Ancient Germanic Tribes

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Institute of International Relations of Moldova

Faculty of Modern Languages

English Philology Department

REPORT

Discipline: Terminology

Topic:

Ancient Germanic Tribes

Accomplished by: Levi?chi Doina

Gr. 1LM2

Chi?inгu 2013

Contents

Introduction

The History of The Term Germanic

The Term of Teutonic or Deutsch

The Classification of The Germanic Race

Origins - Germanic culture

The Migration Period

The Germanic Peoples Role in the Fall of Rome

The Early Middle Ages

The Material Culture

The Viking Age

Bibliography

Introduction

Germans, great ethnic complex of ancient Europe, a basic stock in the composition of the modern peoples of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, N and central France, Lowland Scotland, and England.

The Germanic peoples are the great ethnic group of ancient Europe, a basic stock in the composition of the modern peoples of England, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, North and central France, North and Lowland Scotland.

The term German literally translates into: "Spear man" (Gar = Spear, + Man) as the spear was the most common of weapons in ancient Germanic society and every free man had at least one.

The name German was once only belonging to one single tribe and latter became applied to the entirety of the peoples of the same ethnic stock residing in northern Europe. history germanic teutonic culture

In ancient times, many barbarian tribes were given the broad label of Germanic (Latin: Germanicus) by the Romans. Although these tribes fully recognized themselves as sharing a common ethnic origin, spoke mutually intelligible dialects and shared a common religion, they were not unified or connected in any political sense.

From archaeology it is clear that the Germans had little ethnic solidarity; by the 7th cent. B.C. they had begun a division into many peoples. They did not call themselves Germans; the origin of the name is uncertain. Their rise to significance (4th cent. B.C.) in the history of Europe began roughly with the general breakup of Celtic culture in central Europe. Before their expansion, the Germans inhabited N Germany, S Sweden and Denmark, and the shores of the Baltic. From these areas they spread out in great migrations southward, southeastward, and westward.

Although the earliest mention of the Germans is by a Greek navigator who saw them in Norway and Jutland in the 4th cent. B.C., their real appearance in history began with their contact (1st cent. B.C.) with the Romans. The chief historical sources for the culture and distribution of the Germans are Tacitus' Germania and Agricola and the remnants in later ages of early Germanic institutions. Apart from describing their barbarity and warlikeness, Caesar's Commentaries tell little. As the centuries passed the Germans became increasingly troublesome to the Roman Empire. The Vandals in the west and the Ostrogoths in the east were the first to attack the empire seriously. The Ostrogoths were a part of the Gothic people, often called the East Germanic, whose language (Gothic) was the first written Germanic language. The Goths apparently moved SE from the Vistula River to the Balkans, thence W across Europe.

The History of The Term Germanic

Various etymologies for Latin Germani are possible. As an adjective, germani is simply the plural of the adjective germanus (from germen, "seed" or "offshoot"), which has the sense of "related" or "kindred" or "authentic". According to Strabo,the Romans introduced the name Germani, because the Germanic tribes were the authentic Celts (гнзуЯпхт ГблЬфбт; gnisнous Galбtas). Alternatively, it may refer from this use based on Roman experience of the Germanic tribes as allies of the Celts.

