurr

So what this list suggests is: social institutions (marked),
weekdays, gods, supernatural beings, instruments, things
to do with fishing and sailing; also the plow, as well as
things that have to do with the building of houses.
What surprises me is the word "vo,ttr" -- because the other
words suggest the Finns came from the East, and met with
the North Germanic people when they came to the ocean
(the Baltic ocean). But if they lived inland, it would have
been cold there, and they would have needed something
to keep their hands warm. But this can also be explained
if we assume the vo,ttr was made of wool (or down) while
the Finns may have used something made of fur.

The thing with the weekdays incidentally also give a good
indication about the time period in which the loans
occurred. That is because we can be 99 % sure that
the Germanic peoples got their weekday names from the Romans.
Because it reflects the well known "interpretatio
Germanica" of the Roman pantheon.
But we also know that the Roman calendar originally did
not have the week. It only had "kalendae", "ides" and
"nonae". The Romans must have adopted the 7-day week
relatively late, some time after their politics had
gotten them involved in the Middle East. And from that time
on the introduction of the same 7-day week by the Germans
cannot have been immediate. After that it must have
taken some time before the 7-day week arrived in Finland.
I am not going to attempt to estimate what century we
then arrive in. But it is clear that we are talking about
several centuries. (A.D.)

> 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 have "eykt" (f.).
But this word was not part of the list from which the
above excerpts were taken. Maybe it means that this
particular word arrived earlier than the others (?)
(maybe directly from "urgermansich" ?)

> 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)

"jól" (=yule) was indeed part of the list I quoted.
Also note that words like geohol, gehhol, geol, geola
are documented in Anglo-Saxon. Also in the Gotic language
there is "fruma-jiuleis" = the month of November.
All this shows that the word "jól" is an old one.
But when the Icelandic Annals say that this name
was introduced in honour of Julius Caesar, how seriously
are we to take this? It is of course relevant to consider
that it was Julius Caesar who *was* responsible for an
important calendar reform. But the question is whether
the Icelandic annalists are merely speculating, or -
what would be more interesting - are passing on a genuine
tradition.

> _pukki_ standalone means "goat" - certainly the cognate of the English
> "buck".
> Any ideas?
> Cut it if it's offtopic ;-)

I find it an interesting topic. Am not sure if it is
off-topic for the list. This is typically material that you'd
find in ON textbooks, as general background material.

Keth