NE Germanic

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

.stevegus at aye.net writes:

>My further understanding is that the name of -Gdansk- in Poland represents
>*gudaniska, which looks Germanic, and suggests a Gothic connection on the
>south shore of the Baltic.

-- the first historical mention of the Goths places them on the Vistula, in
what's now Poland.  There is also a layer of specifically Gothic loan-words
datable to the Common Slavic period.

My own guess (no more than that) would be that the Goths, then the
easternmost Germanic group, received some sort of leadership element from
Scandinavia, roughly the way the nascent Russian state did, and the origin
myth of this ruling group was taken over by the much larger, hybrid group
that came into history as "Gothic".