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.