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L
ARS
-G
UNNAR
L
ARSSON
168
II: SaaS.
dovres
‘dear’ cf. Sw.
dyr;
dovne
‘pillow’, cf. Sw.
dyna;
dæ-
jsta
‘tuesday’, cf. Sw.
tisdag;
dåase
‘box’, cf. Sw.
dosa;
SaaN.
diibmu
‘clock; hour’, cf. Sw.
timma; diŋga
‘thing’, cf. Sw.
ting;
III: SaaS.
taake
‘roof’, cf. Sw.
tak;
teegele
‘brick’, cf. Sw.
tegel;
tiije
‘time’, cf. Sw.
tid
.
SaaN.
teasta
‘test’, cf. Sw.
test;
tomáhtta
‘tomato’, cf. Sw.
tomat
.
The initial occlusive in the Norwegian and Swedish word
tak
‘roof’ was a
dental fricative in older stages of the language. Consequently, SaaS.
taake
must have been borrowed after the change *
þ
(= *
θ
) >
t
had taken place in
Scandinavian (Rydving 2012: 164).
4. The thunder god
In the literature about the Saami it is often said that their name for the
thunder god was
Horagalles
. That statement is, however, a consequence of
the fact that the sources to Saami prechristian religion mostly describe cir-
cumstances in the southern parts of Sápmi, but the information has been of-
ten generalised to cover all Saami (Rydving 2010: 95). Håkan Rydving is the
researcher who has succeeded in establishing a strict relation between the
sources and the area they described. His picture is much more precise and
varied, than the one presented in old overviews.
Following Hasselbrink (SLW: 21 f.), Rydving (e.g. 2012: 165) divides the
South Saami language area not into two parts, as is often done (e.g., Korho-
nen 1981: 15 f.), but into three parts: southern South Saami, central South
Saami, and northern South Saami. This division can be supported by strict
linguistic criteria, e.g., the form of the infinitive ending and that of the ac-
cusative singular:
Form Northern SaaS Central SaaS Southern SaaS
Infinitive
-dh
-dh
-jh
Acc. sg.
-b
-m
-m
The word
Horagalles
is a compound, where the latter part corresponds to
SaaS.
gaellies
meaning ‘old man’. The first part of the word can be found in
a few other compounds:
hovresåektie
and
hovrenåarja
‘thunder’,
hovren-
åarjan steavhke
’rainbow’, and
hovreskodtje
‘thunder’,
2
as well as a simplex
Hovre
‘the god of thunder’. Rydving (2012: 165) underlines that these words
2
The word
hovren-gierkie
‘mountain crystal’ (Bergsland – Mattsson Magga) also seems to
belong to this group, but I have no data on the dialectgeographic distribution of this word.