Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences
- Section 1 Mental Maps
- 1 The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers
- 2 Austmarr on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- 3 The Connection Between Geographical Space and Collective Memory in Jómsvíkinga saga
- Section 2 Mobility
- 4 Rune Carvers Traversing Austmarr?
- 5 Polish Noble Families and Noblemen of Scandinavian Origin in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Case of the Awdańcy Family: By Which Route did they come to Poland and why?
- 6 A Medieval Trade in Female Slaves from the North along the Volga
- Section 3 Language
- 7 Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
- 8 Low German and Finnish Revisited
- Section 4 Myth and Religion Formation
- 9 Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
- 10 The Artificial Bride on Both Sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian Folk Poetry
- 11 Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
- 12 Mythologies in Transformation: Symbolic Transfer, Hybridisation, and Creolisation in the Circum-Baltic Arena (Illustrated Through the Changing Roles of *Tīwaz, *Ilma, and Óðinn, the Fishing Adventure of the Thunder God, and a Finno-Karelian Creolisation of North Germanic Religion)
- Contributors
- Indices
7 - Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences
- Section 1 Mental Maps
- 1 The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers
- 2 Austmarr on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- 3 The Connection Between Geographical Space and Collective Memory in Jómsvíkinga saga
- Section 2 Mobility
- 4 Rune Carvers Traversing Austmarr?
- 5 Polish Noble Families and Noblemen of Scandinavian Origin in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Case of the Awdańcy Family: By Which Route did they come to Poland and why?
- 6 A Medieval Trade in Female Slaves from the North along the Volga
- Section 3 Language
- 7 Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
- 8 Low German and Finnish Revisited
- Section 4 Myth and Religion Formation
- 9 Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
- 10 The Artificial Bride on Both Sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian Folk Poetry
- 11 Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
- 12 Mythologies in Transformation: Symbolic Transfer, Hybridisation, and Creolisation in the Circum-Baltic Arena (Illustrated Through the Changing Roles of *Tīwaz, *Ilma, and Óðinn, the Fishing Adventure of the Thunder God, and a Finno-Karelian Creolisation of North Germanic Religion)
- Contributors
- Indices
Summary
Abstract
Elmer Antonsen's suggestion that a fourth-century runic inscription on a bronze strapring (part of a swordsheath) from Nydam, Jutland, might contain the Finnish and Karelian divine/heroic name Ahti (a god of the sea and a warrior-hero conflated with Lemminkäinen in Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala) is not impossible but uncertain at best. This example provides an opportunity to outline the methodological issues involved in evaluating a proposed interpretation of a runic inscription that identifies it with a non-Germanic (and non-Latin) language.
Keywords: Runic inscriptions, Early Norse, weapons deposits, Nydam bog, language contact, Finnic names, theonyms
Introduction
The suggestion that a fourth-century runic inscription on a bronze strap-ring (attachment for a sword-sheath) from the bog site at Nydam in south-eastern Jutland may contain the Finnish divine/heroic name Ahti (a god of the sea and a warrior-hero conflated with Lemminkäinen in Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala [1835; 1849]) is mentioned by Elmer Antonsen (2002: 114) as a possibility that ‘deserves a serious follow-up investigation’ (Antonsen 2002: 114); Grünzweig (2004: 85) echoes this. From the point of view of Finnic historical linguistics, the interpretation is possible, although the fourth century is early for a Finnish -i stem and the etymology of the name Ahti is disputed.
A number of other interpretations for the sequence have been proposed, all with their own uncertainties. Eichner (1996: 15) interprets ahti in the Nydam strap-ring as a past-tense 3 sg. form of eigan (‘to own’) (< PGmc. *aihtai, cf. Old Norse átti), although Stoklund (1995: 276) finds an ownership formula in the past tense pragmatically odd, and the Germanic diphthongs would be expected to be preserved at this early date. Heikkilä (2013: 76) views the sequence in the inscription as the dative form of a Germanic personal name derived from the same root, one of several sources (in his complex account) for the Finnish name.
Alternatively, the word could be an accusative or dative form of Proto-Norse aihtiR > Old Norse ætt, átt (‘family, lineage; direction’). Elsewhere on the same artefact is found anulạ, tentatively connected by Grünzweig (2004: 86) with Old Norse unna (‘to love, not to begrudge’), probably an an-stem noun with a diminutive suffix.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea RegionAustmarr as a Northern Mare Nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD, pp. 147 - 172Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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