LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.07.17 (10) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 17.JUL.2005 (10) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Language varieties

Jacqueline wrote:

> Listen to this. Is’nt it for the birds? Jacqueline
>
> Whistled Languages
>
>  http://npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4713068

Wow Jacqueline! Amazing!
I understand, whistled languages were primarily used to enable
long-distance communication all over the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language
Moreover, on the Canary Islands, birds sometimes imitate Silbo-sounds
(another whistled language), thus transporting the information to even
greater distances! Read this:

LA GOMERA ANECDOTES [Thanks to K. Beesley and M. Kuha]
- Reportedly, some of the commonly used silbo introductions have been
picked up and repeated by birds.
-"My brother was once hiking around Gomera with a friend. They ran out
of drinking water and asked a local person for some. This person said
she didn't have any (it was a very dry area!) but her neighbor up the
mountain could help. "I'll let her know you're coming" she said, and
whistled up the mountain. They walked up the mountain. My brother walked
ahead and arrived first. When he got to the house, a stranger sitting
there said: "Ah, there you are. The water's right around the corner
there; but where is your friend?"

Who needs e-mail there? :-)

But...err...back to Yupik, and their Inuit brothers...let's give this
message a Lowlands-twist ;-) : I just wonder if anything of the
following that I read in a book called "A Speck on the Sea : Epic
Voyages in the Most Improbable Vessels", written by William H. Longyard
could be true. The author mentions Inuit being sighted numerous times in
Scotland, Ireland and the Orkney Islands, hundreds of years ago. Can
anybody back this up with local stories?

This is what he writes:

The first evidence of long-distance small-boat travel may have been
found in Scotland (North Uist) and Ireland (County Down), where
archaeologists have located first-millennium sites that contain
Inuit-style tools. These Inuit would have had to come from the west
coast of Greenland, a thousand miles away. The sites seem to indicate
that there were groups of Inuit present, and if that is the case, then
they probably did not arrive in individual kayaks, but in umiak, larger,
undecked boats that the nomadic Inuit used until the twentieth century
as something of a family station wagon to move wife, children, and
household goods from one seasonal campsite to the next. They were
definitely ocean-worthy vessels because they were also used to hunt
whales. Did one or more make a nearly transatlantic west - east crossing
a thousand years ago?

Why would an Inuit group intentionally venture to the east? Or were they
blown off course during a routine seasonal relocation? Actually, if the
tools found in Scotland and Ireland are Inuit, they were probably
brought back by Viking travelers who were exploring Greenland, led by
Erik the Red after his three-year expulsion from Iceland for murder. His
pioneering journey resulted in six hundred Norse settlers moving to
Greenland in the 980s. Perhaps returning Norse settlers brought back
with them some Inuit implements that they either found there or bartered
for.

It seems unlikely that Inuit umiaks traveled long distances, but there
is some tantalizing evidence that they did reach Europe and the British
Isles during the first millennium and up through the Middle Ages. In his
Natural History: Book II Pliny the Elder cites Cornelius Nepos, who
reported that dark-skinned non-Europeans landed in Germany in 63 a.d.[1]

Christopher Columbus reported seeing the corpses of two "Chinese" in
1477 off the coast of Galway, Ireland, when he was, he claimed, on a
voyage from Bristol to Iceland. He wrote:

[ex]Men have come hither from Cathay in the Orient. Many remarkable
things have we seen, particularly at Galway in Ireland, a man and a
woman of most unusual appearance adrift in two boats.

[end ex]

[tx]Columbus's Cathayans (Chinese) must certainly have been Inuit, who
had similar Asian features. This sighting, though, helped change the
course of history because it further convinced the Italian navigator
that the Orient lay not that far across the ocean. If two kayaks could
span the distance, surely European caravels could.

