Showing posts with label James Macpherson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Macpherson. Show all posts

Monday, June 13, 2016

On Finns and Celts


A comment from my Viking-Irish Redhead Gene Myth post turned into a long blog post of its own. So I decided to repost it here. I may or may not get around to fashioning it into a story so these are notes.
Arhi Kuittinen Finnsanity said...
Mother of European culture is Finnic culture.
Blue eyed, blonde and red haired ur-culture. Finnish language is the oldest language in Europe.
"Vikings" were originally Kvens, Kveenit, the biggest Finnish Tribe years 400-1100. Popes robber barons made unholy big crusade to the Finland 1100 and ended the oldest culture in Europe which was called by Greeks Hyberborea. Finland was the last who standed against pope and Vatican.
King word is from Finnish word Kuningas.
Queen is from Kven word, "She is Kven".
Apollo cult hwrote about nordic Hyperborea the home of Greek knowledge and religion.
20 the most old written history text about Europe speaks about Hyperborea.
Blue eyed sea people destroyed Egyptian culture in Ramses III times - Ramsesses and Seth I were red haired Finnic Pharaos.
In China oldest mummies are red haired Finnic - N1C1 genetic line.
Silk road was Finnic project by these white skinned Finnic mummies.
Moscow and every big European city were originally Finnic town and commercial place.
In England there was Finnish names and Towns like Caleva.
Druids were continuing and developing original Finnic rituals but the language changed during 10000 years.
In Stone Henge there is both Moon and Sun ritually respected - that is Finnic cult, holistic feminine cult. "Hengettäret".
In Finland you can found 35 OLDER stone henges' ruins, Jätinkirkko, 5500 years old astronomical temples.
Lord Of The Rings -book is based on Finnic tales "Kalevala", Battle of the warlocks, etc.
Now you know something about the root of the European culture.


Maureen Hurley said...

LOL, Arhi Kuittinen Finnsanity, you've certainly conflated many, many cultures—not to mention time-zones, and millennia (Neolithic Stonehenge to Medieval Vikings), to support your theory, with no sustaining facts whatsoever. But thank you for your close reading, and comments.

For what it's worth, Stonehenge predates both the Finns and Celts. It was not built by the Finns (or the Druids, for that matter). Every culture on earth worships, or has worshiped the sun and the moon. And most cultures have created celestial, or astronomical temple calendars. The Finns didn't invent the idea. Whether Stonehenge was built by blue-eyed blonds, is moot.

Lithuanian-American archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas said the pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe" were the builders of Stonehenge, etc.

The Greeks were not referring to the Finns when they wrote of Hyberborea. The Hyperboreans were a mythical idyllic people who lived forever, "beyond the North Wind," in a land of eternal spring, where there was no war, or strife. That definition says more about the Greek state of affairs, than it did about Finnic culture.

Whether you read the works of Homer, Pindar, or Herodotus, the Greeks were referring to Hyberborea ,a land north of Thrace, BTW. Roman historian Plutarch connected the Hyperboreans with the Gauls. Hecataeus of Abdera further claimed that Hyperborea was Britain.

Pseudo-Scymnus wrote that the hero Boreas, for whom Hyberborea was named, dwelled at the extremity of Gaulish territory (Britain). Hyperborea was one of several terrae incognito. One of the unknown, unmapped realms.

BTW, during this timeframe there was no such thing as Finland. From the 12th c., onward, Finland was part of Sweden. When Adolf Ivar Arwidsson (1791–1858), proclaimed, "we are no-longer Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns," the idea of Finland was born.

The term "Nordic" does not refer to Finns. As you said, Finns are another culture. Nordic means Norse. As in Norseman. It can refer to five separate countries, from Greenland to Denmark. The word Viking can mean raider or pirate, and it's not a Finnish word. There were viking raiders of many cultures, including the Irish, though the Roman term was Scotii.

The relationship between Finnish and the Indo-European Scandanavian or Celtic languages is scant, as Balto-Finnic is a completely unrelated branch of the Uralic language family. Kuningas is from Proto-Finnic *kuningas, which was borrowed from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz. Finnic, a conservative language, even preserved the Germanic normative singular case.

As to Egypt, there were Celtic mercenaries during the reign of the Ptolemys, who were Greek, not Finnic.

Nor were the Tocharians of the Taklimakan Desert Finnic. Their language, Tocharian A, was Indo-European, not Finnic, it shared many linguistic similarities with Irish, both highly inflected archaic languages.

The specific sheep wool found and the style of plaid twill weaving reflects that of N. Europe, what is now Germany, then a Celtic, or Celto-Germanic region. (We know of this because of placenames, and personal names, as recorded by Tacitus, and others.)

Since you mentioned genetics earlier, by blood, the genetic bond between Finns and Swedes is closer than, say, the Finns and Irish. Haplogroup N1c is found in northeastern Europe, Siberia, and the Far East. It's a descendant of an East Asian macro-haplogroup. Uralic N1c1 is found in Samoyedic (Nganasans, Enets, Nenets and Selkups); and Finno-Ugric (Finno-Permic: Baltic Finnic (Finnish, Karelian, Estonia, etc.); and Permic: (Komi, Udmurt). Saamic (Saami), Volgaic (Mari, Mordvin), Ugric, Hungarian, and Ob-Ugric (Khanty, Masi). The Baltic Finnic branch is related to the migration of the N1c1a1a1 (VL29) group.

As to the Tarim Basin mummies, I don't know where you got your information from. Please cite your sources. The paternal lines of male remains belongs to Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1, and a later Tocharian haplogroup genetic signature is R1b-M343.

