It is striking that the Chinese's own name for China, "Zhongguo", contains the element "-guo", which not only sounds like the old Scandinavian "-gaard", but also has the same meaning. It cannot be a coincidence that shallow lakes with brackish water are called "Nor" in both Central Asia and Scandinavia.
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The suffix "-gård" is the clearest place-name evidence of a common Indo-European origin for Scandinavia and China.
In Scandinavia, it is found in mythology as a suffix in the home of the gods, "Asgaard", the home of the Jotuns, "Udgaard", and the world of men, "Midgaard". The Vikings called Constantinople "Miklagaard", and Russia "Holmgaard". Adam of Bremen from around 1070 AD wrote: "Russia is called by the barbarian Danes for Østergaard (Eastergaard), because it lies in the east, and has like a watery garden an abundance of all good things. It is also called Hunnegaard, because the Huns had their first camp there."
-gård is easily recognized in the Chinese's own name for China, "Zhongguo", which means "The Kingdom in the Middle" or "Midgard". Following the Pinyin system, it is alphabetized as "Zhongguo".
If it is alphabetized in a more informal way with the consonants as in English and the vowels as in Italian, it would be something like "Djung Gjaar", which last syllable clearly represents the Indo-European "-gaard".
The word "gaard" can be found in almost all Indo-European languages. In modern Danish it means an agricultural property with associated cultivated land or a delimited and enclosed area, for example, delimited by walls or buildings.
Modern Chinese names for other nations alphabetized with the Pinyin system also use the suffix "-guo", for example in "Faguo" (France), "Deguo" (Germany), "Meiguo" (USA) and so on.
In fact, if "-guo" is alphabetized in an informal way, which also includes Danish vowels, an even more precise description of the word's modern Chinese pronunciation emerges, at least for Scandinavians. These will be "Djung gjår", "Fa gjår", "Dø gjår" and "Mei gjår", respectively.
Many salt lakes in Central Asia are named something with "Nor", such as "Koko Nor", "Orku Nor", "Ebi Nor", "Ubsa Nor", "Ayar Nor", "Ulungur Nor", "Durga Nor", "Kara Nor" and the now dried up and disappeared "Lop Nor".
Quite similarly, shallow lakes with brackish water in Scandinavia are called "Kertinge Nor", "Korsør Nor", "Stege Nor", "Hedeby Nor" and "Vindeby Nor" and so on. Flemming Rickfors has identified more than thirty "Nor" in Denmark and Norway.
Kertinge Nor near Kerteminde.
This must mean that the original Indo-European peoples of the steppe called shallow salt lakes "Nor".
The Aesirs, as Snorri recounted, came to Scandinavia from Asia, and they therefore found it natural to call shallow lakes with brackish water "Nor" when they came to their new home in Scandinavia
How did it come about that there is such a great similarity between place names in central Asia and Scandinavia?
Our current interglacial period, like all astronomical warm periods, is characterized by a rapid onset of heat and then a slow temperature decline.
When the Mesolithic Age in Scandinavia occurred around 7,500 BC, it was warm all over the Earth, and the heat created monsoon winds, that brought rain to the interior of the continents. The Eurasian steppe, which stretches from the Hungarian Pusta to the steppe at the Yalu River between China and Korea, was much greener and more lush than it is today. But the steppe was far too bare, no one could find food there; people lived on the edge of the steppe at the transition between forest and steppe, as did the North American Indians before they got horses.
This graph is a manipulation of the Wikipedia file "Holocene temperature". It shows eight different reconstructions of Holocene temperature. The thick black line is an average of these. Time progresses from left to right.
On this curve, the Mesolithic is shown to be only about one degree warmer than the present, but most sources state that the Scandinavian Mesolithic was at least 2-3 degrees warmer than the present. This need not be mutually exclusive, because the curve reconstructs the temperature of the entire Earth, and on at higher latitudes, temperature variations have been greater than around the equator.
There are different opinions about when the Holocene Optimum was, but there was clearly a fairly warm period that lasted 4-6 thousand years.
As temperatures dropped around 2,500 BC, rainfall gradually decreased on the Eurasian steppe, the grass turned yellow, and the deserts spread. One by one, many of the Indo-European peoples migrated from the steppe at the center of Eurasia to its edges, such as India, China, Persia, Europe, the Greek islands and coasts, Scandinavia and so on.
On the Pontic Steppe north of the Caspian Sea, the Indo-European Yamnaya people domesticated the horse between 4,000 and 3,500 BC. They then populated the Eurasian steppe from the Hungarian Pusta to Inner Mongolia at a historically furious pace. Around 2,000 to 1,500 BC, they invented the casting of copper and bronze.
