Re: Hervarar saga

>----- Original Message ----
>From: llama_nom <600cell@...>
>To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Tuesday, 12 September, 2006 10:05:25 AM
>Subject: [norse_course] Re: Hervarar saga
>

>> 1. The ON word is of genuine PG, and further of PIE, origin
>> 2. The ON word is a borrowing
>> 3. The ON word does NOT mean "Carpathians"
>
>If the earliest record of the name in ON isn't just a chance
>resemblance (3), then maybe the sequence of events went like this: The
>name was borrowed into PG, before the time of the first consonant
>shift, from another IE language where it was perhaps invented using a
>PIE root [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Mountains ]. It

Yes, precisely. That's what I was thinking of, too.

>survived in at least some some dialect or dialects of East and/or West
>Germanic until it became attached to stories about conflict between
>the Goths and Huns. The name then travelled north with these stories
>to Scandinavia (where it might have been known already, or might have
>been known once but forgotten after contact was lost with the East
>Germanic peoples who formerly inhabited the region; or maybe it was
>never known in Scandinavia till it arrived with the legends).

Yes, inter-dialectal borrowing is quite common, indeed.

>Another name for mountains in the poem 'Jassar fjöll' has been
>connected with German 'Gesenke', from Slavic 'Jeseník'
>(Turville-Petre, p. 88). But I don't think this narrows down the date
>it could have been borrowed at. Although initial /j/ inherited from
>PG was lost c. 600 in Proto-Norse, /e/ underwent a later development
>to /ja/ in certain circumstances (when followed in the next syllable
>by a non-nasal /a/).

Well, it is an interesting piece of information.

The range of "Jeseníky" forms the natural northern border of the former settlement of the Germanic tribes Markomans and Kvades (sorry for the spelling - I've never seen them written in English :-)) who inhabited the present-day territories of Bohemia and Moravia. Moravian Beskyds are, in fact, the westernmost part of the Carpathians.

Markoman and Kvade settlements arrived in the region cca in 50 BC, after the Celtic "Boii" began to leave, and stayed until cca 350 AD, when other ethnic groups, especially the Slavs, came in the region.

It is known that Attila's Huns incorporated groups of unrelated tributary peoples. In the European case Alans, Gepids, Scirii, Rugians, Sarmatians, Slavs (!) and Gothic (!) tribes. After Atilla's sons were defeated by Ardaric's coalition at the river Nedao in 454, the Hunnish empire ceased to exist.

In 560 AD, the Avars invaded the Carpathian basin, conquerring the territories inhabited by Slavs. A bit later, 623 AD, Samo founded the first Slavic empire, uniting the Moravian, Slovakian, Lower Austrian and Carinthian Slavic tribes against their Avar neighbours, who were later defeated by the Franks.

Actually, the earliest Goths inhabited the Carpathians since at least 263 AD, and their territories stretched from the Black Sea (Crimea) to the river Danube (the Roman borders). Before them, the southern and eastern parts of modern Ukraine were populated by the Iranian Scythians, whose kingdom existed on this land between 700 BC and 200 BC.

Hence, the situation is very complicated.

>
>Regarding the origins of the material, Turville-Petre mentions a
>couple of words used in the verses in meanings which are unusual for
>ON, but match the meanings of their cognates in West Germanic
>('skálkr' "servant", rather than "rogue"; 'skattr' "treasure", rather
>then tribute), which "may be due to continental influence" (pp. 84-85,
>p. 86).
>

Well, the name really may have diffused from West Germanic. Thanks for the interesting information again.

Best,

P.