In Which Anne Beeche Discusses the Germanic Peoples

As regulars of these fora may know, I'm rather knowledgeable about the ancient Germanic peoples (though I never claim to be an expert as I am always learning and there will always be things I don't know) and I am more than willing to share my knowledge.

Firstoff and foremost, don't believe what google's search engine believes: Germanic and German do not mean the same thing. It's like rectangles and squares: all Germans are Germanic, but not all Germanics are German. Germanic in fact refers to a wide variety of peoples including the Goths, the Anglo-Saxons/English, and the Scandinavians. If you're worried about confusing the terms, use Deutsche, Deutsch and Deutschland to refer to the people, language and country respectively.

Second off, I am not Lord Viking Lore, I do not know everything, I am just a kid who's been researching Germanics extensively for... a year? Less than a year in fact. So I could very well be wrong about something I've said, or not know something at all. If you're trying to do some actual research, I shouldn't be your primary source of information.

My knowledge does, in fact, have boundaries:

• Out of time: The Early Medieval Period—that means the Migration Period and the Viking Age. Any later and all I have for you is some general knowledge, but you likely won't have to ask about that anyway because after the Viking Age they start to become boring.
• Out of all the languages: Old English, followed by Old Norse. I can maybe muck around with other West Germanic languages with you due to English being one of them, but don't ask me about the East Germanic (Gothic) languages, 'cause I know nothing.
  • Names and calendars coincide with languages.
• Out of the runic alphabets: I am most familiar with the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Since the Elder Futhark is similar I can easily help you with that, but don't ask me about the Younger Futhark and its descendants, I hate them, especially Hälsinge. What were they thinking.
• Out of the peoples: I am most familiar with the Anglo-Saxons and the vikings, and the people who lived in Scandinavia before the vikings. Germans? Kindasortamaybe. But don't ask me about the Goths.
  • Ways of life coincide with peoples, though they tend to be pretty similar.
• As for myth and religion: I know a lot about the Norse perspective because there's a lot more information on that than most other Germanics since they were converted last.
• And literature? I'm currently in the process of reading the Poetic Edda, and I have read a very informative, very accurate translation of Beowulf in its entirety. You can ask me about those, preferably the latter.

I will answer questions, discuss with you, fangirl with you, etc using the extent of what I know. If I don't know, I'll try to direct you in the path of the answer if I can.

Anybody else knowledgeable on the topic, please feel free to back me up, correct me, help out, etc.

Some sources:

I learn by scouring the entire internet for information, and parallels to that information. Here are some sources I recommend which I personally find to be great starting places as they contain a lot of general information on general topics:

• Octavia.net The design of this website is confusing and rather sporadic, making it difficult to find what you are looking for, but one of my first sources. Anglo-Saxons, and a little on the Vikings.
• Viking Answer Lady Who is not me, despite how accurately the name describes me. Like Hurstwic, another first source specializing on the Vikings.
• Vikingsonline.org More historical reenactment weirdos. An excellent collection of articles on the Vikings, though the arrangement is a little sporadic so you'll have to trawl for specific information.
• Reginheim Home of Regin, whoever he is. Another extensive source of information on the Germanic peoples, but this site focuses more on the direct ancestors of the Deutsche, and the East Germanic peoples.
  • Be warned—it's geocities, so I don't know how long the site has before it mysteriously disappears like all geocities sites eventually do.
• Beowulf on Steorarume The most accurate and informative translation of Beowulf you will find for free on the internet, with piles and piles of juicy annotations. You will learn a lot from them. There's also some good stuff on the rest of the site if you poke around, though the web design is also insane.
  • Anglo-Saxon scholars are allergic to good web design.
• Hurstwic An excellent source on the Vikings, one of my first.
• Voluspa.org A massive collection of Old Norse literature, mostly the Prose and Poetic Eddas. Be warned, a few texts are Old Norse only, so I hope you speak Icelandic.

Now that I'm done dumping half of my bookmarks, commence with the questions, comments, concerns, etc.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:54:50 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Goths are an interesting case, Gothic language was spoken in parts of Crimea as late as XVI-XVII Century, as far as I remember The Other Wiki's words. What has remained is, like, one document and one loanword in Crimean Tatar.

Plus, all the Siegfrieds and Nibelungs are Gothic things rather than Anglic or Norse.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

Which explains why I don't know much about them or don't come across them much.

