[gothic-l] Ethnicity and religion/runes

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Ingemar,
You wrote:
>n the North the Jutes. Bornholm shows, according to my
>opinion of course, signs of both Goths and Burgundians - see my
>Ring-name survey.
>

>This was a joke alluding to your tendency of saying the Germans came
>from the Celts.

That must be wrong.  You can tell, because Germanic is quite
a different language from Celtic. Germanic is attested
in runic inscriptions, and it stayed approximately the same
language until the syncopic period. Which means that we know
qute a bit about what kind of language Germanic was, say in
the time of Tacitus.



>
>> What was the exact name used in the time of Alfred the Great for
>> Jutland? BTW, do you know when the name Gotland is first attested in
>> ancient sources?
>
>In Alfreds edition of Orosius treating Otheres journey Jutland is called
>Gotland. About the island of Gotland this form is Middle Age - it was
>earlier called Gutland - but I dare not say an exact date.

This also happens to agree with what Snorri later said,
that in former times Jylland was called Gotland.

Yesterday I checked the older runic inscriptions for the
name Gotland, and I found one, where it says "Gotna land".
This is in the inscription on the so called "Eggjum stein",
where the date indications are given as 700 AD.

And now we also have the runic name "GautR" on a fire-making tool
from the Illerup find in Denmark, with date set to 200 AD.
But the archaeologists Ilkjær and von Carnap-Bornheim, who have
analysed the type of objects found there, and compared them
with the geographical distribution of similar objects, are
pretty sure that they can say that these men, this defeated army,
came to meet their fate on Danish soil, in ships from further North.
They have marked the area of origin as either South Norway or
West (Middle) Sweden. The people at Karmøy were very
enthusiastic about this, because the same trumpet shaped
armring as was found at Illerup, had also be found in a mound
at the Karmsund. (on the map, look for Haugesund in W. Norway)
But since then people have agreed that this is a bit too
narrow.

Due to the incredible number of objects found - and extraordinarily
well preserved! - one knows that it must have been a large army.
One can then calculate what demographic base such an immense mustering
of top quality equipment and men will have required, and it was agreed
that a small community like Karmøy could not have done it alone.

Many of the objects found, such as swords, knives, fire tools,
shield plates etc, had their wooden parts quite well preserved.
Thus, I am sure the dating to 200 AD must be a good estimate.
That means that the runic inscriptions found there belong to
the earliest runic inscriptions that we have!

I posted all the 9 inscriptions yesterday. After that I also had a
chance to take a look at the photographs of the objects on which
some of the runes were found. It wasn't too difficult to read the
runes. They were quite distinct, the ones on the two spear-heads
that I looked at. It was easy to recognize the runes of a fairly
standard elder FUThARK.  In ASCII:


              /\   /  |  |  \  / /| (|)
             (  ) ( ) |  |/  \/  /|  |
              \/   /  | /|   /\   |  |
              /\  /   |  |  /  \  |  |

Catalog labels IMZ & INL, Lanzen-Spitzen, Typ 15,
Tafel 237 u. 238, Teil 2: "Die Lanzen und Speere. Tafelband."
(op.cit. v.Carnap-Botnheim/Ilkjær)

The inscription above occurs on two of the lance points
(that look like spears to me), identical inscription on two
similar lance points. The runes are to be read from right to
left. There are 7 runes in the name:

             O   J   I  N   G   A   W

(that is the reverse of "Wagnijo")
I'd like to discuss this inscription, or these TWO,
since there are two identical ones. I hope yo folks
will allow it, since after all, the name "GautR"
DOES occur there - and then it must at least be *related*
to the Goths. I hope we can agree on as much.

The above inscription is the not the GautR inscription,
but it belongs to the same find, and so I hope it is
okay to discuss it. (Note: In Tacitus "Vangiones" -
a tribe located near the old "Borbetomagus" [later "Worms"]
is near the Rhine, South of Trier. But though similar,
has "n" and "g" reversed relative to the inscription)

The point is that I have seen the combination of
runes "ij" in other Nordic rune inscriptions,
and I think this is a feature of Nordic. But am not
able document it. "Vagn" is PN documented from the
saga literature, and means "car". "Vangr" is however
something quite different, a field. I do not know
what the ending -ijo signifies. Jan de Vries does however
relate the word ON "vangr" (field) to the "Vangiones",
not the "vagn" (car). And de Vries wrote long before
the Illerup finds. Hence his view must be regarded as
impartial here. It may be relevant to observe that
a word ending in -ijo was found on a carpenter's plane
found at Vimose Denmark, end 3rd century. The word
was "talijo" and is probably what the plane was called.
In Stabu Norway, another famous lance point was found,
with the inscription "raunijaR" (also the ij group)
and dated to end 2nd century. (same as Illerup)
Here one has compared with ON reyna vb -> noun reynir m.
Perhaps knowledge of Gothic can throw some light on these
examples?

Best regards
Keth




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