[gothic-l] Re: Heyerdahl, the Goths and the Aesir

[MCLSSAA2 at FS2.MT.UMIST.AC.UK]

I am sorry to put a limpet mine on the ships of some people's
imaginations (I scuba dive); but to me the resemblance between [AEsir]
and [Azeri] is yet another chance coincidence. Likely Snorri Sturluson
heard of the Azeri people by some route, perhaps via Vikings who found
a way along the great rivers of Russia and across the Black Sea to
Constantinople. He either guessed wrongly from the similar names, or
claimed a connection as a way to debunk the old Norse heathen religion
by claiming that the old gods were the deified memories of some
humans. He was Christian.

The older form of Old Norse [AEsir] is Common Germanic [Ansu-], and
that looks less like "Azeri".

AElfric the Anglo-Saxon author did the same with the Greek-Roman gods:
he claimed that they were the deified memories of a rather
disreputable family of humans who had lived on Crete.



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