Note to ǪrvOdd Ævdr 9^VIII (Ǫrv 79)

[8] Tyrfifinnar ‘the Ter-Saami’: Name for a group of Saami hunter-gatherers living in the Kola peninsula. The word is nowhere else recorded in Old Norse, but it occurs in Old English as Terfinnas, the name for a group of inhabitants of this region, according to the witness of the trader Ohthere (ON Óttarr), who distinguished the Terfinnas from the Beormas because the former lived by hunting, fishing and bird-catching, whereas the Beormas had extensive settlements (Lund 1984, 19; Ross 1981, 24-8). The first element tyrfi- is probably derived by folk etymology from the noun torf ‘turf’, but is likely to come from the old Saami name for the Kola Peninsula, Ter or Tre (but see AEW: Tyrfifinnar for different possible etymologies).

References

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Note to ǪrvOdd Ævdr 9^VIII (Ǫrv 79)

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Note to ǪrvOdd Ævdr 9^VIII (Ǫrv 79)