[gothic-l] To Dirk and Tore

Wed Jul 18 22:41:13 UTC 2001

Hi Tore and Dirk, 

--- In gothic-l at y..., Tore Gannholm <tore.gannholm at s...> wrote:
> >>
> >> As Jordanes writes the goths may have immigated from the Island
> >> scandza around the beginning of our era.
> >
> >
> >Hi Anders,
> >
> >I know that is not your main point, but just to add: Jordanes 
actually
> >wrote that the Goths have migrated from the Island of Scandza some
> >1000 years or so before our era!!
> >
> 
> Dirk,
> You are quite right that Jordanes actually wrote that the Goths have
> migrated from the Island of Scandza that looks like a Juniper 
leave, the
> shape of Gotland.

Isn't is rather the shape of Öland then?
> I don't think he mentions anything about 1000 years or so before 
our era.
> It is rather 300 -200 BC
> 
and thanks for correcting my misstake. I think I knew some time ago 
that it was earlier than our era, but I still can't seem to figure 
out if it was 200 or 1000 years. Maybe we will never know.
But I still think that it corroborates the view that Gutnish, 
Icelandic, Danish , Swedish, Norweigan and certainly also High German 
are more related to eachother than they are to Gothic.  We seem to be 
able to follow these languages down to the Viking times and the V.Age 
runes where it looks to me that  Danish and Swedish are almost 
identical.

I saw this by Keth: 
GOTLAND text:
Gutland hitti fyrsti maðr þann sum þjelvar hit. Þá var Gutland sá 
elvist
at þet dagum sank ok nátum var uppi.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ICELAND text:
Gotland hitti [=fann] fyrstr maðr sá sem þjalfarr hét. Þá var Gotland 
só
?elvist*)
at þat do,gum so,kk ok nóttum var uppi.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(the first text is Gutlandish from 1350, the second is the same
text translated to Icelandic)

>From this it looks like modern icelandic is "rather" similar to 
gutnish from 1350.

The Discussion a couple of months ago also showed that we cannot say 
that gutnish is more similar to gothic than e. g. swedish. In my 
thinking the idea of relatedness is between cultures from differeent 
times very much rely on the relatedness of the languages (and names). 
I.e if we can't find any more physical evidence.(I'm not aware of any 
such instances from Gotland or Götaland.) 

If I found this small amount(nearly 0) of connections to support a 
hypothesis about a relatedness to the goths I would simply give up 
and look for other explantions of the linguistics involved.  

My humble wonder then is. Why does so many people on the list persist 
in this discussion, and say that it's a certainty that Gautland or 
Gutland or whatever = the land of the goths.- I know that a migration 
as Jordanes suggests 2500-3000 years ago is of cuors not an 
impossible actual turn of events - But if we can't se any cultural 
connections , whats the point of persiting in saying that the goths 
came from here or there( like saying "thats what my mother told me")
Wouldn't it be more interesting to look for your ancestors with no 
presumtions instead? 
Or is it specially romantic to say that one's ancestors were goths? 
Why not just admit that there is a possibility that Gaut and the 
goths could be ethymologically unrelated as the last few weeks 
discussion seem to suggest.

It would actually also solve a few problems.

Even if (is confused or a liar  )Snorri uses the word Reidgotaland 
for juteland once he also uses it for the 'prooved' area on the 
continen arond Ukraine which he also calls Gotland. From my memory he 
seems to be able to discern between Gautland Gutland and (Reid)got(a)
land. 
This of course doesn't proove that Gautland, Gutland and the goths 
are unrelated. But it does proove that we can't use Snorri as a 
source to say  that these three things are related to eachother 
ethymologically.

If the ássumption that goths and Gaut are unrelated ethymologically 
is correct it can also explain why Snorri can come up with the 
ridiculuos:-) thought the cult of Gaut came from the southeast with 
Odin annd his people.

My assumption here is that you should not read every word litteraly 
that Snorri writes. *A bunch of gods living in Asia and comming here  
e.t.c.* If you read both on and between the lines I think its evident 
that Snorri is aware that Odin is a real person leading a people 
probably worshipping Gaut.    
The archaological evidence also,as I understand it, show that Odin 
comes into the nordic pantheon wery late  ( did i hear 6th, 7th 
century?). Gaut then somewhat earlier. The Illerup Gaut was from 200 
I heard, so in the first or second century seems to be a plausible 
entry for Gaut.
Before that the head god was Njord coming ethymologically from a more 
ancient Nerthus-cult.

Am I wrong in these preunderstandings? 
Then please tell me where my misstake is.

Dirk, the obvious connection between odin and the middle east, is 
through Gaut (If we are to think that a kernel of truth lies behind 
Snorris tellings, which of course is far from certain) The other is 
the runes( If we are to believe in Bang's theories) where also Gaut 
appear. Also does appear the sequence alugod on something which I saw 
in Nationalmuseum in Copehagen when I was there. In NW semitic 
language this could actually mean "High 'God'". 

I don't think it's impossible that the germanic words gud,gott,god 
etc. could be from the god Gaut which was worshipped by many germanic 
tribes. Ingemar Nordgen even writes that this god's name could be 
pronounced in a number of variants. eg one with a soft d  close to a 
lisp-sound.

This is also the way the ancient near east god of good fortune Gad 
was pronounced. 
http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/choice/995496594.html#e
Since the other semitic scripts( exept the runes :-))only had 
consonants, the word COULD have been pronounced with another vocal 
than a. 

Dirk, I assumed you wanted a good explanation of the name Odin in 
semitic. I'm not really certain (of course!). But my fabulation 
is ... as it is pronounced in hebrew it means Waw Dalet-yod-
nun "(and) he governs "
http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?
number=01777&version=nas 

But this is of course only a guess and I really haven't decided if I 
would bet any money on it or not.

Best wishes 
Anders

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