[gothic-l] Re: Gutland Contacts With the Goths on Crimea

[Frank Kermes]

> > Unfortunately some from Stockholm who have written
> > on Gutnish and Gothic make all kinds of attempts
> > to make interpretations that avoid the links
> > between OLd gutnish and Gothic. This is well
> > known. One Stockholm rea´searche has even tried
> > to use the explanation that Gotland means the
> > "streamland".

Well, "Go:tland," (the <o:> being an o with an umlaut--setting up my browser
to use those symbols would mean disabling my Arabic keyboard, which I don't
want to do!) presumably the modern form at one time containing "Gaut," and
gaut being the preterite singular form of <gjutan>, to pour, a class II verb
(PLEASE correct if I'm making a mistake, I'm doing this from memory), <gaut>
would mean "poured."  Stretching "poured" to mean "ejaculated" and thus "the
men," becoming the tribal name of the Gautar, and thus "Gautland" indicating
"land of the Gautar," requires a few more steps than interpreting it as
"Poured (ing) land," or "streamland."  Call me a Stockholm-brainwashed
fascist, but I think there's something to be said for simplicity here.

>Yes, what do those experts at Stockholm University Institute of
>Linguistics know about Scandinavian languages. Especially since we
>had people like Elias Wessen, who I belief wrote mostly in the
>1930/40s.

And Sophus Bugge isn't exactly 'cutting edge' either . . .

>The  link below takes you to a recent paper on Swedish Gothicism. It
>is entitled "Scandinavia the Home of the Goths? - Gothicism as a basis
>for  Nordic-Swedish national Identity". It explains why (mostly in the
>past) Swedes where so eager to prove that the Goths came from Sweden
>(even if it costs the truth).

This just struck me . . .  the (rather convoluted) etymology that arrives at
"Goths" or <*Gutan> meaning men may have been a product of that very Swedish
Gothicism that article speaks of . . .  Much more macho to say "the tribe
poured from semen" than something mundane like "river people."

> > In the 2nd century AD a large migration was likely undertaken from
> >Gutland as described in the Guta Saga. One can thus contemplate
> >Gutnish relations in Ukraine and on the Crimean peninsula. The folk
> >music researcher Jan Ling has for instance found connections between
>folk music in Sweden and in Ukraine.

> > Lingustically the name of Gutar is very close to the Goths, who
> >early wrote themselves gutans and Gut-thiu-da – the Gothic people.

Slight problem here . . .  The Old Norse name is actually <Gautar>, which
corresponds exactly with Old English <Geatas>.  Notice two things: the
diphthong (vowel shifts caused them to be different in the two languages,
but they're still diphthongs of a similar grade); and the plural ending is a
_strong_ masculine ending.  For Gothic, we have only Gutthiuda, <the "gut-"
people> and also the <gut-land>, but <*Gutan> has been reconstructed from
that and the Latin form, <Gotones>.  Note that Got-(ones) is the _weak_
masculine Latin ending, as is the <-an> of the *Gutan reconstruction.
Notice also that the Gothic /u/ and its corresponding Latin /o/ are simple
vowels, not diphthongs.

>That is most likely true, but it does not mean that Goths came from
>Gotland. Continental Goths may at some stage have expanded in all
>directions, to offer only one explanation. Also, the name of Samland
>where the Baltic Sami lived appears to be linguistically very close to
>the Saami of North Scandinavia. Coincidence? Migration?

> > Examples of linguistic affinity can be found in Stein (Crimean
> >gothic 1554) and stein in Gutnish of the 19th century.

And <steinn> meaning "stone" in all dialects of Old Norse.

Further stega
> >(20) = staejg, salt = salt, broe (bread) = broe and hus = hus.

And <hus> in ON . . . is there an actual pattern in correspondences here?
The two examples that I recognize offhand don't seem to be isolated
coincidences.

>Oh yes, I almost forgot, if you know Gothic you can simply read the
>Guta Saga in its original.

Okay, I can read Old Norse, and Old English, but not Gothic.  I know that
Projekt Gutenberg has the Guta Saga online (that is your edition, isn't it,
Tore?), but I just opened to the selection from Guta Saga on _An
Introduction to Old Norse_ ('cuz I have that text handy) fromt E.V. Gordon
(pp. 173-177), and I can read it with no problem.

e.g. "Gutland was come upon first by that man called Thieluar.  Then (or "at
that time") was Gutland thus bewitched that it sank in the day and was up at
night." <Gutland hitti fyrsti mathr than sum Thieluar hit.  Tha war Gutland
so eluist at the daghum sanc oc satum war uppi.>  Some of the spellings look
"odd" compared to the normalized versions of West Norse, but it wasn't too
hard.

Now, I flip open Joseph Wright's _Grammar of the Gothic Language_.

Jah slepith jah urreisith naht jah daga, jah thata fraiw keinith jah liudith
swe ni wait is.  (A passage chosen absolutely at random).  Umm, the first
word is "and," but I wouldn't have known that from just knowing that <oc/ok>
in Old Norse means the same thing (not without using my imagination and
sounding it aloud.  If I went hunting through the glossary, it wouldn't be
too hard to puzzle it out, but having facility in Old Norse does not
translate to the same facility in Gothic.

>(sorry couldn't resist :-))

Some things are just too hard to resist.

Sorry for being off-topic for so long . . .

Cheers,
Frank
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