Drus Griutinge - swesa namna (Ests, Idumings, Gunþiruna)

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> Well, I think that finally we've got a (master-!)piece of true 
> Gothic poetry whatever Elfriede Stutz may have stated. Where in the 
> dark cellars of antiquarian bibliothecae did Llama find the last 
> surviving manuscript of an unknown Ostrogothic Homer? Or were they 
> communicating in sleep? Or maybe we should believe in reincarnation? 
> Whatever the truth, the poem is great, "both in quantitative and 
> qualitative aspect" as someone used to say :-). Let me start with 
> proper names only, I've got some questions to the liuþareis.


Thanks!

 
> Aistjus "Ests" – has this clan name something to do with Aestii of 
> Tacitus and Jordanes? In which case it could be an –i-stem, *Aisteis 
> pl.?

This is what I found in Chambers: Widsith: A Study in Old English
Poetic Legend: "The Gothic form of the name would probably be *Aistjus
pointing to a Prim. Germ. *Aistewes (Erdmann ??, p. 90; Müllenhoff:
D[eutsche] A[ltertumskunde] II, 13); or perhaps Gothic *Aisteis (Grimm
G[eschichte der] d[eutschen] S[prache] 790, 4th ed. 500)" (Chambers
1912, p. 248).

I'm not sure which work by Erdmann the reference is to.  The
bibliography contains two:

Om folk namnen Götar och Gotar (A.T.f.S VI, 4)
Über die Heimat und den Namen der Angeln von A. Erdmann, in the
Sktifter utgifna af Humanistiska Vetenskapsfundet i Upsala I, 1890.

Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to track down these
various works, so (after some dithering) I went with Chambers
suggestion.  Old Icelandic has 'Eistir' (i-stem? u-stem?) and 'Eistr'
(consonant stem).  Old English *Æ´ste isn't attested.  Instead, Íste
appears, apparently by folk-etymological confusion with the direction
"east".



> What's the meaning of Idumiggos?


The Idumings are named in the Old English poem Widsith, line 87, along
with the Ests, right before a mention of Ermanaric.

ond mid Eolum ond mid Istum . ond Idumingum.
Ond ic wæs mid Eormanrice . ealle þrage, 

There are two main theories about these: (1) that the name is a
learned interpolation, being an Anglicisation of the Biblical
Edomites; (2) that they were a Baltic people, perhaps the same as the
Ydumaei, mentioned by Henry of Ymera in the Chronicon Lyvoniae. 
Chambers favours the latter idea (Chambers, pp. 250-252).


> 
> Iþ galgin ridun / Gunþirunos "But upon the gallows rode Godrun's"
> – I guess there's some ON or OE or maybe Gothic metaphor behind it? 
> Could you please tell us? Gunþiruna – *walakuzjo?



In Norse legend, Guðrún's sons were Sörli and Hamðir and Erpr.  Her
daughter Svanhildr (Jord. Sunilda; mss. variants: Sunielh, Sunihil <
Go. *Sunjahildi) was given in marriage to Jörmunrekkr (Ermanaric), who
had her trampled to death with horses -- in Völsunga saga because
suspects her of adultery with his son Randvér; in Snorra Edda the
trampling seems more impromptu, and the motive isn't made explicit,
although the account there is just a brief summary.  Sörli and Hamðir
ride alone to Gothland where they try to take revenge on Jörmunrekkr.
 (Guðrún has given them armour that makes them immune to iron
weapons.)  They manage to chop off his arms and legs, but don't have a
chance to chop off his head before someone (either Jörmunrekkr or
Odin, depending on the version) suggests throwing stones at them. 
That's how they die.  I imagined them as being on the gallows as a
warning to others; when they arrive at Jörmunrekkr's hall in Hamðismál
(14), it says that they find their "sister's son" hanging on a
gallows.  Jörmunrekkr also threatens to bind them with bowstrings and
hang them on the gallows (Hamðismál 21).  See also the Eddic poem
Guðrúnarhvöt "Godrun's Incitement", Saxo's Gesta Danorum, and
Ragnarsdrápa by Bragi Boddason.

The Chronicles of Würzburg and Quedlinburg, c. 1000, each tell a
somewhat different version of this story, and simpler, in which the
tyrant Ermanaric is slain by the brothers Hamido, Sarilo and Odoacer
in revenge for killing their father "after they had first cut off his
hands and feet" (amputatis manibus et pedibus).

To be continued...

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