Shulanda

[Ingemar Nordgren]

Dear Authari,

It is indeed an interesting question you put. I have looked in
Hellquist Etymological Dictionary and the word 'schul' is included as
middle low german for shelter, hut, hiding place, in Swedish we say
'skjul' for this. The ending '-landa' is connected with the word
'land', area, firm ground, beach as opposite to sea et c. In the
specifik form '-landa'in farm- or place names it means in Swedish an
area of land used by somebody living there in opposite to land that is
not claimed by anybody particular. As a verb in Sw. landa means to
land with a boat.

There is a theory among else proposed by Ottar Grønvik that part of
the Crimean Goths were of Lowgerman - but not of Dutch, Saxon or
Jutish - origin - i.e. Westgermanic, but also Scandinavian dialects
are in bottom just both Northgermanic and Lowgermanic. Still there are
some toponyms that to me seem just fitting with Dutch and I can as
well personally think of both Saxon and Jutish. I have written a
little about Gothic toponyms in the Crimea in my book, The Well Spring
of the Goths, and I have had good help by an article  and good advice
from professor Alexandra Superanskaya at Academia Naust in Moscow and,
of  course, Vasilievs book. I then have tried to draw some simple
conclusions myself of the material.

I give you some excerpts of the book treating this subject but,
remember, I am not a linguist myself but I rather try to show what
different experts say.

Best greetings!
Ingemar

". Busbecq himself saw great similarities with Saxon, and if you look
to the counting-words I mean they are close to both Northgermanic and
Westgermanic in the area of the Netherlands – i.e. they have a
Low-German and Scandinavian similarity of e.g. 31= treithyen och
41=furdeithien. Loewe regarded them as Heruls and Karsten as a mixture
of Ostrogoths and Heruls while Krause means they were Goths mixed with
various Westgermanics. Ernst Schwarz places them among the
Northgermanics. (Høst 1971, p.45)
Mac Donald Stearns jr. has made a thorough analysis of the language
and he puts it together with the Bible-Gothic in the Eastgermanic
language-group, since it deviates from both Northgermanic and
Westgermanic. He refers to that the Goths arrived in the Crimea in the
250's, and it fits with the assumption that the Crimean-Gothic dialect
should have been extracted some time around 200 AD. He remarks that
there is a distinct possibility that loan-words  and other renewals
might have come from elsewhere during the passing of time. (Stearns
1978, s. 118 ff.  )

In Nowele 1995 Ottar Grønvik  has written a debate-article where he
claims that Crimean Gothic is of Westgermanic origin, and he then goes
out from the latest language-tree variant where Gothic is presupposed
to come directly from Proto-Germanic, while Northgermanic is secondary
developed from North-Westgermanic according to the picture below...

. In Crimean Gothic the old e1 is represented by i and hence it can
not be of Northgermanic origin, Grønvik claims, but well Westgermanic.
Later the language has developed together with Gothic, and he from
this concludes that a Westgermanic people has taken part in the
migration by the Goths. The origin-area he supports on the single word
kommen, which he means  is the only one among the  around hundred
words from  Busbecq that is useable. It's similarity with German leads
him to place the tribe in the neighbourhood of the Oder or the middle
Elbe, since he because of this word finds it less probable that it is
an ingvaeonic language like Anglo-Frisian or Old Saxon. He also
regards it as a support for polyethnical elements in the Gothic
migration. (Grønvik 1995, p.75 ff)...

