Edition: U.S. / Global

Early Celtic Rule in Scandinavia Doubtful

Published: March 4, 1988

To the Editor:

In discussing the finding of the remains of what is believed to be a victim of ancient Druidic ritual murder near Manchester, England (Science Times, Jan. 26), you state:

''The condition of the body and the manner of the man's death, moreover, suggest that he may have much in common with similar bodies found in peat bogs in Denmark during the 1950's. If the Denmark bodies are also those of Druids, the implication, one of the chief researchers suggests, is that Celts rather than Germans ruled Scandinavia in the second and third centuries B.C. The Germans, in this view, may have been merely a subsidiary branch of the dominant Celtic society.''

This hypothesis, which is strikingly at variance with received ideas on the subject, is immediately open to one serious objection: the complete absence of any supporting evidence of a linguistic nature. A formerly dominant ethnolinguistic group normally leaves its mark on the language (in words and proper names) after it passes from the scene.

The Frankish conquerors of ancient Gaul, for example, bequeathed numerous words to the French language: ''guerre'' (war), ''riche'' (rich). And the centuries-long Tatar domination of much of Russia had a similar impact on Russian: ''loshad' '' (horse), ''karaul'' (military guard). As for the Celts, their former presence in vast areas of Western and Central Europe is attested to by many geographical names: London, Milan, Vienna, Bavaria, Bohemia. Nothing of the sort can be said about Scandinavia. In the introduction to his etymological dictionary of Old Norse (the medieval Germanic tongue that derives from the scantily attested language of ancient Scandinavia), Jan de Vries provides a list of Norse words and proper names of Celtic origin. All date only from the time of the Viking raids on the British Isles (8th to 10th centuries); none reflect a pre-Christian Celtic presence in Scandinavia.

It will take more than a few archeological findings to overturn the traditional view that the ancient inhabitants of Scandinavia were exclusively Germanic. LOUIS JAY HERMAN New York, Feb. 11, 1988 The writer is author of ''A Dictionary of Slavic Word Families.''