The ethnonym seems to be attested in the Fasti Capitolini inscription for the year 222, DE GALLEIS INSVBRIBVS ET GERM(aneis), where it may simply refer to "related" peoples, namely related to the Gauls. Furthermore, since the inscriptions were erected only in 17 to 18 BCE, the word may be a later addition to the text. Another early mentioning of the name, this time by Poseidonios (writing around 80 BCE), is also dubious, as it only survives in a quotation by Athenaios (writing around 190 CE); the mention of Germani in this context was more likely inserted by Athenaios rather than by Poseidonios himself. The writer who apparently introduced the name "Germani" into the corpus of classical literature is Julius Caesar. He uses Germani in two slightly differing ways: one to describe any non-gaulic peoples of Germania,and one to denote the Germani Cisrhenani, a somewhat diffuse group of peoples in north-eastern Gaul, who cannot clearly be identified as either Celtic or Germanic. In this sense, Germani may be a loan from a Celtic exonym applied to the Germanic tribes, based on a word for "neighbour". Tacitus suggests that it might be from a tribe which changed its name after the Romans adapted it, but there is no evidence for this. The suggestion deriving the name from Gaulish term for "neighbour" invokes Old Irish gair, Welsh ger, "near", Irish gearr, "cut, short" (a short distance), from a Proto-Celtic root *gerso-s, further related to ancient Greek chereion, "inferior" and English gash. The Proto-Indo-European root could be of the form *khar-, *kher-, *ghar-, *gher-, "cut", from which also Hittite kar-, "cut", whence also Greek character.

Apparently, the Germanic tribes did not have a self-designation ("endonym") that included all Germanic-speaking people but excluded all non-Germanic people. Non-Germanic peoples (primarily Celtic, Roman, Greek, the citizens of the Roman Empire), on the other hand, were called *walha- (this word lives forth in names such as Wales, Welsh, Cornwall, Walloons, Vlachs etc.). Yet, the name of the Suebi - which designated a larger group of tribes and was used almost indiscriminately with Germani in Caesar - was possibly a Germanic equivalent of the Latin name (*swз-ba- "authentic").

The Term of Teutonic or Deutsch

Trying to identify a contemporary vernacular term and the associated nation with a classical name, Latin writers from the 10th century onwards used the learnиd adjective teutonicus (originally derived from the Teutones) to refer to East Francia ("Regnum Teutonicum") and its inhabitants. This usage is still partly present in modern English; hence the English use of "Teutons" in reference to the Germanic peoples in general besides the specific tribe of the Teutons defeated at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BCE.

The generic *юiuda- "people" occurs in many personal names such as Thiud-reks and also in the ethnonym of the Swedes from a cognate of Old English Sweo-рзod and Old Norse: Sui-юiур (see e.g. Sц Fv1948;289). Additionally, юiuda- appears in Angel-рзod ("Anglo-Saxon people") and Gut-юiuda ("Gothic people"). The adjective derived from this noun, *юiudiskaz, "popular", was later used with reference to the language of the people in contrast to the Latin language (earliest recorded example 786). The word is continued in German Deutsch (meaning German), English "Dutch", Dutch Duits and Diets (the latter referring to Dutch, the former meaning German) and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian tysk (meaning German).

The Classification of The Germanic Race

By the 1st century CE, the writings of Caesar, Tacitus and other Roman era writers indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into tribal groupings centred on:

*......... the rivers Oder and Vistula/Weichsel (East Germanic tribes),

*................................................... the lower Rhine river (Istvaeones),

* ................................................................the river Elbe (Irminones),

* ...................................Jutland and the Danish islands (Ingvaeones).

The Sons of Mannus, Istvaeones, Irminones, and Ingvaeones are collectively called West Germanic tribes. In addition, those Germanic people who remained in Scandinavia are referred to as North Germanic. These groups all developed separate dialects, the basis for the differences among Germanic language down to the present day.

The division of peoples into West Germanic, East Germanic, and North Germanic is a modern linguistic classification. Many Greek scholars only classified Celts and Scythians in the Northwest and Northeast of the Mediterranean and this classification was widely maintained in Greek literature until Late Antiquity. Latin-Greek ethnographers (Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, and Strabo) mentioned in the first two centuries the names of peoples they classified as Germanic along the Elbe, the Rhine, and the Danube, the Vistula and on the Baltic Sea. Tacitus mentioned 40, Ptolemy 69 peoples. Classical ethnography applied the name Suebi to many tribes in the first century. It appeared that this native name had all but replaced the foreign name Germanic. After the Marcomannic wars the Gothic name steadily gained importance. Some of the ethnic names mentioned by theethnographers of the first two centuries on the shores of the Oder and the Vistula (Gutones, Vandali) reappear from the 3rd century on in the area of the lower Danube and north of the Carpathian Mountains. For the end of the 5th century the Gothic name can be used - according to the historical sources - for such different peopleslike the Goths in Gaul, Iberia and Italy, the Vandals in Africa, the Gepids along the Tisza and the Danube, the Rugians, Sciri and Burgundians, even the Iranian Alans. These peoples were classified as Scyths and often deducted from the ancient Getae (most important: Cassiodor / Jordanes, Getica around 550).

