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
8 - Low German and Finnish Revisited
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
This chapter explores the stratum of Low German loanwords in Finnish that can be identified with the contact networks of the Hanseatic League. The chapter opens with some background on the issue of this loanword stratum and comments on recent research. It then explores some new etymologies and revisits others. Comments on methodology are made before closing with a brief conclusion.
Keywords: linguistics, etymology, loanword, language contacts
Introduction
From the perspective of a relatively scarcely populated region on the southern shore of Austmarr, the Baltic Sea, away from the main European traffic streams of today, one may have the impression of being at the periphery of the modern world, far away from the cultural and political centres that spread new trends. It seems hard to imagine that it was indeed this very region, with its Hanseatic cities, that gave or at least mediated the major cultural and political impulses to the Nordic countries, including Finland, over several centuries. For Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, as well as the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia, this has never been doubted. In the field of political, religious, and material culture, Finland joins this circle naturally. With respect to language contact, however, the direct influence of Low German on Finnish has often been denied or at least intentionally minimised, although the first attempts to establish Low German loanwords in Finnish date from the beginning of the twentieth century (e.g. Karsten 1909: 244; cf. Bentlin 2008: 29). Instead, the existence of words of Low German origin was ascribed to mediation through Swedish. Therefore, it can be seen as a major outcome of the reception of my Ph.D. thesis (2008) that linguistic evidence can be seen as so strong that reasonable doubt about Low German influence on Finnish can no longer be maintained (cf. Stellmacher 2008: 301; Häkkinen 2013: 25). Consequently, the first introductory books for students have accepted the Low German loanword layer in Finnish as a fact to be added to the traditionally listed strata when talking about loans in Finnish (see e.g. Häkkinen 2011: 81-82).
Despite the generally very positive reception that this thesis has received, I am not aware of any attempts to investigate further any questions in this specific linguistic context. Therefore, I see good reason to revisit the topic at a distance of several years since the first publication.
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- Information
- Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea RegionAustmarr as a Northern Mare Nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD, pp. 173 - 184Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019