Mount Elbrus Russia. The name "Elbrus" is a metathesis of "Alborz", which is also the name of a long mountain range in northern Iran. It is derived from Avestan "Harā Bərəzaitī", which is a legendary mountain in Iranian mythology. "Harā Bərəzaitī" reflects Proto-Iranian *"Harā Bṛzatī", which was reformed into Middle Persian as "Harborz", and into Modern Persian as "Alborz". "Bṛzatī" is the feminine form of the adjective *"bṛzant" ("high"), the reconstructed ancestor of Modern Ossetian "bærzond" ("high", "peak"), Modern Persian "barz" ("high"), "berāzande" ("elegant"), and "boland" ("high", "tall"), and Modern Kurdish "barz" ("high"). "Harā" may be interpreted as "watch" or "guard", from
Mount Elbrus a popular sport of the populace, and there was tremendous traffic on the mountain. On 17 March 1936, a group of 33 inexperienced Komsomol members attempted the mountain, and ended up suffering four fatalities when they slipped on the ice and fell to their deaths. During the Battle of the Caucasus in World War II, the Wehrmacht occupied the area surrounding the mountain from August 1942 to February 1943 with Gebirgsjäger from the 1st Mountain Division. The Nazi Swatstika was placed on the summit of Mount Elbrus on 21 August 1942. A possibly apocryphal story tells of a Soviet pilot