Further Reflections on Perkunos, the North-West Aryan Thunder God

All Indo-European mythological pantheons include a Thunder God but it is amongst the North-West Indo-Europeans that there is a common unity in terms of the form that the God takes and the etymology of His name. The reconstructed form of his name in Proto-Indo-European[PIE] is *Perkunos.[The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams]. From *Perkunos we derive Perkonis[Prussian], Perkunis[Lithuanian], Perkons[Latvian], Perunu[Old Russian], Pyerun[Russian], Piorun[Polish], Perun[Czech] and Fjorgyn[the mother of Thor], so this deity is most clearly expressed as a unified entity amongst the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic peoples. There may also be a link to the Sanskrit Parjanya but scholars are divided over this. Parjanya is in fact a rain God in the Vedas but of course thunder does bring rain! When we look more closely at the first part of *Perk-unos we find some most interesting associations. In PIE `oak` is *perkus. Of course the oak tree is sacred to the Thunder God and thus more susceptible to lightning strikes due to the tallness and moisture content of the tree. The prefix *per has the meaning of `strike` and of course this is what He does with his axe/hammer/club. Also the PIE term for `axe` is *pelekus, not very different from *per! The axe of course was Thunor`s original lightning weapon and indeed this feature was retained by the Baltic and Slavic versions of Thunor. Amongst the Balts and Slavs He also has a red beard and His vehicle of choice is the chariot drawn by a billy goat.

"Proto-Indo-Europeans believed that they lived under a stone vault, that the stone hills and mountains rose to the sky, or that stone axes fell out of the sky, ie as thunder-stones[e.g. Lithuanian Perkuno akmuo `thunder-stone`[lit. `Perkunas` stone`, where Perkunas is the god of thunder]."[Mallory, Adams]

We need to remember that not only was the axe an earlier form of the hammer as a thunder weapon and as a weapon used in battle but it was of course originally of stone. The Aryans on their migrations and conquests throughout Europe and the Near East still carried stone battle axes even during the Bronze Age. So the axe, in particular the stone axe is the original weapon of the Thunder God and sacred to the Aryans. Amongst the Teutons and some of the Celts the axe eventually transformed into a hammer which people now more generally associate with Thunor/Thor/Donar. Sucellos the Gallic Thunder God is also depicted as carrying a hammer. Although the Finns speak a Finno-Ugric language they are predominately a Nordic people. Their Thunder God is known as Ukko and He too carried an axe or a hammer. It is likely that this deity was influenced by the Indo-European Thunder God of the nearby Balts. Amongst the Finno-Ugric Estonians He is called Uko. There may be an association of Ukko/Uku with Perkele/Peko, a Finnish and Estonian God of the crops. Again my readers should note the etymological similarity with *Perkunos. The original Proto-Germanic name for the Thunder God is *Thunraz. From this we derive the Old English Thunor, the Old High German Thonar or Donar and the Old Norse Thorr. This article should also be read in conjunction with my artcle from 12/8/12 *Perkunos-the Original Name of the Northern PIE Thunder God.

Indo-European Presence in British Isles More Ancient than Originally Thought

One still sees the nonsense printed in even modern history books about the arrival of the Celts into the British Isles around 500BCE. Historians now know that this is not the case and posit the theory that they arrived from 2000BCE onwards. Likewise the Germanic invasions via the Anglo-Saxons are traditionally ascribed to the year 449CE. Now whilst I do not doubt that this historic event happened we now know that Germanic people resided in Britain centuries, possibly millenia before that date. Indeed English may be much more archaic than originally thought and occupy a separate sub-group of Germanic:

"The ... analysis reveals a Scandinavian influence on English and apparently a pre-Scandinavian archaic component in Old English. All Germanic lexica spoken today appear to converge in the network on an ancestral Common Germanic lexicon spoken at an unknown time, but constrained to before AD350 and probably after 3600BC."[Forster et al, 2006]

Indeed it is considered that Old English may be as archaic as the split between Goidelic and Brythonic Celtic.[Dyen et all, 1992] Conservative estimates place this split occuring at least as far back as 900BCE, probably earlier. It is of course quite possible that other forms of Indo-European were spoken in the British Isles before the coming of the Celtic and Germanic peoples, particularly if we accept that Indo-Europeans have been present in these island for over 4,000 years. Indeed it is possible that Proto-Indo-Europeans-undivided Aryans colonised Britain in the Neolithic before the split of Indo-European into different language groups. Please see my articles from 24/6/12 and 11/4/13, titled The Ancient Presence of the Germanic Peoples in England and The Belgae and the Ancient Colonisation of England. What is significant is that Britain and Ireland share a common genetic basis along with the rest of North-West Europe and that is the haplotype R1b, a sister to R1a. Both groups were responsible for the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe west and east. It is in my opinion fruitless to argue which of these two haplotypes were responsible for the origin of Indo-European as they both share a common racial stock in their mother haplotype R1. For years people have argued that the Celts did or did not build Stonehenge. Whether that particular group did or didn`t is irrelevant to me as we know that Stonehenge in its recogniseable and finished form-Phase III that is, was most definitely built by Indo-Europeans of the `Wessex Culture`, famed for its corded ware style of pottery, stone and bronze battle axes, burial mounds and single inhumation burials. What is needed now is for proud Anglo-Saxons to reclaim their heritage and start to debunk the lies spread by political whores that the English are a `bastard` or a `mongrel race`, terms which if they had been used by politicians or television producers about any other ethnic group would have resulted in criminal prosecutions.