With regard to that Stearns jr indeed classified it as an Eastgermanic
language in the Gothic language-family Grønvik is not quite
convincing. There still exists a possibility that the Crimean Goths
already from the beginning have been of a polyethnical character
including both Vistula-Goths, Northgermanics and Westgermanics, or
that the language in time has been mixed up with new elements. In any
case it is a little too hasty to decide the area of origin to middle
Germany with support of a single word. He tries to strenghten his
argumentation through referring to a paper by Neumann and Düwel 1985,
where they treat an old city- and river-name Greek Aloúston, today
Alušta , on the Crimea. The authors have connected this with OHG.
erila from older elira, OE. alor, OWN. @lr < Germanic *aliz-, *aluz
and mean that it for a place-name is  nessecary to add the suffix -ta-
(Germanic  *alusta-/*alista-, cf..  Lat.  arbustum `equipped with
trees'). They refer to the Westphalian river-name Alst (12th c. Alest)
and to the Dutch place-name Aalst (a. 866 Alost) and Elst (a.  911
Eliste). Grønvik's analysis of the wovels, however, seems rather
convincing, but it should in that case as well be possible to
interpret it as Anglo-Frisian. Specially so since Aalst and Elst occur
in the argumentation. I have above suggested that also the Jutes,
Ýtas, 'the outpoured' should be included in the Gothic cultic area,
and then it is in no way preposterous to assume possible connections
with neighbouring Anglic tribes. Grønvik also remarks that e1 in ON. 
was  a which is found on rune-stones from the 3rd c. and forward, but
how rapidly that developement grasped over all tribes in
South-Scandinavia is still unknown, since the inscriptions often are
judged as a special runic coiné, applicated by rune-masters working
over vast areas. Their evidence-value hence is disputed. Grønvik
however has a clear point when he demonstrates the thinkable size of
the origin-area with polyethnical components in the language. This
indeed strenghtens my thesis, that it was not primarily the language
but the religious origin that united the Goths – they all had an
ancestry from Gaut, the outpourer, they simply were  'the humans',
'the outpoured'. Grønvik indeed later claims that Gaut was an early
name of Óðinn which appeared on the Continent and spread northwards
(Grønvik 1995, p.89 ff), but his arguments are in this case not
convincing regarding that all those peoples/dynasties who claim
ancestry from Gaut also claim to come from the  Scandinavian area, or
are confirmed to come from there. There still is a certain strenght in
the suggestion that the Crimean Goths represent an at least partly
polyethnical mixture, if you assume that a considerable number
originally were Ingvaeones, who lived in the outskirts of the Gothic
influence-area, and had longer than the Goths stayed with the old
fertility-cultic habits. This  namely could possibly  explain why they
never took the Arianism but all the time in the Christian epoch were
loyal to the Romano-Greek church of Constantinople which with
Teodosius became the catholic, universal church. This explanation 
concerning polyethnicity  also could support that some of them also
might have been Heruls. They emigrated early from Scandinavia and so
they might have been exposed to different linguistic influences on the
Continent before they lined up with the Goths in the Pontic area. They
besides are actually confirmed as Gothic allies and are known to have
lived close to the Ostrogoths/Greutungi and were active on the Black
Sea with maritime warfare. They are not counted as Goths from the
beginning, but a number of remaining Heruls well could have been
Gothizised in the same manner as other originally non-Goths, and like
other non-Goths it should be as natural for them to accept the Greek
creed as I suggested for the Ingvaeones. In any case, in my opinion, a
possible Westgermanic people on the Crimea must have an origin west or
north of Germany.

Concerning the last Crimean Goths Supeanskaya however has an own
opinion. F.A.  Braun (1890) has in  Zhyvaya Starina told about a
journey he undertook to Mariupol on the northern shore of the Sea of
Asov, whereto the Crimean Greek had been forced to move in 1877 from
the Bakhchisarai-region under the impression that Catharina the Great
wanted to protect the Christian against Islam. In reality the
migration weakened the base of the reign of the kahn on the Crimea and
led to a later Russian annectation of the peninsula. Braun searched
for possible Gothic population-remnants. There were 25 villages in the
vicinity of Mariupol, where the transferred Greeks lived. Some of them
spoke Greek, other Tatar-languages but nobody spoke a Germanic or
distantly reminding language. Braun however in every village found
several persons he meant were of Gothic etnicity with blond hair, blue
eyes, high-grown and also more corpulent than the Greeks and the
Tatars. One of them had the nick-name Chalbasch – the white-head.
These Superanskay beleives were the last Crimean Goths.
(Superanskaya1995, pers.com.)
A Tataric researcher, Kurtiyev, has found traces after the Goths in i
Uskyt (present Privetnoye). The place Iskyt also was of great interest
out of an ethnographical point of wiew, since the place  had name in
two languages, and there were peculiarities in the way of living and
the clothing-habits of the population. There also occured the
person-name Gafrid - probably Gottfrid Superanskaya writes, and she
supposes also that the place-names might refer to the Scyths, since
the Goths were called so in the beginning. She besides points out that
in 1944 all non-Slavs (except of the Karaites) were deported from the
Crimea, and almost all place-names were changed, which she quite
correctly regards as a toponymic genocide. (Superanskaya 1992, p.144 f)
The Goths on the Crimea, Superanskaya means, sometimes may be regarded
as polyethnonyms, since Goths to the Greeks was a collective name of
all Germanic tribes as an opposite to non-Germanics, occasionally also
a tribal union but not nessecarily a Germanic such. This is quite
interesting considering my basic claim the Goths primarily from the
beginning were a cultic league or, else formulated, just a tribal
religious union – not nessecarily a political. Other Gothic ethnonyms
are tetraxites and trapezites but they do not include all Crimean
Goths. The Trapezites have got name after their living-space at the
mountain Trapezus, and some beleive that these Goths have founded the
city Trapezunt on the Caucasian side of the Black Sea. Tetraxites were
those Goths inhabiting the peninsulae Taman and Kertch. Procopius
mentiones them as another ethnical group than the Crimean Goths. Their
capital was Fanagoria close to Anapa, and they shall according to
Procopius have lived at Kertch since 275 AD.
Superanskaya beleives it is possible that tetraxites
(Greek.) come from  tetra: four, fourth taxis:
`class, order, troup'. The Goths were divided in three groups
–Eastgoths, Westgoths and Gepids. The Tetraxites might have been
differed from them rather early, she suggests, and they were divided
from the other Goths through marshes and hence had difficulties to
keep in touch. They accordingly are "the fourth group", she proposes.
Vasilyevsk (1912) compares Tmutarakan in the old Russian sources with
Tetraxites/Tmetraxitei and thinks that the name of this old Russian
princedom might be derived from the name of this Gothic nation.
Vasilyevsk also compares other names on the Taman-peninsula,
Greek. and Lat.  Matrica, Matercha,  to prove the possibility
of such an adaptation. Superanskaya here sees a possibility that this
could explain the mentioning of "the Gothic maidens at the beach of
the blue sea".(Superanskaya 1992, p.145)
Concerning the place-names – the toponyms – she points out the
difficulties with more than 40 languages with many dialects, and that
the Gothic elements in place-names not could be preserved in their
original form, since the Goths not were the first on Crimea. When they
arrived many places had already got their names and other in time got
Turkish names. The single one which is  undisputed is Gothia. She
however remarks that the borders of Gothia  are differently described
by the authors. Sometimes it is confined to the Belbek-river/Kuchuk
Uzenbash/Kap Ai-Thodor, but sometimes the whole southern coast of the
Crimea is included. Many of the places where the Goths lived later got
Turkish names, and here she mentiones Mangup Kale which was the new
name of Doro. It means 'destroyed fortress'.  DorosGreek,
was the capital of the Goths until it was
conquered and destroyed, and the meaning of the name is disputed, but
by all evidents to judge of Greek descent. The oldest Gothic graves
are from the 5th to the  7th cc, and characteristic for all
pre-Christian graves in Gothic areas is, according to Repnikov(1932),
that no weapons have been found. (Superanskaya 1992, p.146)
A Crimean-Gothic name which may be of a certain interest is the word
Fula/Fulli (Greek.  , ). Superanskaya says that
several researchers mean that it only exists one such name, but she
herself has a long list. The for us most interesting are the forms
Pula, Phyle and Thulle. The Romans beleived that Fulla was a legendary
land in the north, and Goethe wrote a ballad about the king living in
Fula/Thule. It is hard to know if all these forms are the same word,
and the Russian letter can replace both ph and th Superanskaya
comments. (Superanskaya 1992, p.147)"

