Warrior Class

[ualarauans]

Skalks is actually a slave (most often = Gr. DOULOS, also 
OIKETHS "domestic servant", PAIDARION "slave child"). Cf. also ga-
skalki SUNDOULOS "Mitknecht" – it's neuter on –ja, looks more like a 
word for a thing, not for a living person. I don't think a Gothic 
warrior would be happy with these names for himself :) Still, you 
may use it if you mentally place your Goths into the High Middle 
Age, with its knights, heralds, noble ladies etc. Unfortunately, the 
historical Goths didn't live so long to develop a feudal terminology 
of their own. Words of their language pertain to realities of a 
different time. It's "master and slave", not "suzerain and vassal" 
which dominated the social landscape in the classic society and 
which is reflected in the language of the Gothic Bible. Some other 
Old germanic translations, less dependent on the original text, were 
making use of the Germanic social terminology. That's why you can 
occasionally find Jesus depicted as a Germanic warlord and the 
disciples as his "optimates" (guardsmen), e.g. OHG druhtin and 
thegana in Otfrid von Weissenburg's Evangelienbuch. In Gothic, these 
were *drauhtins and gadrauhts (pl. gadrauhteis) respectively. For 
the latter, you can also opt for reconstructed poeticisms (based on 
ON): *drauhtimagus, *drauhtiguma and the like. *drauhtifaþs
(Gen. -fadis) for *drauhtins seems also possible.

In a few written sources of the Migration period the Latinized word 
sculca (Gr. SKOULKA) is used for some kind of military service. It 
might be cognate to skalks, although there's a Latin etymology (from 
exculcare).

In Langobardic laws it is glossed: sculca id est cabalcata, or: id 
est custodire aliquam rem [http://mdz10.bib-
bvb.de/~db/bsb00000878/images/index.html?id=00000878&nativeno=300]

See also: [http://books.google.com/books?id=-
9TtkWNMNhIC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=sculca&source=web&ots=C4KxcGMd0J&sig=
ghLqMKCDWFP9adyB5W0Y6sCJzEk]
[http://www.northvegr.org/lore/germaniclaw/003.php].

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Ingemar Nordgren" <ingemar at ...> 
wrote:
>
> 
> 
> Hi Rutgur,
> 
> An employed fighter/warrior (cf. German 'Knecht', Sw. 'knekt') is
> called 'skalks'. This, however, is  in a household and if it has a
> bearing for army titles I do not know.
> 
> Best
> Ingemar
> 
> 
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Sir Rutgur" <rutgur@> wrote:
> >
> > Did the Goths have particular word their Warrior Class?  .for the
> Leadership
> > for their Warrior Class?  I'm wondering if they had a 
functionally
> > equivalent word for "knight", at least as it relates to warfare &
> the army.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>


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