[gothic-l] Re: Danparstadir - Reidgotaland

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Dirk,
>people in these times rarely lived to the age of 90 years to be able
>to remember what their 90 year old grandmother had told them when they
>were 10. Over a period of 180 years a story would have been told
>thousands of times by thousands of different people. If this 180 year
>horizon had worked than the Hildebrandlied should have provided a more
>accurate account of events.


I have the following counter argument:
Back then people had far more childeren.
Thus the PERCENTAGE of people that grew old, did not have to have
been very great. Nevertheless, a certain not unsignificant number
of people DID get old, and lived to a high age.

Thus, I will claim that most childeren back then, knew some
old people. And besides, it is now that old people are being
"put away". Back then they stayed around the house, and were thus
much more available to tell stories to the childeren.
Read Egils saga skallagrimsson. There you find described what
it was like to get old.

I am not all that familiar with the Hildebrandslied.
Was that the song about "Hadubrand u. Hildibrand"?
Isn't that only a fragment? How do you know it is distorted?


>
>Are they really independent or are they all based on a comon folklore?

The question, if they are really independent, that you raise here, is
an important question. But why does it have to be "folk lore"?
Why not just tradition? (e.g. court tradition)

> For example, one author Rudolf of Fulda wrote down a story according
>to which the Saxons migrated from Britain to North Germany (Hadeln to
>be precise)thus reverting the direction of their migration. This one
>story sparked off many seemingly independent histories and stories
>according to which the Saxons came from Britain.

That is also a good example.
That is why I stressed the large geographic separation between
Rök stone, Vafþrudnismál and Anglo-Saxon England.
If the Rök inscription is 9 generations removed (ca. 800),
the Old English sources would be far less removed.
We should look more closely at the OE sources!

>Anyway, I don't say
>it is not worth pursueing the identidy of these Hreidgothas, maybe
>some real people were at some time really called by that name, but you
>would also find that many independent sources refere to Amazons,
>trolls and witches, why not try to locate them?

Let's say we were investigating a Biblical place name instead.
In the Bible there are also stories about miracles.
Science, however, deals mostly with the place names.


Cheers
Keth



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