[gothic-l] Re: Gaut, Gapt & the Gepids

[Ingemar Nordgren]

Hi Steve,

You wrote

> Hi Bertil:
>
> >  On Gapt we disagree as I see the origin
> >  of Gaut from  the meaning gjuta, goet, gjutit (pour in
> >  English) of course related to the goet/
> >  got/gut/geat name.
  It was my understanding that the derivation of
> Gapt from Gaut relies on a common accepted "scribal error" interpretation,> since Gapt occurs only in Jordanes while Gaut is widely attested.

The difference  between Gothic p and u and Greek p is almost none. Hence
a scribal error is most convincing.I am also quite agreed with Bertil in
the meaning of Gaut.


> >  Maybe also one has to reflect on the background of the
> >  Goetar and Nordic mythology. The Goetar might well have
> >  emerged already during the Bronze Age...

They most certainly did  in form of a new emerging cult  during the
transition from bronze to Iron Age. This cult probably spread  around
the Baltic and included Gauter, Gutar, Jutar and Vistula Goths. The
Goths accordingly are a number of peoples regarding themselves to come
from a common divine origin - not a single people. This I have treated
in my dissertation and my last book Goterkällan (The Well-Spring of the
Goths. About the Goths in the Nordic Countries and on the Continent).
Still it only exists in Swedish, sorry to say, and I search interested
publishers in English and/or German.

> > The question is if the gepids also if the Gepids
> >  existed as a seperate people already in Scandza.

No, they did not. They formed in the Vistula region around the Sambian
peninsula as an multiochtonic unity originating from all of Scandinavia.
This is convincingly shown by prof. Jerzy Okulicz-Kozaryn in Warszawa.

> A particularly good question since the notion of what constituted a 'separate
> people'  no doubt depended on whether one were a third century Goth, a
> classical historian, or a 21st century Gothophile.  I have always assumed
> (intuitively!) that dialectical variation among eastern Germanic speakers was
> slight, that Gothic (all flavors), Lombard, Burgundian, and Vandalic were
> mutually intelligible in the first half of the first milennium and that, to
> the East Germans themselves, ethnic differences were largely a question of
> clan/tribal affinity.

I agree the laungage differences probably were small and e.g. the
Burgundians and the Vandals most probably had a close common cultic
background as the Goths,  having broken out from the same original
pre-Gothic fertility league which earlier covered all Scandinavia, and
Gaut may have been even their original transition god even if they did
not attach his name to the tribe. This shows in their royal genealogies
and in the ring-symbolism.I have treated this question latest in an
article in English in Migracijske Teme  1-2, Zagreb 2000.

Kind regards
Ingemar


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