Minerva Piha University of Turku Combining Proto-Scandinavian loanword strata in South Saami with the Early Iron Age archaeological material of Jämtland and Dalarna, Sweden1 In this article, I will examine South Saami prehistory from the perspectives of archaeol- ogy and historical lexicology. I will present a theoretical model that can be applied to a multidisciplinary research that uses methodologies from both the sciences and test it using South Saami material. My linguistic data consists of North-West Germanic and Early Proto-Scandinavian loanwords in South Saami. Th ese loanword strata can be dat- ed to 1–550 CE. I will make an inventory of the semantic categories of the words in the loanword strata to see from which domains words were borrowed. I will also examine the prominent individual words that might have signifi cance as intercultural markers. Th e archaeological material used in the research includes hunting ground graves, iron manufacturing sites and dwelling sites in Dalarna and Jämtland, Sweden. I will consider remain types, artefact fi nds and remain structures dated to 1–550 CE. Only those sites that have been excavated will be included in the data. I will correlate the lexical fi nds with the archaeological fi nd groups in order to examine what the datasets together re- veal about contacts between the South Saami and Scandinavian speakers. Th e combina- tion of archaeological and lexical research off ers new advantages and perspectives to the study of prehistory. Th e study brings new evidence for the prior hypothesis about South Saami speakers as domestic animal herders. Th e combination of these sciences also re- veals that the earliest hunting ground graves should be considered to have belonged to a non-Saami speaking Paleo-European people. FUF 64: 118–233 (2018) 118 <https://doi.org/10.33339/fuf.66694> FUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.indd 118 19.12.2018 14:55:14 1. Introduction 5.1. Th e uncorrelative semantic 1.1. Archaeological and linguistic and archaeological categories background of the research 5.2. Th e correlative semantic and 1.2. Th e datasets archaeological categories 2. Th e theoretical model 5.3. Problematic categories, fi nd 2.1. Perspectives on categorization groups and lexical fi nds in linguistics and archaeology 5.4. Summary 2.2. A hypothetical example 6. New perspectives on the Early of the use of the model Iron Age in the hunting grounds 3. Th e lexical material in Jämtland and Dalarna 3.1. Semantic categories 6.1. Domestic animals 3.2. Language and cultural among Southern Proto- contacts in the light of Saami speakers the loanwords 6.2. Reindeer pastoralism 4. Th e archaeological material 6.3. Southern Proto-Saami 4.1. Remains in the contacts with Paleo-European hunting grounds of central Scandinavia 4.2. Th e archeological 6.4. Iron manufacture categories and fi nd groups 7. Conclusions 4.3. Summary Appendix 1 5. Combining the lexical and Appendix 2 archaeological material Appendix 3 Appendix 4 1. Introduction In this article, I will examine South Saami prehistory from the perspec- tives of archaeology and historical lexicology, which both seek to study the human past. I have sketched a new theoretical model applicable to multidisciplinary research that uses methodologies from both of these sci- ences. I will test the model using material connected to the South Saami language and its speakers. Th e combination of archaeology and historical lexicology provides a wider and more detailed picture of the past: the dis- ciplines reveal diff erent prehistoric phenomena and diff erent aspects of the same phenomena. My interest in this article lies in studying the contacts between the predecessors of South Saami and Scandinavian speakers in the Early Iron Age (1–550 CE). I will try to answer the question of what the combination of archaeology and historical lexicology can tell us about South Saami prehistory concerning the contacts between the two language groups. 119 FFUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.inddUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.indd 111919 119.12.20189.12.2018 114:55:144:55:14 Minerva Piha 1.1. Archaeological and linguistic background of the research In recent years, the consensus that archaeologists and linguists had con- structed in the 1980s about the immigration and diff usion of Finnic and Saami speaking groups has come under criticism. Late Neolithic cultures in Finland were previously thought to belong to Finnish- and Saami- speaking groups (e.g. Carpelan 1999: 258; Koivulehto 1999c). New results in linguistics strongly indicate that these cultures are too old to be Finnic- or Saami-speaking (e.g. J. Häkkinen 2010a). Instead, it has been proposed that the Finnic and Saami languages arrived in the Baltic sea area around the end of the Bronze Age or beginning of the Iron Age (500 BCE) (J. Häk- kinen 2010b: 57–58; see also e.g. Parpola 2017: 259). Th e modern under- standing is that the Proto-Saami language has its Urheimat in the