why middle earth

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

In terms of cultural contact, we should not consider the coastal raids of the eighth century as major factors in the development of the English language, particularly minor skirmishes like Portland. Real cultural exchange does not take place between raiders and raided, but between two cultures living alongside one another, as in England after the Scandinavian settlement began in the latter half of the ninth century. It would be a poor historian indeed who projected all the results of centuries Scandinavian conquest and settlement back to the first recorded Viking landfall in England.

(this will be a bit off topic)

You seem to assume that there is a great differnce between the Vikings and the Scandinavian people who settled in England, but fact is that the Vikings mostley was normal people who allso participated in these raids. It was these folk who settled in England, Normandy and Vinland (Newfoundland and other parts of North America) The Vikings were not just pirates, but allso traders.

We seem to have agreed that it is the same word, but I have some last comments. Is it not so that the Anglo-Saxons originate frome the inhabitans of Saxony and Schleswig ? The latter was "danish" until 1864, Is this not where the first capital of Denmark was build. (Hedeby = Haithabu = town on the heat)
What I am saying that the inhabitans of England was partial descendants of the Jutes, is there not a chance that they could speak before crossing the North Sea?

In any case you a right, we are all Germanic tribes and our language clearly originate frome the same place.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I tend to shy away from the word 'Viking', since in Old Norse (at least in Old Icelandic) it does have roughly the meaning of Mod E 'pirate', or perhaps 'freebooter'. I prefer 'Scandinavian', because it says more about the culture of the Norse settlers in England than does 'Viking'.

The Angles did indeed originate among the Geats (according to Bede and supported by references to the Geats, particularly in Beowulf). That doesn't mean, though, that the Vikings of the eighth century were there when the Angles left. Rather the two peoples descended from the same early-sixth-century people, tribes from southern Scandinavia, modern-day Holland and northern Germany. We cannot simply say that these early people were Danish just because some of them lived in what is now Denmark (or was in the late nineteenth century). When they lived there, no such thing as Denmark existed, and I might as well say that they were English because their descendents also founded Mercia and Wessex. The point is that the people you have mentioned are the very same common Germanic ancestors whom we presume to have spoken Primitive Germanic.

Anyway, it's just such an over-arching history that seems to have attracted Tolkien. He followed all the branches of Germanic, including what little Gothic we know, and seems to have tried to imagine what the legends would be like that gave rise to the stories and folklore of that can be traced throughout that linguistic family. That his writing developed far beyond this idea does not alter the debt he owes to his medieval forebears, nor the ultimate aptness of 'Middle-earth' as the stage for his fiction.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I will not claim they were danes, as the danes lived in southern Sweden at this point. For some reason we chose to take name after this tribe in stead of the Jutes and others.

I did not mean that Schleswig was inhabited by Danes because of the fact that we owned it untill 1864. The thing that is interesting is that the first danish king(Gorm the old) had his capital here around the year 900. (this is not a legendm it is the first person we know for a fact rueld what was to become the modern Denmark.) In Deeds of the Danes written in 11?? we are told of lots of kings before Gorm, but we dont know for sure. I never said that all english people was danes I was just pointing out that the word proberbly originated from northern Germany/Southern Denmark.

No americans are not danes as the daneish/norwegian/islandic people who settled there all died, just like they all did in Greenland. (allthough they lived for centuries at Greenland)

No it was not the chinese or Columbus who discoverd america, but the Scandinavians. (well after the native americans of course. . .)

I will stop now as it has nothing at all to do with why Tolkien choose the name middle-earth