You're right that Tolkien used Finnic sources. The Silmarillion is partially based on Finnic tales recorded in the "Kalevala" (which is a 19th c. construct from folkloric fragments from Karelian, Estonian, (Baltic), and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. But it was compiled into epic verse by Elias Lönnrot, who also coined the name, "Kalevala."

Like Scottish poet James Macpherson's Ossian Cycle, so influential in the development of the Romantic movement, the Kalevala is not an authentic, replete tale unto itself. It is a quilt, a pastiche. LOTR was also heavily based on Welsh and other cultural (read Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon) mythologies as well.

The Romantic movement emphasized emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, vs. rational, or Classicist ideals: not inclusive of history, anthropology, nor archaeology. It was the birth of the ideal of the Noble Savage, and epic folk hero—which ironically, stemmed from the ancient Greek writings. Full circle.






Sunday, July 12, 2015

MacCamelot: Stealing King Arthur, or Musing on Pseudo Histories


Oops! I made a grave mistake of responding to a link posted on someone's Facebook page. It was a poorly written pseudo-history article on King Arthur. I noted that it was an argument full of holes, and posted a comment (below), expecting a lively exchange. Instead I was unfriended for my candor. So very sad for the loss of friendship, I clearly misjudged her. I'm also flummoxed. Was I barking up the wrong tree? Perhaps I should have checked my allegory at the door.

Maybe it's because I've read so much pre-medieval and medieval scholarship, that I can't engage in reading pop-culture articles without a response. I thought the article was very poorly thought out, and said so. But it got me interested in researching the so-called "Scottish connection posed by Edinburgh author Adam Ardrey, (apparently he has an axe to grind with the English and Christianity). I was also curious to see if there were any interesting rebuttals posted on the internet.

I couldn't access the original link to the article in question as my friend had unfriended me. Then I remembered my browser's History menu. Yes! So here it is:

Was King Arthur actually Scottish? New research assesses the evidence

(More to come once I process it... or you can take a gander over to the Celebrate Scotland site. What follows below are roughshod notes—as I try and sort out my thoughts on the page. Or try and write my way out of a paper bag. So consider this a draft in progress.)


What I wrote on my former friend's Facebook page: 
"Augh, these dim-witted articles drive me crazy. Wasn't a myth of English-speaking people, as no one was really speaking much by way of English yet. Briton, maybe, Cumbric. Welsh was still differentiating itself from Cumbric at the time. Nennius was a bit of a fabulator. Geoffrey of Monmouth was much worse. If so, Arthur would have to be king of the Dalriadic Scotti, not the modern Scots. And it would be spelled Artio(s) or Artiaus (the bear). The entire west of Britain was Cumbric-speaking after the 5th c., with pockets of Erse speakers, significantly in Eboricum, along the Clyde, the Hebrides, and to north.
The place-names mentioned in the article are, in essence, Welsh words. it's really hard to get Avalon/ Welsh Afallon; Breton Avallenn from Hinba, or Iona.
Then there's the problem that both the Bretons and the Irish also have Arthurian tale, not to mention that the oldest Arthurian tale, Culhwch and Olwen is in Welsh.
Must be some sort of sugar rush from swilling too much Irn Bru affecting their brains."
So, was that above post harsh enough to merit my banishment from the kingdom of Facebook Friendships?



OK, so what little we do know is that King Arthur of myth and legend, was busy fighting against the Anglo-Saxon foe, so he couldn't be English as the Angles become Anglish. The Kingdom of Scotland wasn't founded until ca. 839, or 850 AD, so Arthur also couldn't be Scottish, as there was no such thing as Scotland yet. Caledonia was populated with Pictish natives and Irish settlers.

The Irish Scotti of Ulster migrated en masse to the edge of the Pictish lands (in what is now western Scotland), and founded the Kingdom of Dalriada (Dál Riata) in Caledonia at the end of the 5th c., so, if King Arthur was Scottish, as the article claimed, by this same insane reasoning, wouldn't that make Arthur Irish, and not Scottish?? LOL.

Pictland eventually fell to the Irish Scotti in 839 AD., Certainly Arthur was a Celtic, maybe Cumbrian, or proto-Welsh, or Cornish, or possibly a Romano-British, war leader, but Scottish? But not Anglish. What would Bede say?



This article, from the Scotsman, offers a more balanced rendition (if only they didn't use the word "Scottish"; my goat dander is all up in a fluff:

Author Adam Ardrey claims that Arthur was actually Arthur Mac Aedan, the sixth-century son of an ancient King of Scotland. Ardrey claims that instead of the romantic English king of legend who lived at Camelot – which is often said to be Tintagel in Cornwall or in Wales – Arthur was actually Arthur Mac Aedan, the sixth-century son of an ancient King of Scotland, whose Camelot was a marsh in Argyll. Ardrey, an amateur historian who works as an advocate in Edinburgh and previously wrote a book claiming Merlin the wizard was actually a politician from Glasgow, spent years investigating his theories and says that they can be proved “beyond reasonable doubt”. The assertions in his book Finding Arthur: The True Origins Of The Once And Future King are strengthened by the discovery in 2011—what some experts believe is King Arthur’s round table at Stirling Castle. Read more here: The Scotsman


Arthur was an English king? Where did that memo come from? In the 6th c, there was no Scotland. Certainly not a Scottish king. Pictish, maybe. And Merlin was a Weegie politician? 'Splains a lot. Must've been a Tory. Ardrey's theories can be proved “beyond reasonable doubt”? Amateur historian, indeed.