south- ern parts of Karelia and Finland, from whence it spread to other parts of Fennoscandia, disintegrating into dialects (e.g. Aikio 2006: 43–47; Aikio 2012: 77; J. Häkkinen 2010b: 57). Even though the expansion of Finnish and Saami languages has been dated much later than traditionally believed, the immigration of Saami – whether it was the language or its speakers – into inland Scandinavia is suggested, especially by linguists, to have occurred earlier than previously thought. Some archaeologists in Sweden propose that the ancestors of South Saami had already arrived in inland Scandinavia by the beginning of the Common Era, or even earlier (e.g. Zachrisson 1997, 2009; Hansen & Olsen 2006: 103). Some researchers do not acknowledge the presence of the Saami in the inland areas before a very late dating (e.g. Stedingk & Baudou 2006). Nevertheless, since the 1970s, the general view seems to be that it is not important to ask when or from where the Saami immigrated into Scandinavia (Simonsen 1973: 181–182) but how the Saami ethnicity was adopted (Storli 1986, 46). Since the 1980s, archaeologists (e.g. Zachrisson 1997) have discussed the emergence of the Saami ethnicity as having taken place in the Iron Age. However, the Saami ethnicity is not the same thing as the Saami lan- guage, although they are deeply connected. Th e question of when and from where the language came to Central Scandinavia and how it aff ected the emergence of the Saami ethnicity has not been discussed by archaeolo- gists to any signifi cant extent (although see Gjerde 2016: 54), even though language should be an important factor in creating ethnic identity. In this article, I speak of languages and language speakers, not ethnicity, ethnic 120 FFUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.inddUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.indd 112020 119.12.20189.12.2018 114:55:144:55:14 Combining Proto-Scandinavian loanword strata in South Saami ... identity or ethnic groups. I will address the question of language, material culture and ethnicity elsewhere in my PhD work. (On Saami ethnicity in archaeology, see e.g. Gjerde 2016: 29–33; Hansen & Olsen 2006, 29–44.) Linguists, in turn, have traditionally viewed the expansion of the Saami languages as having reached inland Scandinavia around 800–1000 CE (e.g. Saarikivi 2011: 114). J. Häkkinen (2010b: 59), Heikkilä (2011: 68–69) and Aikio (2012: 77–78) have suggested, based on Saami toponyms that have been borrowed from Proto-Scandinavian, that the predecessor of the modern South Saami language must have already been in Scandinavia around 400–500 CE at the latest. I am inclined to support this hypothesis. Th e hypothesis is, however, problematic from the perspective of ar- chaeological interpretation. Th e very early archaeological remains from before the Common Era or right around the beginning of the Common Era that are suggested by archaeologists to have belonged to the ancestors of the South Saami people may very well have belonged to them, but these ancestors would not have spoken any form of Saami language, as it ar- rived slightly later. Here, I will present a hypothesis of who these ancestors might have been linguistically (see chapter 6 of this article). Th e predecessor of modern South Saami in the Early Iron Age is called the southwest dialect of Proto-Saami by Aikio (2012: 77). It is not the pre- decessor of South Saami alone, but also of Ume Saami and perhaps Pite Saami. I will call this dialect Southern Proto-Saami, and although this article deals mainly with South Saami vocabulary, I acknowledge that Southern Proto-Saami is also the predecessor of at least Ume Saami. At fi rst, Southern Proto-Saami was a variety that diverged from Common Proto-Saami sometime between 1–500 CE (Aikio 2006: 43; 2012: 77), but gradually it developed into a separate protolanguage and then into Ume and South Saami. 1.2. The datasets My linguistic data consists of North-West Germanic (NwG) and Early Proto-Scandinavian (PScand) loanwords in South Saami (SaaS). Th e loan- words are defi ned as NwG or PScand by examining regular sound changes in the words (about sound changes and etymologies see e.g. Campbell 1998; K. Häkkinen 1997: 9–74). Th ese loanword strata can be dated, with the help of runic inscriptions, to the Roman Iron Age (1–400 CE) and Migration Pe- riod (400–550 CE) (J. Häkkinen 2010b: 55). I will do a Wörter und Sachen 121 FFUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.inddUF64_varmuuskopio_12_12.indd 112121 119.12.20189.12.2018 114:55:144:55:14 Minerva Piha inventory on the semantic categories of the words in the loanword strata to see from which life domains words were borrowed. I will also examine prominent individual words that might have signifi cance as intercultural markers. I have aimed at including all the words etymologized to NwG and early PScand loanword strata in the data but decided to limit my data to words borrowed into early PScand (which has hypothetically been spo- ken around 200–550 CE).