Origins - Germanic culture

The native tribal religion of the Germanic peoples was born in the fog shrouded forests on the North and Baltic Sea shores of Europe. The Germanic peoples are descended from explorers who settled in extreme Northern Europe, and spoke a language that was a fusion of an Indo-European tongue, and the language of the Northern Megalithic culture (a culture related to the builders of Stonehenge). These two cultures, the Indo-European, and Northern Megalithic met and fused in Northern Europe sometime around 1600 BCE. Linguists, working backwards from historically-known Germanic languages, know that this group spoke proto-Germanic a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The tribes that resulted from this fusion remained in a core area that is modern Denmark, Southern Norway, Southern Sweden, and Northern Germany until about 200 BCE when they started expanding into areas formerly held by the Celts, and Illyrians. Rock carvings in the core area dating from 4000 BCE to 500 BCE portray many sacred symbols of Asatru. Ships, Sun wheels, Fylfots, Wagons and other pictures all show the continuality of religious belief. Archaeological finds dating from 3500 BCE to 500 BCE such as the Sun Chariot from Trundholm also confirm this.

The earliest Germanic culture that archaeologists can identify as such is the so-called Jastorf culture, a cultural province of northern Europe in the early Iron Age (c.800 BCE), covering present-day Holstein, Jutland, northeast Saxony, and western Mecklenburg. From the linguistic point of view, however, the Germanic people constitute an archaic branch of the Indo-European family. At the time they entered into history, their closest neighbors were the Celts in Gaul, as Germanic tribes had spread south toward the Rhine and the wooded hills of southern Germany. To the east their neighbors were the Balts and the Scythians and Sarmatians, Iranian tribes that roamed the plains of Russia. To the north they were in contact with Lapps and with Finns. Most of the information we have about them from early times comes from classical authors such as Caesar and Tacitus. Although they were primarily pastoralists, they also practiced agriculture. Their cattle were relatively small and could not entirely be depended upon for a livelihood; hunting provided an additional supply of meat. Their social organization was originally geared toward egalitarian communalism, but as contact with the Roman empire changed economic conditions, a more diversified society developed in which wealth and rank tended to prevail, although nominally power still rested in the hands of the Юing (Thing), the popular democratic assembly of all free men able to carry arms.

The first mention of a Germanic tribe is circa 230 BCE when the Basternae tribe migrated to the Black Sea, and came to the attention of Greek chroniclers. From then on, the Germanic tribes would come in increasing conflict with the Celts, Illyrians, and Romans, eventually swallowing up most of the Celtic and Illyrian territories in Central Europe. This was the beginnings of the Migration Era which lasted from about 350 BCE to 650 CE (although the Viking expeditions of colonization from 780 CE to 1100CE should be counted as a part of this as well), an era when nearly every Germanic tribe was actively on the move. Over population and a need for new farm lands sent the Germanic tribes in search of new lands. This expansion of Germanic peoples into virtually every corner of Europe dramatically indicates the energy and dynamism of our so-called barbarian ancestors.

German historians in the 19th century used the term Vцlkerwanderung (pronounced: 'fњl ker 'van der ung), or the "wandering of the peoples" to describe the great Germanic tribal migrations starting in the mid 4th century. We can see that these migrations had a large contributory factor leading to the break-up of the Roman Empire. These groups all developed separate dialects, the basis for the differences among Germanic languages down to the present day.

