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Jairo Castillo. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.
Let us return to our brief ethnolinguistic review of the names which the months of the year receive in Basque [See The months of the year in Basque (1)].
Apiril ‘April’. This name comes to us from Latin Aprῑlis, with the tentative double meaning of ‘month of Aphrodite’ (from Greek Aphrô), or ‘month when flowers bloom’ (from Latin aperῑre ‘open’). Equally interesting is the form jorrail, understood by Caro Baroja as ‘month or moon for weeding’, this month being typically dedicated to hoeing and removing weeds from cultivated fields. And we shall also mention the form opail, which would, according to Caro Baroja, refer to offerings (opa izan/egin ‘offer’ + (h)il ‘month or moon’) or bread rolls (opil ꞊ ogi ‘bread’ + bil ‘round’), formerly traditional at this time of the year. (more…)
Luis Manuel Peña.
This is certainly an exceptional opportunity to review the names of the months in Basque. Apart from the twelve forms established by Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language, for standard Basque, there are, as it happens, many others of different origin and formation, which provide us with abundant ethnolinguistic and ethnographic material to better understand our ancestors’ way of thinking. (more…)
Egu, Sun god of ancient Basques. Ziortza Artabe. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.
Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language, regulated quite some time ago the standard forms for the days of the week: astelehena, asteartea, asteazkena, osteguna, ostirala, larunbata and igandea. Their prescribed equivalents in Bizkaia Basque are likewise well-established: astelehena (also ilena), martitzena, eguaztena, eguena, barikua, zapatua and domeka. And on top of it all, there are innumerable dialectal and subdialectal variants (ortzeguna, ortziralea, egubakoitza, neskaneguna…). (more…)
Viking raids on the Iberian Peninsula in the 9th–11th centuries. Reproduced from Haywood 1995.
During the Viking Age (c. 800–c. 1060), seafarers of Nordic origin ravaged numerous communities along the northern, western, southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula. In the following centuries, devout Nordic Christians went on pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. But is it possible that individuals of Iberian Peninsular origin undertook travel, together with Scandinavians or perhaps partly on their own, in the opposite direction? And, if so, how far north did they go? The present note summarizes a few potential linguistic, archaeological and genetic indications of links from the mid 1000s to the early 1200s between the Iberian Peninsula and the olden Norwegian capital Nidaros, the present-day Trondheim. (more…)
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