Goths? They're a bit too far southwest. All I know about them is they're South Germanic, their language family is extinct and they sacked Rome, and their name gets abused a lot by teenagers and architects.

edited 12th Jun '11 4:00:38 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Which of the Germanic peoples is your favorite? I like the Frisians. They're so dreamy!

Youron Anglo-Saxon scholars are allergic to good web design. May not be as I know a few and they find high technology alien for some damn reason despite growing up with computers.

Who watches the watchmen?

Were Germanic societies as bad as usually depicted in media?

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI

Matthew the Raven: All of them have their ups and downs.

Personally I like the vikings for most aspects of the culture, even though it appears that the gender roles got worse for the vikings and not better. That's why I also like the Migration Period Scandinavians even though there's less known about them.

I like the Anglo-Saxons for the language.

Most of what we know of the Germanic societies come from accounts by their enemies *

or those who did not really know or understand them *

^{For example, a muslim man was living with Germanics, vikings I think, and he spoke of them as being rather unclean for entire families the same bowl to wash their faces in the morning. The opinion is a rather poor comparison because muslims were much cleaner than anybody who lived in Europe, and in fact vikings practiced more hygenic practices than the rest of europe at the time.}

, because pagan Germanics did not keep records or write literature. The result? Demonization, misunderstandings, misrepresentations.

Most people will argue that the Germanics were very sophisticated and not at all the unwashed, uncivilized, untailored barbarians as they were presented, but I take a third option and argue that, like every society, there are two sides: The civilized, sophisticated side you see outside of war which definitely existed with the Germanics without a doubt, and the more demonic side you will of what happens when people war. They get excited. They get crazy. They get raging killboners.

Don't think America is any different. This is not a cultural phenomenon, but the very stuff of human nature. The duality of man, if you will.

Also, Vikings were the cleanest people in Europe, they washed their faces every morning as the muslim dude said, and they made a point of washing weekly, calling their Saturday "washing day", and were pretty big about combing their hair, they've found combs everywhere, and boxes made specially for combs. if you think a weekly wash is still bad, remember that Christian peoples made a point of not washing for some reason, so they probably only washed a few times a year. Anglo-Saxons thought of the vikings as clean-freaks and found their hygienic practices unusual.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:35:25 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

How would the pheneotypes of Vikings compae to modern Denmark and Norway/Sweden today? (Denmark being less blonde)

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Gah I don't know that as a straight fact.

To figure out the answer to that question you'll have to figure out what mass immigrations were made to Scandinavia between the Viking Age and now, and pull those people and their most common phenotypes out.

The Scandinavians were spoken of by the Romans as being ridiculously tall, so height had always been a common phenotype. They glorified light hair, so there were still likely a lot of blonds, and those that weren't blond bleached their hair (including/especially the males). They had the resources to do that since the 1st century according to Tacitus (soap, and the materials to make soap; the Germanics had soap before Romans.)

Racial mixing has gone on since antiquity however, and the Proto-Indo-Europeans undoubtedly took over and assimilated with some earlier residents of Europe who spoke unrelated languages, and there was a Celtic expansion before the Germanic expansion (Though I don't know if the Celts went up to Germania though, and the Germanics originated from there when they expanded), so it's not like they were 99% tall and 99.5% blonde. Long story short, you'll still have varieties.

EDIT: Why yes, I did in fact say that I didn't know the answer to that question... then went right ahead and answered the question anyway. Go me and my educated theorieshypothesesguesses based on the scattered facts that i do already know.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:16:33 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

anne: That thread you just linked to is not even an accurate societal or situational comparison.

The vikings also earned their reputation for their numerous raids on the coasts. They forced the inhabitants of England at the time to form a semi-mutual network of fortified townships in towns that were near the coast and those not much further inland.

Who watches the watchmen?

I linked to that to make the point that people in war always do ungodlyhorrible things no matter what culture they're from, which the witnesses and victims of the invasions would have seen and remembered, so even what is clearly demonization has its basis in truth.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:31:35 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I would have preferred you left the thread buried in the depths of the fora. There are loads more historically applicable situations.

Who watches the watchmen?

Okay, I have removed the link.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

What do you know about that brief period when Vikings landed in the British Isles and mingled with the Celts? By all accounts, that's where the red hair comes from (and why Gingers were demonized for so long). If I remember correctly, they each thought the other was pretty badass and generally got along better than either did with 'civilised' peoples.

I may be wrong, though, which is why I'm asking around.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

Thank you anne.

