[gothic-l] Carpathians and Croatians

[Francisc Czobor]

Hails allaim!

I believe I've found an indication about how called the Goths the 
Carpathian Mountains, beside which they settled for some centuries.
According to Felix Genzmer, who translated in German and commented 
the Edda ("Die Edda - Götterdichtung, Spruchweiseiten und 
Heldengesänge der Germanen", Eugen Diederichs Verlag, München, 1981, 
1997), in a Nordic fragment connected to the Hlöðskviða 
[Hloedhskvidha], "The Song of Hlödur", entitled in German "Das 
Hunnenschlachtlied" ("The Song of the Battle with the Huns"), 
Heidrek, the father of Hlödur, was killed at the Harvada Mountains, 
which are, according to Genzmer, the Carpathians. It is very 
interesting that this Old Norse denomination shows the first Germanic 
sound shift.
The Song of Hlödur being obviously of Gothic origin (it tells about a 
battle between Goths and Huns), it is most probable that the Norse 
skalds took also the "Harvada" name (directly or indirectly) from the 
Goths. It is imaginable that the name of the Carpathian Mountains 
(called by Ptolemy "Carpates Mons", name which could be connected 
with the Dacian tribe of Carpi, who lived in the NE of today's 
Romania, or with Karpis, the ancient name of the Drava river, an 
affluent of the Danube, or with a Thracian word reflected in the 
Albanian "karpë" and the Bulgarian dialectal "karpa", both 
meaning "stone, rock") suffered the first Germanic sound shift: 
*karpat- > Gothic *harbada- or *harbatha- (with -b- pronounced like a 
bilabial -v-) > Old Norse Harvada. It is also possible that the sound 
shift occurred not in Gothic, but in some other East Germanic 
language, spoken by a Germanic tribe who preceded the Goths in that 
region (like the Bastarnae, the Peucini, or the Skirians), and the 
Goths took the word already sound-shifted from them (BTW: in Tabula 
Peutingeriana, a Roman road map of the 3rd century C.E., the 
Carpathians are called "Alpes Bastarnice").
Moreover, this presumable Gothic *harbada-/*harbatha- could be the 
source of the Old Slavic tribal name "Hrvat", whence the name of the 
Croatians (in the Serbo-Croatian language, the word for "Croatian" 
is "Hrvat"). Beside today's Croatians (whose present location is not 
quite near the Carpatians), there was in early Middle Ages another 
Slavic tribe, the so-called "White Croatians", who lived in the 
vicinity of the Northern Carpathians (in the SW of today's Ukraine).
What do you think, sounds all this plausible?

Francisc





------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for Your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at Myinks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/l.m7sD/LIdGAA/qnsNAA/wWMplB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>. 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/