Danube once appears as the mother of Vrtra, "a dragon blocking the course of the rivers." The Finnish word for Danube is Tonava, which is most likely derived from the word for the river in Swedish and German, "Donau". Its Sámi name "Deatnu" means "Great River". It is possible that "dānu" in Scythian as in Avestan was a generic word for "river": "Dnieper" and "Dniestr", from "Danapris" and "Danastius", are presumed to continue Scythian "*dānu apara" "far river" and "*dānu nazdya-" "near river", respectively. The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the "Istros" (Ἴστρος) a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian
Danube Hills Danube Hills The Danube Hills (), also variously called the Vorderer Forest, Anterior Bavarian Forest or Vorderer Wald ("Vordere Bayerische Wald"), is part of the Bavarian Forest, a low mountain range in Germany. In older geographical-regional literature the German name "Vordere Bayerische Wald" was applied to the whole southern chain of the Bavarian/Bohemian mountains between the Danube and the Regen, from the Keilberg Depression near Regensburg to the Austro-German border near Passau. Bernhard Grueber and Adalbert Müller described it in 1846 as the "äußern Wald" ('outer forest') "named the Regen Mountains by the geographers". Others chose the name Danube Hills