At the same time, the Earth's temperature dropped, causing the monsoon winds, which bring rain to the interior of the continents, to decrease and the deserts to spread. This led to an Indo-European migration from the steppe to Europe, Persia, India and China, which areas they easily conquered in chariots, on horseback, with sharp bronze weapons.
During the Migration Period, around 400 - 500 BC, another drop in global temperature occurred, which caused the steppe to become further yellowed and dry, the lakes dried up and the deserts of Eurasia spread. Many peoples broke out from the center of Eurasia and headed towards the edges of the world closer to the sea, where rainfall is generally more abundant.
Sveans, Danes, Jutes, and Aesisrs left from the center of Eurasia and headed towards Scandinavia, which was still quite sparsely populated after the Gothic migration towards the Black Sea coast and the Roman Empire.
Snorri Sturlason tells about this in the preface to "The learning about the Old Nordic Gods":
"From the North and over the entire eastern part and all the way up towards the South is called Asia; in that part of the world is glory and ornaments and abundance of fruits, gold and precious stones. And there is the center of the Earth. And so, as the Earth is more beautiful and in all respects richer and better than other places, so the population there also became most excellent in all wisdom and strength, beauty and all kinds of skills."
"Odin, and also his wife, possessed the gift of prophecy; by the help of which he found that his name would be preserved and honored in the northern part of the world above that of all kings. Therefore he was pleased to depart from Tyrkland, and he was accompanied by a great company, both young and old."
"The Aesirs took wives there in the country; some married their sons to domestic women. All these families became so numerous that they spread all around Saxony and over all the northern countries, so that their tongue, the tongue of the Asia men, became the proper tongue of these countries. From the fact that the names of their ancestors are recorded, it is believed that it can be inferred that these names have followed this tongue, and that the Aesirs have brought it with them to the northern countries, to Norway and Sweden, to Denmark and Saxony. But in England there are old place names which, from what can be understood, derive from a language other than this tongue."
"The tongues of the Asia men became the real language of these countries" wrote Snorri. It must have been a great cultural upheaval indeed. It was on that occasion that place names from the center of Asia were introduced into Scandinavia.
A striking feature of place names in Qinghai on the Tibetan plateau and the nearby areas is that many towns and places are called something with "ning", for example Xining or Ning Xia; just like countless villages in Denmark, such as Revninge, Kertinge, Refsvindinge and Mesinge.
It is likely that Old Danish "-ning" means "person". The expression is found in "hedning" (pagan), "Færing" (person from Faroe Islads), "Islænding" (Person from Iceland) "flygtning" (Refugee) and "slægtning" (relative) and many other compounds, where it clearly means "person". The village of Kertinge near Kerteminde, "Kert-ninge", would thus mean "The Kert-persons", i.e. the people who are associated with the water body "Kert".
Left: The Salty Lake Koko Nor seen from space. Communist China has discarded the lake's ancient name and renamed it the more prosaic Qinghai Lake.
Right: View of the salt lake Koko Nor in Qinghai.
In the same way, one can imagine that, for example, the place names Mesinge and Revninge came about. There were already some natural formations called "Mes" and "Rev", lakes or watercourses or similar. The people who lived there before had given them these names.
When the Aesirs, Danes and Jutes came to these places, it became Mes-ninge" and "Rev-ninge", which means the people who live at "Mes" and "Rev". Or old local kings were called something like "Mes" and "Rev", and the names Mesinge and Revninge tell us that the residents considered themselves descendants of these.
View of the brackish lake, Kertinge Nor, near Kerteminde. Photo VisitKerteminde
It may be objected that "ning" does not mean person, but is a derivation or inflection form somewhat similar to the English "ing" form.
But if you think about it more closely, the English meaning is actually somewhat the same as the meaning "person". For example, "James is running" tells that James is identical to a running person.
In Chinese, people generally address each other with "ni", as in Swedish, but in Northern China, especially in the Beijing area, people address superiors and older people with the more respectful "ning". This supports that "-ning" originally meant person or persons, and since it is found in both Europe and Asia, it is reasonable to believe that this place name element is an Indo-European element, introduced into Scandinavia during the Migration Period by the Aesirs, Danes and Jutes.
Silk Road Links - Kenyon College. Asiatisk historie og Silkevejen
Den gamle nordiske gudelære - Snorres fortale Heimskringla
Thanks to the website "China History Forum" - which unfortunately is no longer with us - for information and inspiration.
