Seeing language from the DNA

[Jaska]

Buuut, can we be sure they are not (part of) genetic ancestors of Sami?
I mean they are not writing “linguistic ancestors of Sami”..

Unlike Svestad & Olsen have understood, no linguist has ever claimed that they could not be part of the genetic ancestors of the Saami. On the contrary, the hundreds of loanwords and placenames borrowed into the Saami languages require some degree of population continuity from the earlier population to the Saami-speaking populations. 

The problem is that the authors go further than this: they believe that this archaeological continuity could tell about linguistic continuity - over the linguistic results! Which is of course absurd and unscientific.
"As we have shown, this archaeological record does not comply well with the linguistic reconstructions; in fact, it often contradicts or challenges them." (Page 21b.)

The reason for this misunderstanding, in turn, is that they talk about the Saami ethnogenesis as if it was one object, approachable by different disciplines equally, when in reality only linguistics can approach the linguistic ethnogenesis; only archaeology can approach the material culture ethnogenesis; only genetics can approach the genetic ethnogenesis; etc.

All these main problems and misunderstandings have been pointed out and underlined in our response. There still remain many corrections concerning smaller details which are not included here:
https://www.alkuperasivusto.fi/Comment.pdf
Or in Academia:
https://www.academia.edu/114870366/Comme...hnogenesis

[Jaska]

Sami are originally "Bjarmian" long distance traders setting up seasonal camps in suitable locations for metal working to exchange tools and weapons for furs from the native peoples of Fennoscandia.
After working and trading during the winter they would return trough the river systems in the spring with boats loaded with furs and ivory, until some stayed as they married in to the tribes and the dialects separated.

You are welcome.

Hmmmm...
1. "Bjarmian" is only a Viking Age label, and not in any certainty to be associated with the Saami people.
2. Time and place are crucial in any such scenario, but you did not give any. I assume you meant that this model could fit in with the linguistic results.
3. The model itself is possible, as we can assume that travelling/visiting usually precedes permanent settling in certain region.
4. Metal working could be a possible motive behind the Southern Proto-Saami speakers, but it is less fitting for the more northern Saami. See chapter 3.3 in our response to Svestad and Olsen.

[Æsir]

Sami are originally "Bjarmian" long distance traders setting up seasonal camps in suitable locations for metal working to exchange tools and weapons for furs from the native peoples of Fennoscandia.
After working and trading during the winter they would return trough the river systems in the spring with boats loaded with furs and ivory, until some stayed as they married in to the tribes and the dialects separated.

You are welcome.

Hmmmm...
1. "Bjarmian" is only a Viking Age label, and not in any certainty to be associated with the Saami people.
2. Time and place are crucial in any such scenario, but you did not give any. I assume you meant that this model could fit in with the linguistic results.
3. The model itself is possible, as we can assume that travelling/visiting usually precedes permanent settling in certain region.
4. Metal working could be a possible motive behind the Southern Proto-Saami speakers, but it is less fitting for the more northern Saami. See chapter 3.3 in our response to Svestad and Olsen.

1. Hence the quotations, we know that by Viking Age Bjarmians where under heavy Baltic Finnic influence, take over of the trade system?
2. I will leave the linguistic dating to you, thanks for being here, this model is robust and can easily start with Seima-Turbino.
   The language can change based on who controls the trade system at what time > later Baltic Finnic expansion in to the eastern trade network.
3. Yes, this model is the most likely.
    You will know that Bjamian/Permian and Lappalainen have the same meaning, Sami is also a travelling trader in Russian is it not?
4. Will look at it.

[Jaska]

Æsir:

You will know that Bjamian/Permian and Lappalainen have the same meaning, Sami is also a travelling trader in Russian is it not?

What is the meaning of Bjarmian? To my knowledge, there is no certainty about the etymology of this name. Like Lapp(alainen), it is an exonym referring to a group of people. Any meanings beyond that reference are mere guessing.

Saami-type names are very young in all non-Saami languages, including Russian. Also its meaning is the group of people to which it refers: the Saami.