Many details of early movement and change within this group remain obscure, but by the late 2nd century, B.C.E., Roman authors recount, Gaul, Italy and Spain were invaded by migrating Germanic tribes, culminating in military conflict with the armies of republican Rome. Julius Caesar, six decades later, invoked the threat of such attacks as one justification for his annexation of Gaul to Rome. By the 1st century of the Common Era, the writings of Caesar, Tacitus and other Roman and Mediterranean writers indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into tribal groupings centered on the lower Rhine river, the river Elbe, the river Vistula (Poland), Jutland, Scania and the Danish islands.

As Rome advanced her borders to the Rhine and Danube, incorporating many Celtic societies into the Empire, the Germanic tribal homelands to the north and east emerged collectively in the records as Germania, whose peoples were sometimes at war with the Empire but who also engaged in complex and long-term trade relations, military alliances and cultural exchanges with their neighbors to the south.

The Migration Period

During the 5th century CE, as the Western Roman Empire lost military strength and political cohesion, numerous Germanic peoples, under pressure from population growth and invading Asian groups, began migrating en masse in far and diverse directions, taking them to Great Britain and as far south through present day Continental Europe to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. Over time, this wandering meant intrusions into other tribal territories, and the ensuing wars for land escalated with the dwindling amount of unoccupied territory. Wandering tribes then began staking out permanent homes as a means of protection. Much of this resulted in fixed settlements from which many, under a powerful leader, expanded outwards. A defeat meant either scattering or merging with the dominant tribe, and this continual process of assimilation was how nations were formed. In Denmark the Jutes merged with the Danes, in Sweden the Geats merged with the Swedes. In England, the Angles merged with the Saxons and other groups (notably the Jutes), as well as possibly absorbing a number of natives, to form the Anglo-Saxons.

A direct result of the Roman retreat was the disappearance of imported products like ceramics and coins, and a return to virtually unchanged local Iron Age production methods. According to recent views this has caused confusion for decades, and theories assuming the total abandonment of the coastal regions to account for an archaeological time gap that never existed have been renounced. Instead, it has been confirmed that the Frisian graves had been used without interruption between the 4th and 9th century CE and that inhabited areas show continuity with the Roman period in revealing coins, jewellery and ceramics of the 5th century. Also, people continued to live in the same three-aisled farmhouse, while to the east completely new types of buildings arose. More to the south, in Belgium, archeological results of this period point to immigration from the north.

The Germanic migrations can be divided into three main phases:

The first phase of migrationsare of the Indo-Europeans. Indo-European is the general name given to the people thought to be originated from the steppes of central Asia. Around 5000-4000 BC., these people started to emigrate to the warmer places in the south or west. Most scholars think of this as the beginning of the distinction between Indo-European tribes. Tribes who emigrated to the west became the ancestors of Germans, Slavs, Greeks, Latins, and Celts. People who chose the south as their destination came to be known as Indo-Iranians. There are also a rather small group of people who most likely chose not to participate in this great migration. These later entered the pages of history as Scythians and Sarmatians, although they are also believed to be nomadic Indo-Iranians since their language and customs are closely tide to the Ancient Persians.

The second phase, between 300 to 675 AD, set in motion the Germanic migration age and resulted in putting Germanic peoples in control of the societies of the former Western Roman Empire.

The third phase, between 780 and 1100, saw Scandinavian Germans on the move in multiple waves of migration, conquest, and plunder. Settling large areas of northern Europe where their descendants remain today: Russia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, Iceland, the Shetland and Orkney islands.

The Germanic Peoples Role in the Fall of Rome

Some of the Germanic tribes are frequently credited in popular depictions of the decline of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century. Professional historians and archaeologists have since the 1950s shifted their interpretations in such a way that the Germanic peoples are no longer seen as invading a decaying empire but as being co-opted into helping defend territory the central government could no longer adequately administer. Individuals and small groups from Germanic tribes had long been recruited from the territories beyond the limes (i.e., the regions just outside the Roman Empire), and some of them had risen high in the command structure of the army. Then the Empire recruited entire tribal groups under their native leaders as officers. Assisting with defense eventually shifted into administration and then outright rule, as Roman government passed into the hands of Germanic leaders. Odoacer, who deposed Romulus Augustulus, is the ultimate example.

