Re: The Mysterious Wihtgar

Thanks Wodenhelm,

Excuse my whimsical extract. No, the point is a serious one (and various names were used through the ages).

Interpretations of what things mean seem to get stuck - particularly where the AS Chronicles are concerned, even if they don't make sense. And sometimes the only way to draw attention to them is to propose another solution.

The names of the Isle of Wight (Wihte ealond) and the alleged warrior 'Wihtgar' who took its (then) capital 'Wihtgaraburg' for the Saxons are intertwined.
If he was real, he arrived at a place already named after him.

The question is - on linguistic grounds - was he likely to have been real or a description of a place turned into a person by chroniclers that didn't understand the context? Perhaps it's impossible to say.

(We had already had the oddity of a man called Port capturing Portsmouth  - A.D. 501. This year Port came to Britain with his two sons, Bieda and Maegla, and two ships, to the place called Portsmouth (portesmutha), and killed a young British man, a very noble man. - Maegla could be the Briton Maglos)

This all could shed some light on the thorny problem of whether the war in Hampshire and Isle of Wight was a British civil war (Cerdic, the leader had a British name) absorbed into the history of the Saxons or the great Saxon invasion that drove the British leaders West and into Brittany and heralded the beginnings of Wessex and England - as the AS Chroniclers would have us believe.

Part of the solution hinges on the meanings of 'Wihtgar' and of 'Wihtgarabyrg'.

wiht [] 1. f (-e/-a), n (-es/-u) wight, person, creature, being; whit, thing, something,
wihtga see wítega
wítega [] m (-n/-n) wise man; lawyer; prophet, soothsayer; prophecy; [witan]

gár [] 1. m (-a/-a) spear, dart, javelin, shaft, arrow, weapon, arms; 2. tempest?, piercing cold?, sharp pain?; 3. see gára
gára [] m (-n/-n) spear-man
gára [] m (-n/-n) corner, point of land, cape, promontory; strip of cloth, saddle cloth [gár]

burg [] f (byrg/byrg) a dwelling or dwellings within a fortified enclosure, fort, castle; borough, walled town; [gen sing ~byrg, ~byrig, ~burge; dat sing ~byrg, ~byrig; nom/acc pl ~byrg, byrig; gen pl ~burga; dat pl ~burgum]

So was Wihtgar eg?
- the man with the spear
- the creature with the spear
- a wise man (with no spear)
- a person's promontory

And Wihtgarabyrg eg?
- the spearman's fort
- the creature with the spear's fort
- the wise man's town
- the person's promontory fort or town (as suggested previously)

Interpretation also helps us decide whether Carisbook in the centre of the island or Brading, the Roman port, was the capital of the island.