Here, NB, is a really hot spot concerning the original -landa question:

"There are a considerable number of  -sala-names within the Gothic
areas on the Crimea but no Upsala. About these names Superanskaya writes:
The element –sala is of Indo-European origin. It is a place-name. Cf.
the Germanic name Salaber (sala `place, house and ber(th) `perfect,
radiating'). The element –sala takes the first position in the
personal name and the second position in a place-name. Further it
easily might be connected with Turkish elements; Bughaz Sala (bughaz =
mountain-pass), Suuk Sala (suuk = sour), Kodzhasala (kodzha is an
honorary title). (Superanskaya 1992, p.148)
The –sala -names accordingly can not be used to prove a North- or
West-Germanic origin, but still there is a distinct possibility that
some of the –sala-names might be Gothic.
Other toponymic endings in the area are among else -anda, -inda,
-unda, -onda. Examples of such place-names are Avonda/Avunda, Lunda
och Terskunda. Here is according to Superanskaya a similarity with
Germanic, and she writes:

There are different hypothesis regarding their origin. A.Carnoy (195l,
p.102) mentiones the old  French term warande `protected place, park,
fence'. The word is still used in the Netherlands. (Superanskaya 1992,
p.148)

Here, accordingly, exists a possible connection to a Westgermanic
origin  for parts of the Crimean Goths, and then rather an
Anglo-Frisian. It is however not possible to disregard that Rus and
Varjags of supposed Scandinavian origin also have ben extant in  the
area later, and hence might have affected the toponymic geography."




--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "authari" <authari at ...> wrote:
>
> Hello friends
> Last year we made a wide archeological survey in neighborhood of
> Mangup and Eski-kermen (South-Western Crimea) as a part of RGZM
> project and found some monuments of Migrations period. Some of it is
> situated near Ternovka village.
> There is a cluster of toponimics with root "Shul": old name of
> Ternovka is Shuli (or Eski-Shul; Eski - tatarian old), Shuldan -
> byzantinian cave monastery and Shulanda.
> Shul is not translateble from tatarian.I asked 84-year old local
> tatarian for translation and he said that it means school 
> (not surprising - he worked as a driver for geman officer at
> WWII),nobody can translate it now.
> Local specialists of toponimics (Markevich, Bel'ansky) said that it
> could not be translated from turcic languages. More than that names of
> sites in Crimea ending -anda, -inda, -unda seem like ancient
> (Shulanda, Oreanda, Marsanda(later Massandra), Avinda(Avunda).
> Could be Shul-, Shulanda gothic words? (Shuli valley is core Crimean
> gothic area). Do you have gothic etimology for it?
> Google given me only a mess. Is it a name?
> Thanks in advance.
> Best wishes
> PS 
> Coords of Shulanda by Google Earth 44°36'19.90"N   33°42'53.27"E
>


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