The presence of successor states controlled by a nobility from one of the Germanic tribes is evident in the 6th century - even in Italy, the former heart of the Empire, where Odoacer was followed by Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, who was regarded by Roman citizens and Gothic settlers alike as legitimate successor to the rule of Rome and Italy.

The Early Middle Ages

The transition of the Migration period to the Middle Ages proper takes place over the course of the second half of the 1st millennium. It is marked by the Christianization of the Germanic peoples and the formation of stable kingdoms replacing the mostly tribal structures of the Migration period. In continental Europe, this is the rise of Francia in the Merovingian period, eclipsing lesser kingdoms such as Alemannia. In England, the Wessex hegemony as the nucleus of the unification of England, Scandinavia is in the Vendel period and enters the extremely successful Viking Age, with expansion to Britain, Ireland and Iceland in the west and as far as Russia and Greece in the east. The various Germanic tribal cultures begin their transformation into the larger nations of later history, English, Norse and German, and in the case of Burgundy, Lombardy and Normandy blending into a Romano-Germanic culture.

A main element uniting Germanic societies is kingship, in origin a sacral institution combining the functions of military leader, high priest, lawmaker and judge. Germanic monarchy was elective, the king was elected by the free men from among elegible candidates of a family (OE cynn) tracing their ancestry to the tribe's divine or semi-divine founder.

In early Germanic society, the free men of property each ruled their own estate and were subject to the king directly, without any intermediate hierarchy as in later feudalism. Free men without landed property could swear fealty to a man of property who as their lord would then be responsible for their upkeep, including generous feasts and gifts. This system of sworn retainers was central toearly Germanic society, and the loyalty of the retainer to his lord was taken to replace his family ties.

Early Germanic law reflects a hierarchy of worth within the society of free men, reflected in the differences in weregild. Among the Anglo-Saxons, a regular free man (a ceorl) had a weregild of 200 shillings (i.e. solidi or gold pieces), classified as a twyhyndeman "200-man" for this reason, while a nobleman commanded a fee of six times that amount (twelfhyndeman "1200-man"). Similarly, among the Alamanni the basic weregild for a free men was 200 shillings, and the amount could be doubled or trebled according to the man's rank. Unfree serfs did not command a weregild, and the recompense paid in the event of their death was merely for material damage, 15 shillings in the case of the Alamanni, increased to 40 or 50 if the victim had been a skilled artisan.

The social hierarchy is not only reflected in the weregild due in the case of the violent or accidental death of a man, but also in differences in fines for lesser crimes. Thus the fines for insults, injury, burglary or damage to property differ depending on the rank of the injured party. They do not usually depend on the rank of the guilty party, although there are some exceptions associated with royal privilege. Free women did not have a political station of their own but inherited the rank of their father if unmarried, or their husband if married. The weregild or recompense due for the killing or injuring of a woman is notably set at twice that of a man of the same rank in Alemannic law.

All freemen had the right to participate in general assemblies or things, where disputes between freemen were addressed according to customary law. The king was bound to uphold ancestral law, but was at the same time the source for new laws for cases not addressed in previous tradition. This aspect was the reason for the creation of the various Germanic law codes by the kings following their conversion to Christianity: besides recording inherited tribal law, these codes have the purpose of settling the position of the church and Christian clergy within society, usually setting the weregilds of the members of the clerical hierarchy parallel to that of the existing hierarchy of nobility, with the position of an archbishop mirroring that of the king.

In the case of a suspected crime, the accused could avoid punishment by presenting a fixed number of free men (their number depending on the severity of the crime) prepared to swear an oath on his innocence. Failing this, he could prove his innocence in a trial by combat. Corporeal or capital punishment for free men does not figure in the Germanic law codes, and banishment appears to be the most severe penalty issued officially. This reflects that Germanic tribal law did not have the scope of exacting revenge, which was left to the judgement of the family of the victim, but to settle damages as fairly as possible once an involved party decided to bring a dispute before the assembly.

