MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Sat, 01 Nov 2008

I was wondering when somebody would notice this: the Caucasus is the Indo-European homeland, and heartland. And the folks who are still there are just the w=ones that stayed at home during the migration age. The only thing the Ossetians are missing is that, of course, they are related to the Georgians (and the Russians) as well as the Scots, the Franks and the English.

Heathenry does a lot of toponymy, the study of place names, to ascertain the extent and nature of various god-cults in the Viking Age and before. So it's no surprise to me that there are placenames all over Western Europe that can be traced back to the Caucasus.

Hundreds of years ago, Ossetians roamed all over Western Europe, from the Caucasus to Scotland. As Tim Whewell reveals, the folk memories of these wanderings have lingered down the centuries, so that it can be hard to tell where myth ends and history begins.

(link) [BBC News]

/Asatru | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 11/1/2008 11:54:35
Gerd G wrote

As far as the place names in this article are concerned, the only problem is that a lot of these alleged Ossetian toponyms are completely false etymologies. This article, unfortunately, takes the fanciful claims made by enthusiastic Ossetians completely uncritically. London is not from Ossetian, nor is Orleans. The latter, for instance, was originally named Aurelianum, because it was a Gaulic settlement that was rebuilt by the Roman Emperor Aurelian. It has nothing to do with being an Ossetian 'stopping place.' On the other hand, there have been some serious attempts to relate Arthurian legend to Sarmatian legend, so that connection might be real.

On 11/9/2008 10:38:02
Jer Goode wrote

Sorry, I have to agree with Gerd on this. I will add the example of Belfast: The name, Belfast, is the anglicised version of the Irish Béal Feirste, which translates as "Mouth of the (River) Farset". I applaud the Ossetians for their enthusiasm and their knowledge of their Indo-European roots, but this simply isn't true. And they aren't the "ones that stayed at home during the migration age". They had a kingdom in what is now Hungary, but were defeated and most fled, although there is an ethnic minority there today that retains some knowledge and culture of their forebearers, but not their language. Their modern day "homeland" is just where they ended up due to migrational pressures, just like the rest of us. The Caucus may be the place of origin for the Indo-Europeans, but I don't think it's possible to say that there is some pure surviving pre-migration stock. The Osstetian language is Indo-Iranian. The only surviving language of their particular language subgroup is spoken in Tajikistan, with the next closest relative being Pashto in Iran. With they are related under the vast umbrella of the Indo-European language group to the Georgians and Russian, they are ultimately ethnically and linguistically very dissimilar, hence their desire for independence.

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