[gothic-l] Re: Eruli

[george knysh]

--- "Troels Brandt <trbrandt at post9.tele.dk>"
<trbrandt at post9.tele.dk> wrote:
> The linguists claim, that the wording in the
> introduction of Getica
> indicates that Jordanes mentioned a recent event. I
> do not know if
> this is correct,

*****GK: If it is, then the Eruli were recently (not
long before 551) pushed out of "their" territory by
the Danes. Now whether "their" refers to the Danes or
to the Eruli, it seems that the territory in question
must be in Scandinavia. Is this a confirmation of the
Procopius story?******

 but as he described an ethymology
> of their name
> connected to the swamps at the Black Sea,

*****GK: He seems to have borrowed the explanation
from Deuxippos via Ablabius/Cassiodorus. This
explanation dates from the 3rd c, when the Eruli first
became known(?) to classic authors. Eruli were
transmogrified into "Eluri", probably because the
staging ground for their assaults was in a "swampy"
area. In other words the Greeks reworked "Eruli" into
"Eluri". Once this entered classical literature, it
could be cited as "authoritative" irrespectively of
its adequacy.*****

 it is
> difficult to explain
> why he should describe a Scandinavian origin in the
> introduction.
> Actually he did not call Scandinavia an origin.

*****GK: That's true. He does however connect the
Eruli to Scandinavia. The alternative reading of that
early passage, viz., that the Danes pushed the Eruli
out of some territory in Scandinavia around the
mid-3rd c. continues to appear plausible to some
investigators. Is there any firm argument against
it?****
>
> As I wrote this does not exclude a Scandinavian
> origin, but maybe
> Mahomedov's observations just indicate that both the
> Goths and the
> Harii had close Scandinavian family- or
> trade-relations - or that
> Scandinavian groups had joined the Goths bringing
> with them a
> religious influence from the Gautoi as Ingemar has
> suggested.

*****GK: That's possible. BTW if one dismisses the
Procopius story and holds that the expulsion of the
Eruli from some Scandinavian territory by the Danes
occurred shortly before 551, is one committed to the
view that until then some Eruli resided in
Scandinavia, whence contingents could join other Eruli
in the south? How did these Scandinavian Eruli get
there? Were they autochtons?****

 I think
> we shall avoid that old discussion for some time,
> but the Harii could
> be such a group though Tacitus believed they were
> Lugii.

*****GK: This whole controversy about the original
locale of the Eruli and Goths is beginning to remind
me of a joke about the authenticity of Shakespeare.
"William Shakespeare did not write the plays. They
were written by another man, who was called William
Shakespeare."******
>
> If we assume that Mahomedov's Tanais-group were the
> Harii/Heruls, the
> warriors could have left some tribemembers back in
> the Tanais-region,
> just like also the Goths and the Alans joining the
> Huns left people
> behind them at the Black Sea. When some of the Huns
> returned around
> 450 AD, the Germanic people may have concentrated at
> Crimea, which
> they could more easily defend and escape by sea if
> necessary - but
> this is a subject, I have not investigated.
>
> What is the title of Mahomedov's book - and the
> language?

*****GK: It is entitled "Chernyakhovskaya kultura.
Problema Etnosa" and is in Russian.[ISBN 83-227-1762-8
: MONUMENTA STUDIA GOTHICA Tom I. Ed. A. Kokowski.
Lublin 2001. 290 pp.] But there is an excellent
summary of its main points in German on pp.181-193.
"Die C'erniachov-Kultur.Das Problem ihrer ethnischen
Zuordnung" wr. by Christian Radtke (Schleswig). And
all drawings and maps also have German explanatory
texts.*****
>
> Troels
>
>


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