Traditional Germanic society is gradually replaced by the system of estates and feudalism characteristic of the High Middle Ages in both the Holy Roman Empire and Anglo-Norman England in the 11th to 12th centuries, to some extent under the influence of Roman law as an indirect result of Christianization, but also because political structures had grown too large for the flat hierarchy of a tribal society. The same effect of political centralization takes hold in Scandinavia slightly later, in the 12th to 13th century (Age of the Sturlungs, Consolidation of Sweden, Civil war era in Norway), by the end of the 14th century culminating in the giant Kalmar Union. Elements of tribal law, notably the wager of battle, nevertheless remained in effect throughout the Middle Ages, in the case of the Holy Roman Empire until the establishment of the Imperial Chamber Court in the beginning German Renaissance. In the federalist organization of Switzerland, where cantonal structures remained comparatively local, the Germanic thing survived into the 20th century in the form of the Landsgemeinde, albeit subject to federal law.

The Material Culture

Germanic settlements were typically small, rarely containing much more than ten households, often less, and were usually located at clearings in the wood. Settlements remained of a fairly constant size throughout the period. The buildings in these villages varied in form, but normally consisted of farmhouses surrounded by smaller buildings such as granaries and other storage rooms. The universal building material was timber. Cattle and humans usually lived together in the same house.

Although the Germans practiced both agriculture and husbandry, the latter was extremely important both as a source of dairy products and as a basis for wealth and social status, which was measured by the size of an individual's herd. The diet consisted mainly of the products of farming and husbandry and was supplied by hunting to a very modest extent. Barley and wheat were the most common agricultural products and were used for baking a certain flat type of bread as well as brewing beer. The fields were tilled with a light-weight wooden plow, although heavier models also existed in some areas. Common clothing styles are known from the remarkably well-preserved corpses that have been found in former marshes on several locations in Denmark, and included woolen garments and brooches for women and trousers and leather caps formen. Other important small-scale industries were weaving, the manual production of basic pottery and, morerarely, the fabrication of iron tools, especially weapons.

Julius Caesar describes the Germans in his Commentarii De Bello Gallico, though it is still a matter of debate if he refers to Northern Celtic tribes or clearly identified German tribes."[The Germans] have neither Druids to preside over sacred offices, nor do they pay great regard to sacrifices. They rank in the number of the gods those alone whom they behold, and by whose instrumentality they are obviously benefited, namely, the sun, fire, and the moon; they have not heard of the other deities even by report. Their whole life is occupied in hunting and in the pursuits of the military art; from childhood they devote themselves to fatigue and hardships. Those who have remained chaste for the longest time, receivethe greatest commendation among their people; they think that by this the growth is promoted, by this the physical powers are increased and the sinews are strengthened. And to have had knowledge of a woman before the twentieth year they reckon among the most disgraceful acts; of which matter there is no concealment, because they bathe promiscuously in the rivers and [only] use skins or small cloaks of deer's hides, a large portion of the body being in consequence naked.

They do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of their food consists in milk, cheese, and flesh; nor has any one a fixed quantity of land or his own individual limits; but the magistrates and the leading men each year apportion to the tribes and families, who have united together, as much land as, and in the place in which, they think proper, and the year after compel them to remove elsewhere. For this enactment they advance many reasons-lest seduced by long-continued custom, they may exchange their ardor in the waging of war for agriculture; lest they may be anxious to acquire extensive estates, and the more powerful drive the weaker from their possessions; lest they construct their houses with too great a desire to avoid cold and heat; lest the desire of wealth spring up, from which cause divisions and discords arise; and that they may keep the common people in a contented state of mind, when each sees his own means placed on an equality with [those of] the most powerful."