Who watches the watchmen?

Hah. It's good to see somebody fighting the good fight here already

If you mean by South "non-North", okay, but Gothic was a East Germanic language, and everything west of it was, well, West Germanic. There are in any case no living East Germanic languages any more, so you not being able to speak it is more than understandable, heh.

Burgundic, actually. But then Burgundics are related to the Goths (they were East Germanic, too), so it's not that far off.

Yeah, well. I think we can honestly say they were less socially and technologically advanced than "even" the Celts, to say nothing about the Mediterranean cultures. During ancient times they just were kinda backwards, I think. And during the Migration Periods, the wandering tribes just were human locust hordes and plunderers of the worst sort.

Theories about the origin of the Celts vary, but the most common theory is that they originated from Bohemia - which in later ancient times lay practically in the middle of continental Germanic settled regions (which really did stretch from North Sea to Black Sea). So, yes. The Continental Germanics encountered and assimilated a substantial Celtic population. Not just in Bohemia (but there, too - the Marcomani subjugated and assimilated the remaining Celts there when they moved to there), but also elsewhere - the formation of the Chatti, too, probably involved a lot of assimilated Celts. Meaning there is a reason probably why we associate "blond, blue-eyed, high grown" with North Germany and Scandinavia mostly...

Well, Germans, of course. Duh

If you mean ancient Germanic peoples, well, as a Hessian I'd of course say the Chatti. I don't know all that much about them, though.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

Dia: Well, you taught me something new. I was always under the impression that red hair was a Celtic thing, maybe I was wrong.

At the time the Vikings (most specifically the Danes and Norwegians) started invading the British isles, Anglo-Saxons already had long settled-invaded a few hundred years ago and established their kingdoms in what is now England, and Scots were doing their own thing up there.

You know, I was always confused about how the Vikings were able to go right around the north of Scotland and settle at the Isle of Man first, and then start making invasions from there, especially without being from around there. If the vikings were on good terms with scots.

However, if Macbeth is anything to go by, the Scots and Norway were at war around the days of Edward the Confessor.

Whoops! I misremembered East Germanic as "South Germanic". My bad. I have fixed that in the OP.

Being backwards or less technologically advanced does not mean the same as being uncivilized.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:56:37 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

What about the blending of the viking culture into the places they invaded. Also their various influences on said cultures.

Damn Arthur you need to publish that damn paper so we can use it here.

edited 12th Jun '11 7:16:12 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Yes, it happened, rather noticeably in England, in fact it even had an affect on the English language. The word "egg", for example, is not native English but in fact comes from Old Norse.

An even better example is the Normans, who descended from Viking invasions on northern France and even developed their own dialect of French.

So, what about these influences the Vikings had on non-Vikings through invasion? Did you want to know something specific?

edited 12th Jun '11 7:29:47 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Anne: Picts and other proto-Celtic and early Celtic peoples were known for striking black hair and blue eyes. In old Norse legends, Thor (at least, probably more) was a redhead.

Octo: Thanks for the info!

edited 12th Jun '11 7:40:30 PM by Diamonnes

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

Wow me with your knowledge of a fact or set of facts you choose. There is also the occurrence of conquerors and conquered effectively becoming the same group. See Anglos and Saxons.

Who watches the watchmen?

Yeah, I read about his being a redhead earlier today. The funny thing is, I accidentally drew him as a ginger◊ and had to digitally alter the colors for the final image because I imagine him as a blond. =P Guess my mistake was actually canon.

Then again there are gingers◊ with hair so light that they look practically blond◊ anyway so I probably won't even have to change my mental image.

Also, now that I think about it, that would explain the "dark" Irish.

EDIT: I wonder, do gingerness and blondness go hand in hand?

edited 12th Jun '11 7:56:34 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I do like the Vikings; they are a group of people I'm fond of researching. Which I haven't done so in a LONG time. TO THOSE SOURCES!

Black Irish (as opposed to Red Irish) you mean? Yeah. (Oddly, in Ireland, blonde was considered the freakish hair colour rather than red.)

edited 12th Jun '11 7:56:02 PM by Diamonnes

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

The sources I gave are great places to start.

Also, here's a tip: If one source claims there's "not enough information" on an aspect to get a picture, go to the next source, and keep checking different sources until you are certain.

EDIT: Thor's been described as both blond and ginger. The Prose Edda calls him "fair-haired".

edited 12th Jun '11 8:12:58 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.