The sign of the dead.
Since Vilh. Thomsen in 1868 first pointed out the remarkable significance of Finnish for the earliest history of the Teutonic tongue and of European civilization, the question has developed, and now aims at finding out also the loans from religion, myth and poetic conception.
Joh. Fritzner, in his essay on "The Heathenism of the Lapps" (Norsk Historisk Tidskrift IV) was the first to touch upon this subject; but during the last ten years the matter has grown in importance, and embraces a wider range than ever before, for now, in accordance with Vilh. Thomsens linguistic standpoint, it is not only a question of loans from the Scandinavian heathenism we know of, but also of loans from pre-historic times.[1]
Loans from cult & myth have been amply proved, not only among the Lapps, who are in a position of a special dependence on Scandinavian civilization, but also in great degree among the Finns, who, in a more independent way, have appropriated and worked in ideas from many of the Aryan tribes. I shall, for the present, devote myself to the Lappish sources, which are a still unexhausted mine for Scandinavian loans.
The first place among all these sources is held by the so-called Närö-manuscript, written by priest Johan Randulf in 1723, "An account of the Finn-Lapps' Idolatry". Its publication by the present Norwegien minister Qvigstad, in the
- ↑ I have already published a short account of the papers on this subject in Danske Studier 1911, 38 (it will also appear in an altered form in Germanisch-romanische Monatschrift).