[gothic-l] Re: Greutung, Therving

[george knysh]

--- Francisc Czobor <fericzobor at yahoo.com> wrote:
 The current
> explanation of these
> denominations is that, when still located in Eastern
> Europe, before
> the invasion of the Huns, the Greutungs lived in the
> steppes of
> today's Ukraine (?), whereas the Tervings settled
> the more afforested
> Dacia.

*****GK: The Tervings are already attested in the 3rd
century. According to various sources, the boundary
between Tervings and Greutungs was the Dnister.*****

> Regarding Reidgotland,

*****GK: Pritsak etymologizes this as "Nest-Gothland"
i.e. the area of some posited "original" location
where some Goths still remained while others had
spread far and wide. There are many interpretations as
to where it was: Ukraine, Vistula mouth,
Scandinavia.****

 > Speaking about the ethnonym "Rus", most sources
> agree on the fact
> that it was originally refering to a Swedish Viking
> clan (whence the
> name of Sweden in the Balto-Finnic languages:
> Finnish "Ruotsi",
> Estonian "Rootsi").

******GK: There are actually three basic answers (not
counting "kooky" ones like the Etruscan option
mentioned below and , I strongly suspect, the Gothic
connection as well). Apart from the Scandinavian
theory, many still hold the Middle Dniprovian theory
(viz., that the Rus' or Ros' are somehow originally
linked to the river systems just south of Kyiv/Kiev
(Ros', Rosava, Ros'ka, Rostavytsia etc..), and some
adhere to the steppe Iranic theory (viz. "Rus" as
meaning "aristocracy" and originally a socio-political
rather than an ethnic designation, like the Alanic
Rosomoni subject to Hermanaric).*****

 This is explainable in the
> context that the
> founders of the first Russian state were Swedish
> Vikings ("Variag"),
> and the rulers of the first Russian dinasty had
> North-Germanic names:
> Hröríkr (Rurik), Ingvar (Igor), Helge (Oleg), Helga
> (Olga), Valdemar
> (Vladimir) etc.

*****GK: This is obviously incorrect. The first state
("knyazhenie") on contemporary Russian territory was
that of the Slovenes (in the area of later Novgorod),
and this is clearly stated in the Primary Chronicle.
The Varyags came later. The Iranic theory mentioned
above holds that these Varyags adopted the political
terminology of the Khazar Empire (which was Iranic
speaking in the West at that time/ late 8th early 9th
c.) and were perhaps at first closely connected to it:
whence "Rus'" and "Kagan" (as the Swedish ruler of the
Rus' was called by his ambassadors in 839)******



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