While the Germanic peoples were slowly converted to Christianity by varying means, many elements of the pre-Christian culture and indigenous beliefs remained firmly in place after the conversion process, particularly in the more rural and distant regions. The Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals were Christianized while they were still outside the bounds of the Empire; however, they converted to Arianism rather than to orthodox Catholicism, and were soon regarded as heretics. The one great written remnant of the Gothic language is a translation of portions of the Bible made by Ulfilas, the missionary who converted them. The Lombards were not converted until after their entrance into the Empire, but received Christianity from Arian Germanic groups.

The Franks were converted directly from paganism to Catholicism without an intervening time as Arians. Several centuries later, Anglo-Saxon and Frankish missionaries and warriors undertook the conversion of their Saxon neighbours. A key event was the felling of Thor's Oak near Fritzlar by Boniface, apostle of the Germans, in 723.

Eventually, the conversion was forced by armed force, successfully completed by Charlemagne, in a series of campaigns (the Saxon Wars), that also brought Saxon lands into the Frankish empire. Massacres, such as the Bloody Verdict of Verden, were a direct result of this policy. In Scandinavia, Germanic paganism continued to dominate until the 11th century in the form of Norse paganism, when it was gradually replaced by Christianity.

The Viking Age

Norsemen split into an Old East Norse and an Old West Norse group, which further separated into Icelanders, Faroese and Norwegians on one hand, and Swedes and Danes on the other. Politically, the union between Norway and Sweden was dissolved in 1905, and the Republic of Iceland was established in 1944. In Great Britain, Germanic people coalesced into the Anglo-Saxon or English people between the 8th and 10th centuries.

The various Germanic Peoples of the Migrations period eventually spread out over a vast expanse stretching from contemporary European Russia to Iceland and from Norway to North Africa. The migrants had varying impacts in different regions. In many cases, the newcomers set themselves up as over-lords of the pre-existing population. Over time, such groups underwent ethnogenesis, resulting in the creation of new cultural and ethnic identities (such as the Franks and Galloromans becoming French). Thus many of the descendants of the ancient Germanic Peoples do not speak Germanic languages, as they were to a greater or lesser degree assimilated into the cosmopolitan, literate culture of the Roman world. Even where the descendants of Germanic Peoples maintained greater continuity with their common ancestors, significant cultural and linguistic differences arose over time; as is strikingly illustrated by the different identities of Christianized Saxon subjects of the Carolingian Empire and Pagan Scandinavian Vikings.

More broadly, early Medieval Germanic peoples were often assimilated into the walha substrate cultures of their subject populations. Thus, the Burgundians of Burgundy, the Vandals of n Andalusia and the Visigoths of western France and eastern Iberia all lost their Germanic identity and became part of Latin Europe. Likewise, the Franks of Western Francia form part of the ancestry of the French people. Examples of assimilation during the Viking Age include the Norsemen settled in Normandy and on the French Atlantic coast, and the societal elite in medieval Russia among whom many were the descendants of Slavified Norsemen (a theory, however, contested by some Slavic scholars in the former Soviet Union, who name it the Normanist theory).

Conversely, the Germanic settlement of Britain resulted in Anglo-Saxon, or English, displacement of and/or cultural assimilation of the indigenous culture, the Brythonic speaking British culture causing the foundation of a new Kingdom, England. As in what became England, indigenous Brythonic Celtic culture in some of the south-eastern parts of what became Scotland (approximately the Lothian and Borders region) and areas of what became the Northwest of England (the kingdoms of Rheged, Elmet, etc) succumbed to Germanic influence c.600-800, due to the extension of overlordshipand settlement from the Anglo-Saxon areas to the south. Between c. 1150 and c. 1400 most of the Scottish Lowlands became English culturally and linquistically through immigration from England, France and Flanders and from the resulting assimilation of native Gaelic-speaking Scots. The Scots language is the resulting Germanic language still spoken in parts of Scotland and is very similar to the speech of the Northumbrians of northern England. Between the 15th and 17th centuries Scots spread into Galloway, Carrick and parts of the Scottish Highlands, as well as into the Northern Isles. The latter, Orkney and Shetland, though now part of Scotland, were nominally part of the Kingdom of Norway until the 15th century. A version of the Norse language was spoken there from the Viking invasions until replaced by Scots.