[Æsir]

Æsir:

You will know that Bjamian/Permian and Lappalainen have the same meaning, Sami is also a travelling trader in Russian is it not?

What is the meaning of Bjarmian? To my knowledge, there is no certainty about the etymology of this name. Like Lapp(alainen), it is an exonym referring to a group of people. Any meanings beyond that reference are mere guessing.

Saami-type names are very young in all non-Saami languages, including Russian. Also its meaning is the group of people to which it refers: the Saami.

Both Bjarmians and the Lapp have been associated with an seasonal lifestyle, occupation outside permanent settlement, outside major population centers.
I assume this interpretation has risen independent of each other among common people and not by later scholars?

Sorry it was Bjarmian/Permian that had the meaning of traveling merchant in Russia, not Saami.

[Jaska]

Æsir

Both Bjarmians and the Lapp have been associated with an seasonal lifestyle, occupation outside permanent settlement, outside major population centers.
I assume this interpretation has risen independent of each other among common people and not by later scholars?

Ottar actually states that the Beormas were agriculturalists:
https://web.uvic.ca/hrd/iallt2003/oldeng...aph-1.html

[Æsir]

Æsir

Both Bjarmians and the Lapp have been associated with an seasonal lifestyle, occupation outside permanent settlement, outside major population centers.
I assume this interpretation has risen independent of each other among common people and not by later scholars?

Ottar actually states that the Beormas were agriculturalists:
https://web.uvic.ca/hrd/iallt2003/oldeng...aph-1.html

He is talking about the "Bjarmian" core population that later became Baltic Finnic, Norse and Slavic speaking, leaving the Saami as isolates.

We have a later example from Canada where the Métis refused assimilation and where also in the process of diverging linguistically.
If the agricultural French Canadians would have assimilated in to the English speakers then that evolution would have accelerated in to similar conclusion we have with Saami speakers today.



Btw, is the lantalaiset/lappalaiset thing also just folk lore?

[Jaska]

Æsir:

He is talking about the "Bjarmian" core population that later became Baltic Finnic, Norse and Slavic speaking, leaving the Saami as isolates.

Isn’t that just speculation? They could have been Saami or Finnic speakers based on the substrate placenames on the Archangel Region, and then they became assimilated into the North Russians.

Æsir:

We have a later example from Canada where the Métis refused assimilation and where also in the process of diverging linguistically.
If the agricultural French Canadians would have assimilated in to the English speakers then that evolution would have accelerated in to similar conclusion we have with Saami speakers today.

I do not follow. What is that conclusion you mean concerning the Saami?

Æsir:

Btw, is the lantalaiset/lappalaiset thing also just folk lore?

Partly. Lantalainen associates to the Finnish word lanta ‘dung; cattle’s shit’, but the name actually comes from the Scandinavian word for ‘land’, in some Scandinavian dialects ‘cultivated land’. In different Saami languages it refers to the dominating ethnicity of the region (Finns, Norwegians), often additionally or especially farmers.

Lappalainen is the oldest known and the most widespread Finnish exonym for the Saami – the only such name which is known in dialects all over Finland, just like the Saami placenames are found all over Finland. Some historians have proposed that Lappalainen was originally any hunter-gatherer or wilderness inhabitant, but there is no support for such an assumption. Finns must have had a name for the Saami already in Southern Finland, and Lappalainen is the only credible option for such a name.

Since the tax collectors of Sweden shifted the ethnic Lapps (thus far distinguished from the Finnish settlers) to the settlers' list in 1763, “Lapp” became also a tax class: “Lapp” was a person who did not live in a house and did not farm, but instead hunted, fished or herded reindeers. But still “Lapp” also meant ethnic Saami in the colloquial speech.

[Æsir]

Isn’t that just speculation? They could have been Saami or Finnic speakers based on the substrate placenames on the Archangel Region, and then they became assimilated into the North Russians.

