LL-L: "Place names" LOWLANDS-L, 02.FEB.2000 (02) [E]

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From: Family Lindley [john at lindley-york.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject:  LL-L: "Place names" LOWLANDS-L, 02.FEB.2000 (01) [E]

John Lindley wrote:

>If the Swedish -tuna
>settlements are very early, do they predate the Low German
>influence on Scandinavian languages through, for example, the
>Hanseatic League thus representing a very early common
>Germanic linguistic element ?

Briefly: the answer is yes. The names in -tuna date back to early Viking
Age or earlier, ie. before the year 1000 or even several centuries earlier.
Although there were some influences from Low Saxon (=Old Saxon) on the
Scandinavian languages in this period, through e.g. christian missionaries
in the 10th century -- some of this is reflected in the religious
vocabulary of Old Swedish -- a place name element such as _tuna_ could not
have been the result of borrowing.

The Low German expansion in the Baltic area (which was a prerequisite for
the foundation of the Hanseatic League) did not start until the mid 11th
century. Lübeck, the main trading port of the Hanseats, was founded in
1143, and the German settlements in cities on the east coast of Sweden
started in the century that followed. Most of the Low German elements in
the Swedish language entered the language in the 14th and 15h centuries.

Regards,

Carl Johan Petersson

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Place names

Carl Johan wrote (above):

> The Low German expansion in the Baltic area (which was a prerequisite for
> the foundation of the Hanseatic League) did not start until the mid 11th
> century. Lübeck, the main trading port of the Hanseats, was founded in
> 1143, and the German settlements in cities on the east coast of Sweden
> started in the century that followed.

Allow me to tweak this just a teensy bit to give credit to the non-Germanic
portion of our ancestors.

Lübeck began taking the lead within the Hanseatic Trading League or Mercantile
Union around the year 1300, and its role as such came to be ratified with the
first Hanseatic Meeting there in 1358.  Yes, as a Saxon port city it was
founded in 1143 by Adolf II Count of Schauenburg.  However, that was only the
official beginning of the Saxon era for the city.  Its actual beginning was
Slavic (unfortunately often *still* referred to as "wendisch" in German
descriptions), Lechitic, most likely Obodrite, northwestern Polabian.
Fledgeling Lübeck is believed to have existed at least since around the year
1100 and is known to have been called "Liubice" by its Christianized
Slavic-speaking inhabitants.  In 1138 it was destroyed by non-Christian
Slavs.  I think it is not established if this spelled total destruction and if
the population of the port city, founded five years later close by the old
trading post, was entirely Saxon or a mixture of Saxons and Slavs, as was
fairly typical for Eastern Holsteen/Holstein and areas farther east at the
time.  Nevertheless, in fairness it ought to be stated that Lübeck's general
history predates Saxon rule and that the place name is Slavic-rooted (a fact
that escapes many Germans, certainly those outside the area, in part also
because the name appears Low Saxon/German, as though it contains the common
part _-beck_ < 'brook').

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: A pretty nice introduction to Slavic history of Germany's eastern half
can be found here: <http://lakoma.tu-cottbus.de/Sorben/inhalt11/d0101.htm>.

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