| dbo:abstract |
Haliurunas, haljarunae, Haliurunnas, haliurunnae, etc., were Gothic "witches" (also called priestesses, seeresses, shamans or wise women) who appear once in Getica, a 6th century work on Gothic history. The account tells that the early Goth king Filimer found witches among his people when they had settled north of the Black Sea, and that he banished them to exile. They were impregnated by unclean spirits and engendered the Huns, and the account is a precursor of later Christian traditions where wise women were alleged to have sexual intercourse and even orgies with demons and the Devil. The term has cognates, or close cognates, in both Old English and Old High German, which shows that it had an old history in Gothic culture and paganism and originates in Proto-Germanic. The account may be based on a historic event c. 200 AD, when the Goths had won a critical and decisive victory and a new royal clan asserted its power, and the priestesses were banished for opposing the new royal ancestor cult. In connection to this, they may also have been banished by their king in order to take over their riches. Another reason may have been blaming them as scapegoats for having caused a defeat against enemies by predicting the wrong outcome. (en) |
| rdfs:comment |
Haliurunas, haljarunae, Haliurunnas, haliurunnae, etc., were Gothic "witches" (also called priestesses, seeresses, shamans or wise women) who appear once in Getica, a 6th century work on Gothic history. The account tells that the early Goth king Filimer found witches among his people when they had settled north of the Black Sea, and that he banished them to exile. They were impregnated by unclean spirits and engendered the Huns, and the account is a precursor of later Christian traditions where wise women were alleged to have sexual intercourse and even orgies with demons and the Devil. (en) |