Yes, but the Baltic Finnic eastern expansion is a fact during the Viking Age.
In my hypothesis the Bjarmian core regions where in the process of being assimilated in to the Baltic Finns, the process was still ongoing when Slavic expansion happened.

I do not follow. What is that conclusion you mean concerning the Saami?

Isolated from linguistic contact to the population they partly originated from after that population assimilated in to Baltic Finnic, Norse and Slavic speakers.

Partly. Lantalainen associates to the Finnish word lanta ‘dung; cattle’s shit’, but the name actually comes from the Scandinavian word for ‘land’, in some Scandinavian dialects ‘cultivated land’. In different Saami languages it refers to the dominating ethnicity of the region (Finns, Norwegians), often additionally or especially farmers.

Lappalainen is the oldest known and the most widespread Finnish exonym for the Saami – the only such name which is known in dialects all over Finland, just like the Saami placenames are found all over Finland. Some historians have proposed that Lappalainen was originally any hunter-gatherer or wilderness inhabitant, but there is no support for such an assumption. Finns must have had a name for the Saami already in Southern Finland, and Lappalainen is the only credible option for such a name.

Since the tax collectors of Sweden shifted the ethnic Lapps (thus far distinguished from the Finnish settlers) to the settlers' list in 1763, “Lapp” became also a tax class: “Lapp” was a person who did not live in a house and did not farm, but instead hunted, fished or herded reindeers. But still “Lapp” also meant ethnic Saami in the colloquial speech.

Yes, dung and owning land is very much related.
The cattle dung was what made things grow, maybe even more important byproduct than the milk.

So it is a coincidence that Lapp and Permian have the folk lore definition of someone living outside permanent settlement?

[Æsir]

[Jaska]

Æsir:

So it is a coincidence that Lapp and Permian have the folk lore definition of someone living outside permanent settlement?

But do they? Which folk tells about that, and in what source this lore can be found?
A guess by some historian does not fulfill the criteria of folklore.

[Æsir]

Æsir:

So it is a coincidence that Lapp and Permian have the folk lore definition of someone living outside permanent settlement?

But do they? Which folk tells about that, and in what source this lore can be found?
A guess by some historian does not fulfill the criteria of folklore.

Good question. So they can both be traced in to interpretations made by historians?

Btw, has anyone looked more closely the DNA from families with surnames like Lappalainen?

[Queequeg]

Related to the "can genes be seen from the language"-discussion, as a sidenote: just stepped off the train in Nanuoya i.e. Nanuoja in Sri Lanka, according to Finnish translitteration. Nanu "something the locals could not explain, maybe a personal name or something?" and then oja "a small river, also like in some areas in Finland, however in Finland nowadays mostly a "ditch". Sinhala is based on Indo Aryan, so is the word oja in Finnic a loan word? Sinhalese people BTW speak an Indo Aryan language, but in terms of genetics they resemble neighbouring Tamils.

[Jaska]

Related to the "can genes be seen from the language"-discussion, as a sidenote: just stepped off the train in Nanuoya i.e. Nanuoja in Sri Lanka, according to Finnish translitteration. Nanu "something the locals could not explain, maybe a personal name or something?" and then oja "a small river, also like in some areas in Finland, however in Finland nowadays mostly a "ditch". Sinhala is based on Indo Aryan, so is the word oja in Finnic a loan word? Sinhalese people BTW speak an Indo Aryan language, but in terms of genetics they resemble neighbouring Tamils.

Most probably this is just a coincidence. There are limited number of sound combinations in the languages of the world, and some of them also happen to have similar meaning than in some other language. I cannot tell right away what would be the phonological shape in Proto-Indo-Iranian, if oya descended from there, but most probably it would not be *oya but something different. 

If these kind of names seem to delimit in the region of Sinhala language, perhaps they are borrowed from the Dravida languages.

[Jaska]

Æsir:

Btw, has anyone looked more closely the DNA from families with surnames like Lappalainen?

Yes. There are at least two N-subhaplogroups within the last 2000 years, which have both surname Lappalainen and Saami results in FTDNA Discover.