Knésetja is the Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

 expression for a custom in Germanic law, by which adoption

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

 was formally expressed by setting the fosterchild on the knees of the foster-father.

Germanic law

When prince Haakon

Haakon I of Norway

Haakon I , , given the byname the Good, was the third king of Norway and the youngest son of Harald Fairhair and Thora Mosterstang.-Early life:...

, the youngest son of Harald Fairhair was brought to the court of Aethelstan, the Norwegian messenger, Haukur, simply placed the child on the king's knees as soon as he came into his presence. By this act, Haakon had been adopted by Aethelstan, which also implied an insult to the English king as the foster-father was usually of lower standing than the real father.
Aethelstan became angry and wanted to kill the child on the spot, but Haukur simply said that since he was now the child's foster-father it was up to him whether he wanted to kill him and went away. Aethelstan let the child live and had him baptized. (Heimskringla

Heimskringla

Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson ca. 1230...

, Harald Harfager's Saga).

The same gesture was also part of the formal ceremony of both engagement

Engagement

An engagement or betrothal is a promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposal and marriage which may be lengthy or trivial. During this period, a couple is said to be betrothed, affianced, engaged to be married, or simply engaged...

 and marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 in early Scandinavian law. Here, the bride was set on the knees of the groom.

Indo-European parallels

The Germanic procedure of Kniesetzung has parallels in various other Indo-European cultures, and has been suggested to derive from a custom in Proto-Indo-European society

Proto-Indo-European society

Proto-Indo-European refers to the single ancestor language common to all Indo-European languages. It is therefore a linguistic concept, not an ethnic, social or cultural one, so there is no direct evidence of the nature of Proto-Indo-European 'society'. Much depends on the unsettled Indo-European...

 in comparative philology

Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...

 since the 1920s, although evidence for this is considered inconclusive.

In Hittite texts

Hittite texts

The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites...

 of the Late Bronze Age, specifically the mythological texts of the Song of Ullikummi and the Story of Appu, there are accounts of the how after the birth of the son, the father accepts the newborn from the midwife and as a sign of the son's legitimacy sets him on his knee and names him

Given name

A given name, in Western contexts often referred to as a first name, is a personal name that specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially in a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name...

.

Antoine Meillet

Antoine Meillet

Paul Jules Antoine Meillet was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. Meillet began his studies at the Sorbonne, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the members of the Année Sociologique. In 1890 he was part of a research trip to the...

  suggested that Latin genuīnus "innate, native; genuine" is a derivation of genū "knee".

Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 mentions setting on the knee in Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

 9.454 and Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

 19.400.

Comparable customs have been suggested for Indo-Iranian

Indo-Iranian

Indo-Iranian can refer to:* Indo-Iranian languages* Prehistoric Indo-Iranians * Indo-European languages* Proto-Indo-Iranian religion* Proto-Indo-Iranian language...

 and Celtic cultures.