Later on in his book, the author provides more recent and detailed
information:

[tx]Columbus's first voyage opened the floodgates to European
exploration of the New World. It wasn't long before ships ranged up
north from the Caribbean, notably the fishing boats of the Basques, then
the French and Dutch, who all sailed in northern waters. Predictably,
contact was established with the Inuit, and from the 1570s on ship
captains often tried to kidnap Inuit men, women, and children and bring
them to Europe to be put on display as novelties for paying audiences.
Martin Frobisher was guilty of two such outrages, in 1576 and 1577.[2]
Several Inuit kidnap victims even toured Europe, though most died
shortly after contact with Europeans, probably because they had no
immunities against European diseases.

Kayaks were also taken during these encounters, and some of these still
exist in museums in Britain and the Netherlands. Over the years
historians have debated whether or not any of these kayaks, or kayakers,
arrived in European waters of their own volition, were blown off course,
or were the victims of self-serving kidnappers. The kidnapping "trade"
went on for nearly 150 years before the Dutch government in 1720 issued
a decree prohibiting it by Dutch whalers. This has caused some
historians to speculate that the increased sightings of kayakers in
European waters at this time were due to ship captains off-loading their
captives before they reached home ports and the law.[3] Perhaps they
kept these men on board until the last moment to use as whale scouts.

But the timing doesn't quite fit. Even before the decree by the Dutch
Staten Generaal kayakers appeared often around the Orkney Islands in the
1680s, and one even paddled into the River Don near Aberdeen about 1728;
his boat has been on display at Marischal College there for three
hundred years. A mummified kayaker, still in his boat, was picked up in
the Skagerrak between Denmark and Norway as early as 1607.

In 1693 the memoirs of the Reverend James Wallace, of Kirkwall on
Orkney, were published. They contain this reference to kayakers, whom he
mistakenly refers to as "Finnmen":

[ex]Sometimes about this country are seen these men they call Finnmen.
In the year 1682 one was seen in his little Boat, at the South end of
the Isle of Eda, most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and
when they adventur'd to put out a Boat with Men to see if they could
apprehend him, he presently flew away most swiftly. And in the year
1684, another was seen from Westra, and for a while after they got few
or no Fishes for they have this Remark here, that these Finnmen drive
away the fishes from the place to which they come. These Finnmen seem to
be some of those people that dwell about the Fretum Davis, a full
account of whom may be seen in the natural and moral History of the
Antilles, Chap. 18. One of their boats, sent from Orkney to Edinburgh,
is to be seen in the Physitians hall, with the Oar and Art he makes use
of for killing Fish.

[end ex]

[cx]Were Inuit intentionally making epic voyages of one thousand miles
across the raging North Atlantic in fragile skin-covered kayaks? Some
doubt that a skin boat could last for what must have been at least a
two- to four-week voyage without becoming waterlogged. They say that a
skin boat needs to be regreased every two days. However, anthropologists
who have studied Inuit culture have shown that Inuit only greased their
kayaks' skins once per hunting season. A finicky boat that needed
attention every few days would be too marginal a craft to have been used
as long and as well as the Inuit used their kayaks.

[tx]More importantly, though, is that those who are skeptical about
Inuit transatlantic voyages during the late seventeenth century
apparently have not taken into account that Europe was gripped by a
mini-Ice Age during this time; ice-core samplings have proven that its
worst years were from 1680 to 1730--precisely the time of numerous
sightings of kayakers around the British Isles. In light of this, what
seems most likely is that because these kayakers were forced to travel
farther offshore from Greenland to find food in the colder waters of
these years, they may have gotten lost or fatigued and sought temporary
refuge on ice floes. While on an ice floe a kayaker might have eaten,
slept, and even regreased his hull. These floes drifted east with the
current and began to melt, and the kayaker then had to relaunch. Seeing
seagulls he may have followed them to land--but the land was not
Greenland. It was Scotland, or the Orkney or Faeroe Islands.

Sorry for making this post so long...but since it seems to be
off-season, maybe few will bother ;-)

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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