|
Blakumen
''Blakumen'' or ''Blökumenn'' were a people mentioned in Scandinavian sources dating from the 11th through 13th centuries. The name of their land, ''Blokumannaland'', has also been preserved. Victor Spinei, Florin Curta, Florin Pintescu and other historians identify them as Romanians (variation of the exonym Vlach), while Omeljan Pritsak argues that they were Cumans. Judith Jesch adds the possibility that the terms meant "black men", the meaning of which is unclear. Historians identify ''Blokumannaland'' as the lands south of the Lower Danube which were inhabited by Vlachs in the Middle Ages, adding that the term may refer to either Wallachia (to the north of the Danube) or Africa in the modern Icelandic language. ''Blakumen'' on runestone G134 The only preserved example of the variant ''Blakumen'' of the ethnonym was an inscription on a runestone in the Sjonhem cemetery in Gotland in Sweden. The forms of the runes on the memorial stone suggest that it was raised in approximat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vlachs
"Vlach" ( or ), also "Wallachian" (and many other variants), is a historical term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate mainly Romanians but also Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians and other Eastern Romance-speaking subgroups of Central and Eastern Europe. As a contemporary term, in the English language, the Vlachs are the Balkan Romance-speaking peoples who live south of the Danube in what are now southern Albania, Bulgaria, northern Greece, North Macedonia, and eastern Serbia as native ethnic groups, such as the Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and the Timok Romanians. The term also became a synonym in the Balkans for the social category of shepherds, and was also used for non-Romance-speaking peoples, in recent times in the western Balkans derogatively. The term is also used to refer to the ethnographic group of Moravian Vlachs who speak a Slavic language but originate from Romanians. "Vlachs" were initially identified ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
