[gothic-l] Varangians

[Tore Gannholm]

>Greetings, Tore!
>
>>>It is now fully accepted by the present generation of scholars in
>Russia that the Varangians played an important role in forming the
>Russian state. Novgorod, Kiev etc.>>
>
>Yes, once Stalin and his heirs were gone, the Russians became willing
>to accept the Varangian theory.
>
>Still, we should be careful of going too far. The Varangians set up a
>state, and a number of words got borrowed into Russian. But the
>impact of Norse on Russian was not anything like the impact of French
>on English after the Norman conquest. Even the Norse names we find
>in "Russian" treaties with the Byzantines don't really prove much. An
>English king named Richard (French name, deriving from Norse) might
>very well not speak French, although the first one surely did.
>
>I put "Russian" in quotes because, as you probably know, the
>name /rus'/ itself is thought to come from Swedish.

I was in Staraja Ladoga on Wednesday and there the latest theory was
that it is the Finnish word for Swedes. It was the Swedes in Staraja
Ladoga, Gorodisje and Novgorod.

The other thing I learnt was that Nestor talks about Rurik his true
Varangians and his household. The latter two have in translations
been distorted supposed to be his brothers which today is not longer
the case.

Tore


>
>As for /airils/, the problem is nobody here seems to know what this
>meant, or if it is in Gothic, or Norse, or anywhere at all.
>
>Remember too that there seems to have been contact between Slavs and
>Germanic peoples (maybe Goths) in a time long before the Varangians.
>A word like /xl#b/ "bread," probably from Germanic /hlaifs/, is found
>in nearly every Slavic language, which would not have happened if the
>borrowing came as late as the Varangians.
>
>Regards,
>Gazariah
>

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