[gothic-l] Re: Names of Heruls-Goffart-J.Svennung-midnight sun-

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at y..., "einarbirg" <einarbirg at y...> wrote:
> --- In gothic-l at y..., "faltin2001" <dirk at s...> wrote:
> >.                                                         
> > >        
> > >     Einar; This is one of your misunderstandings. I said ; I do 
> not 
> > > think he believed....
> > > And; I think.....
> > > At least I am not making claims like Goffart who claims to know 
> what 
> > > every individual Goth knew and knew not. And claiming knowing 
> what 
> > > everybody else knew too.
> > 
> > 
> > Einar,
> > 
> > you cannot seriously believe that Goffart would be such a fool to 
> > proclaim that he knows what every individual Goth knew or did not 
> > know. Once you reached this conclusion from reading his book, you 
> > should have made a plausibility check and ask yourself: am I 
> > mis-understanding something or is this Harvard Professor 
completely 
> > incompetent;-) 
> > 
> > I could already see from your comment on a passage from page 95 of 
> > Goffart's book, that you have seriously mis-interpreted him.
> > 
> > 
> >    Einar; Hæ, Dirk.                                                
>  Thanks for your response.                                           
>  
>    I do not think I did misunderstand him.  If I did so,why have you 
> not corrected me and showed how I mis-interpreted him?   


Hi Einar,

I am usually 'under attack' from several people. So engaging in a 
textual discussion of Goffart's books seemed too time consuming.



            
> 
> I will go to the library on my way home and read it again. I will 
let 
> you know tomorrow. That is if the book is now available at the 
> library. 


That is a good idea. When doing so try to keep in mind that Goffart 
writes in a very very elavated and sophisticated style unlike many 
authors.





> 
> But the sentence is such; page 93.  
> The broken bridge ,symbolizing collective amnesia, helped to explain 
> why no Goth or anyone else had ever heard of the Scandzan homeland 
> before.                                   
> As far as I remember he made this statement without any 
reservations.
> So what did I misunderstand?



Right, firstly I was refering to page 95 (' ...silly stories...'). 
Anyway, on page 93 Goffart is not suggesting that Goths really 
suffered from 'collective amnesia'. He interprets the 'broken bridge' 
as a methaphor introduced by Cassiodorus or Jordanes (or an earlier 
source) to emphasise the finality of their migration to southern 
Russia. With this symbolic breaking of the bridge, all contact with a 
more distant past and more northern homeland was lost. The indication 
that it is a symbol, derives from the fact that in reallity a broken 
bridge would not be enough to separate an entire people completely. 
Note the Goths who stayed on the other side of the bridge vanish from 
the remainder of the report completely, because the broken bridge 
symbolised that they had no contact with them anymore. Further, that 
the island named Scandza was not part of a genuine Gothic tradition, 
but one of the three origo topoi has been shown by several historians 
and philologists (see also W. Pohl in the Reallexikon entry for the 
Goths). The other two are the biblical topos and the Getae/Troja 
topos. For each one of the topoi, Jordanes/Cassiodorus had to come up 
with some sort of plausible link or justification, because real Goths 
of his time cannot have had memory of a biblical origin, a 
Getian/Trojan origin and a Scandzan origin, because they were unreal. 
The bridge methaphor serves to link the Scandza topos to the history. 
Certainly not everybody will agree in principle, but since W. Pohl 
clearly accepts that the 'Scandza' story is nothing but a topos in the 
article on the Goths in the Reallexikon, Goffart's interpretation of 
the bridge-metaphor should not cause too much of a problem.

Turning this around; had a Scandzan origin been part of a genuine and 
well-known Gothic tradition and not just a mediterranean topos that 
there would have been no need to introduce the metaphor of the broken 
bridge to the story.
 
I don't really want to discuss this at length, but when you are 
reading Goffart again, please try to keep in mind that his writing 
style is really very elavated (stylistically sophisticated maybe a 
better description) and that often he uses stark terminoloy to 
emphasise a point. 



  
 
 
> > > > Of course not, because they knew the same geographical 
sources.
> > > 
> > >   Einar; Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
> > > 
> > > Apart from that then their descriptions are very much 
> different.     
> >  
> > > The similarities are not there. They both say 40 days. Apart 
from 
> > > that there is no similarity. 
> > > 
> > > And I do not think that you have any idea, if they used the same 
> > > sources in these case. Who says they did?
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Why always this frontal attack? 
> > A good analysis of the geographical sources available and used by 
> 6th 
> > century authors is provided by Rolf Hachmann  in 'Die Goten und 
> > Skandinavien'. The argument is based on philological comparisons 
> and 
> > rather complicated.
> 
>    Einar; This frontal attack is not a right understanding.I do not 
> understand why you say this.    



I said this because instead of just asking for a source you introduced 
your reply with a complete rejection of even the possibility that I 
might be right. 


                                     
 
> 
>  This is interesting info. Are these authors claiming that Jordanes 
> and Procopius used the same sources when descriping the midnight 
sun.?



This is a very complicated philological matter. My understanding is 
that neither of the two copied from each other or from directly the 
same source, but from at least two sources that were however strongly 
influenced by each other. I think it was Svennung who suggested that 
Procopius' information about Thule was (at least in parts) some 200 
years old when he used it.





> 
>    Einar; I do agree with you .But I really do not think I am beeing 
> abrasive. If you feel so,then I am sorry. But all of us should try 
> not beeing to sensitive to critic. Me,you and many others. 



I think we have disolved this in our (rather friendly) private e-mail 
exchange.

cheers
Dirk


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