Portugal and Spain also had some measure of Germanic settlement, due to the Visigoths, the Suebi (Quadi and Marcomanni) and the Buri, who settled permanently. The Vandals (Silingi and Hasdingi) were also present, before moving on to North Africa. Many words of Germanic origin entered into the Spanish and Portuguese languages at this time and many more entered through other avenues (often French) in the ensuing centuries (see: List of Spanish words of Germanic origin and List of Portuguese words of Germanic origin).

Italy has also had a history of heavy Germanic settlement. Germanic tribes such as the Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths had successfully invaded and sparsely settled Italy in the 5th century. Most notably, in the 6th century, the Germanic tribe known as the Lombards entered and settled primarily in the area known today as Lombardy. The Normans also conquered and ruled Sicily and parts of southern Italy for a time. Crimean Gothic communities appear to have survived intact until the late 1700's, when many were deported by Catherine the Great. Their language vanished by the 1800's.

The territory of modern Germany was divided between Germanic and Celtic speaking groups in the last centuries BCE. The parts south of the Germanic Limes came under limited Latin influence in the early centuries CE, but were swiftly conquered by Germanic groups such as the Alemanni after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. After the disappearance of Germanic ethnicities (tribes) in the High Middle Ages, the cultural identity of Europe was built on the idea of Christendom as opposed to Islam (the "Saracens", and later the "Turks"). The Germanic peoples of Roman historiography were lumped with the other agents of the "barbarian invasions", the Alans and the Huns, as opposed to the civilized "Roman" identity of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Renaissance revived interest in pre-Christian Classical Antiquity and only in a second phase in pre-Christian Northern Europe. Early modern publications dealing with Old Norse culture appeared in the 16th century, e.g. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Olaus Magnus, 1555) and the first edition of the 13th century Gesta Danorum (Saxo Grammaticus), in 1514. Authors of the German Renaissance such as Johannes Aventinus discovered the Germanii of Tacitus as the "Old Germans", whose virtue and unspoiled manhood, as it appears in the Roman accounts of noble savagery, they contrast with the decadence of their own day. The pace of publication increased during the 17th century with Latin translations of the Edda (notably Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum of 1665). The Viking revival of 18th century Romanticism finally establishes the fascination with anything "Nordic". The beginning of Germanic philology proper begins in the early 19th century, with Rasmus Rask's Icelandic Lexicon of 1814, and was in full bloom by the 1830s, with Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie giving an extensive account of the reconstructed Germanic mythology and his Deutsches Wцrterbuch of Germanic etymology.

The development of Germanic studies as an academic discipline in the 19th century ran parallel to the rise of nationalism in Europe and the search for national histories for the nascent nation states developing after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A "Germanic" national ethnicity offered itself for the unification of Germany, contrasting the emerging German Empire with its neighboring rivals, the Welsche French Third Republic and the "Slavic" Russian Empire. The nascent German ethnicity was consequently built on national myths of Germanic antiquity, in instances such ast the Walhalla temple and the Hermann Heights Monument. These tendencies culminated in Pan-Germanism, the Alldeutsche Bewegung aiming for the political unity of all of German-speaking Europe (all Volksdeutsche) into a Teutonic nation state. Contemporary Romantic nationalism in Scandinavia placed more weight on the Viking Age, resulting in the movement known as Scandinavism. The theories of race developed in the same period identified the Germanic peoples of the Migration period as members of a Nordic race expanding at the expense of an Alpine race native to Central and Eastern Europe.

Bibliography

F. Owen, The Germanic People (1960);

A. Schalk, The Germans (1971).

http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/germans-german-tribes.html

http://www.odinsvolk.ca/GermanicPeoples.htm

http://www.imperialteutonicorder.com/id43.html

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