[gothic-l] Carpathians and Croatians

Tue Aug 19 06:10:56 UTC 2003

Hi Francisc!

Except for some questionable notes, e.g. ethnicity 
of the Bastarnae and Peucini (the latter were a branch 
of the former?), which probably had the Celtic origin 
rather than German one and, accordingly, scarcely spoke 
an East German language, your basic conjectures look 
very attractive. I like your etymology of the Croats 
from the Gothic *harbada. 

Moreover, I believe that the East Goths having been 
dislodged westward by the Huns involved some Slavic 
tribes from the Carpathian Mountains into their long 
drift to Apennines. The Gothic migration might have 
separated the South Slavic tribes (conceivably 
the 'Antes') and initiate the further distinction 
between the Croats and Serbs. Note that both peoples 
speak the same language up to nowadays. But the Slavic 
tribes, which had migrated with the East Goths, entered 
the Roman influence area, accepted the Roman Catholicism 
and became Croats while other South Slavic tribes, 
which had followed the West Goths, remained in 
the Byzantine influence area, joined the Orthodox Church 
and became Serbs.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Vladimir

-----Original Message-----
From: Francisc Czobor [mailto:fericzobor at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 2:04 PM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] Carpathians and Croatians

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

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