Ptolemy describes the fjords? [gothic-l]

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> Dirk, the Juniper doesn't have leaves. It has needles.
> 
> I think your "here is a translation" is a bit too easy,
> after I gave you the original text with manuscript variants.


Hi Keth,

sorry if my message came across that way, but I just wanted to throw 
in a translation of the text which showed that some authors (rightly 
or wrongly) used the term Juniper. I did not mean to say that this 
dis-qualified your interpretation in any way. 





> The thing to do would of course be to go to a really good Latin 
dictionary.
> 
> Here are the manuscript variants once again:
> 
> (from the Getica §16 : cetri, citri, caedri, cedri, coedri.)
> 
> I feel pretty confident that this word is the same as
> we use when we say an orange is a "citrus" fruit.
> Auf deutsch heißt es Zitrone.
> 
> But that is not the right answer here. Beacuse in Latin
> "citri" was ALSO the name of the african thuja tree.
> Please look in Brockhaus under "Lebensbaum" and you will
> find a description. There is the orientalis as well as
> the occidentalis.
> 
> Andreas Nordin simply translates by "med buktande sidor
> liksom citronträdets  blad". But clearly he has chosen
> the easiest reading, where the more difficult reading
> is clearly to be preferred. (i.e. the lemon leaf)
> 
> Namely: there is no POINT in referring to a lemon leaf,
> because it has no characteristic, no personality.
> It looks like any other leaf. But the lectio difficilior
> gives us a leaf of very characteristic shape, that is
> a rarity among leaves.
> 
> Also this tree (I think sometimes called cedar/cypress?)
> was an important product in antiquity. It was used
> for building because the wood is very light.
> (and also fragrant)
> 
> The translation you presented simply can't be right
> because English  Juniper was a "Juniperus" in Latin
> = Wachholder auf Deutsch. (es hat keine Blätter
> nur Nadeln)
> 
> I do in fact have an English-Latin dictionary
> and it says Juniper (eng.)= iuniperus (lat.)
> But the latin-English part says:
> citrus -i m.
> 1) a kind of african cypress with an aromatic timber
> used in making furniture: Luc. Plin.
> 2) the citron-tree : Plin.
> 
> So the translator you used (from california?) clearly
> made an error there.


Very interesting. Can you tell what kind of shape Ptolemy/Jordanis had 
in mind when writing about the island of Scandza. Ptolemy also seemed 
to have reported about a peninsula, i.e. a projected arm of land in 
the north of Scandza, perhaps shaping the stem of the leaf.

cheers
Dirk
 



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