[gothic-l] Re: Gothic (oldest attestation of Germanic)

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

>> around 1000 BC. They encountered speakers of non-Indo-
>> European origin, gradually changed their Proto-Indo-European
>> into Proto-Germanic, and dispersed beyond the original homeland
>> to occupy the region from the North Sea stretching to the
>> River Vistula in Poland by 500 BC. The languages spoken during this
>> period is only attested indirectly, in the foreign words, usually
>> proper names, used by Greek and Latin authors, and in early
>> loans in neighbouring and co-territorial languages, especially
>> Finno-Ugric and Baltic. The earliest direct records are
>> Scandinavian runic inscriptions from the beginning of the
>> third century."
>> ...
>
>But I knew that the oldest known attestation of Germanic is the
>inscription in Etrusc alphabet "harigasti teiwa" (1st century BC) on a
>helmet found in Austria. Or maybe my information is wrong?
>
>Francisc

Hi Francisc,
I know this is true, because I just read about it during the weekend.
It was on a bronze helm of Roman origin, that was found together
with older helms. I wonder if that too wasn't in Looijenga.

But it is also incorrect to say that the earliest Scandinavian runic
inscriptions are from the 3rd century. First of all the Illerup
inscriptions are ca. 200 AD, and you can expect accurate dating
here because several of the weapons had wooden handles as well as
sheaths. (and wood is good for C14) But there was also a spearhead
(or lance point) found at ØVRE STABU in "Østre Toten" (Norway) in
1890. It had the inscription:

                   r a u n i j a R.

The spear point is 28 cm long, and there are 8 runes that are read from
left to right. As I already mentioned, I read in Tineka Looijenga's
doctoral dissertation over the weekend, and she mentions the ØVRE STABU
spearhead on page 79 of her thesis. (Something which might be useful
for you to know, since I did not find a subject-index that was included
with the thesis. It therefore took me a considerable amount of time
to orient myself)

Looijenga then writes that the ØVRE STABU inscription is the oldest
one, and dates from the second century. She also says the ØVRE STABU
spearhead is of the "Vennolum" type. (anybody able to describe that
term more accurately?), which is interesting, because the 3 Danish
spearheads that bore runic inscriptions were ALSO of the Vennolum
(=Typ 15, in Ilkjær et al. cf. Vol. 1, pp. 95-109) On page 105,
Vol. 1, you see a very clear drawings of the two inscribed Illerup
lancepoints that had runic inscriptions. The Cat. labels are IMZ
and INL. (these just for possible later reference)

I also distinctly remember Looijenga mentioning the date 160 AD
for the ØVRE STABU lance point. i.e. definitely 2nd century.
(see if you cannot find the reference to 160 AD on page 79 at
http://www.ub.rug.nl/eldoc/dis/arts/j.h.looijenga/) The runes
are in so called "tremolo" style.

What I wanted to discuss with you was exactly this ØVRE STABU
inscription "raunuijaR".  Note the combination -ij-. That is
supposedly something very special. The stem "raun" is far
easier and probably has to do with a verb that means "to test".
and then the -aR suffix is of course merely the masc. sg. nominative
ending. They compare it with ON wk.vb. "reyna" > masc. noun
"reynir" = the tester. See Lehmann R7 "Ranja" (Router) on
Dahmsdorf spearhead, assumed to be East Germanic. It is thought
to be the name of the spear. (the runner, the tester).
But what about the combination -ij-?, is it possible to
say anything about it? Gothic has a lot of verbs on -jan.
But the combinatin -ij- I did not find.


Bets regards
Keth






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