deutsches
appearance: c. -2000
dispersal: c. -1000
ascendancy: proto-germans
[1]
the deutsche is what the germans (eventually) called themselves and the teutons appear to be a very early name given to them by the people of the south. i'm definitely missing intermediary points but my understanding is that german archaeology is a bit sketchy anyways. i can, however, interject a few quick points before i wave my hands and put this off to future research. from either denmark or scandinavia, the germans began moving southwards sometime after -1000 but were checked by the early celts of the hallstatt culture. i would theorize that it was a rather late celtic onslaught north that awoke this sleeping giant and sent horde after horde of barbarians upon the settled peoples of the south, who happened to even be
germans by the time of the later viking migrations. it seems to me that, as opposed to the usual linguistic classification of north-east-west, there was probably only a real divide between the north and the south. i say this because the eastern dialect appears to be derived from the northern, implying that it was a later migration from scandinavia. i would thus derive the eastern germans directly from the north and will identify the southern germans with those of the traditional "west". however, this is complicated by early cartographic evidence that places the swedes as originally located in the netherlands, meaning that the north germans were originally located in the south. as the religious traditions show a substrata from the netherlands to sweden (frisia/freyja/frey) that eventually show up in sweden (frey-yngve) from a late migration north (the yngvaeones were first located in frisia), this means that the east germans separated to the north first and were only later followed by the danes/swedes, ie north germans. so, the east germans were originally north germans, the north germans were originally south germans and the west germans were originally central/east germans. then the east germans moved west again, helping to push the west germans into the west....one almost perceives of an ancient cycle not unlike the constant western migrations from central asia into europe itself except that this one was circular and not linear.
the germans indeed make up the largest part of this site as of right now as the european aristocracy has been primarily german from the fall of the roman empire. there are few exceptions and they are far between. as the ancestors of the english, the germans are also the ancestors of the north americans and as ancestor to most of the spanish aristocracy, they are also the ancestors of the ruling classes in central and south america. german settlers also expanded eastwards into russia and make up the majority of the ruling class there, as well as throughout eastern europe and as far south as greece and cyprus. the crusades were essentially run by germans. no matter how you look at it, indeed, it is the germans that have shaped modern europe and america more than any other nation, not through developments in their homeland but through developments in the periphery of their rule - france, england, spain, america, italy and russia. this is why when people ask me what my opinion on a united europe is, my response is generally "well, they're all germans
anyways....". under this understanding, nearly all of the wars in the history of europe from before charlemagne right up until the cold war and beyond can be seen as little more than a long series of german civil wars.
i'd like to take the ideas of gimbutas to their logical conclusion now, which becomes a complete absurdity that is as valid as any other sorting out of pre-german migrations. i will para-translate the heimskringla into modern archaeological terms. it goes a little like so......
see, the indo-europeans were from asaland, beyond the don or the dniester...it's hard to really tell because all of the rivers in southern russia have, essentially, the same name, from the danube to the donets. anyways, the indo-europeans [who are represented by the legendary warrior-king, odin, which may even be something of an early name for these people [there were similar invaders in afghanistan named "odals", however that is taking it way beyond the logical conclusion of absurdity here]] left asia and, through the route of russia [gandarike], entered modern germany from the north-east. once there, the indo-europeans [odin] of what was by this time the corded ware culture, differentiated into celts, slavs, italics, etc [the sons of odin in sax-land], eventually moving off in all directions, including north to denmark, where they settled [odin settled on the island that now bears his name]. thus, it is denmark that is the home of the proto-germans. once settled in denmark, the descendants of odin through skjold [the danes] intermarried with the indigenous inhabitants [gefion]. however, over time, the natives fought back [vanlanders, who were not, as is commonly mistaken, finns, but the descendants of the neolithic revolution. the suomi/kainu invasion from the east was much later than the extremely early events relayed in the mythology. the agricultural vanagods - frey, freyja, etc - show a common substratum as far away as the netherlands and could certainly not have been the proto-finns. the confusion is that "vanaland", the indo-european name for finland, which the modern "finns" do not recognize, is simply something much older than the finnish invasion and the germans either never figured out that the invasion took place or did not care enough to alter what they called the region or the people living there.]. at some point, there was a religious revolution, and the indo-european belief system was temporarily overthrown in favour of the much more ancient agricultural religious system of the middle eastern pre-norse [or something along those lines, anyways. njord was a vanagod that was transferred to asagod territory and became king after odin "died", which represents the final break between north german and south german. the differentiation point, indeed, seems to be a farming revolution in sweden that must have occurred some time fairly concurrent with the eastern migrations to northern poland.]. by this time, however, even the indigenous peoples of the countryside would have spoken a language ancestral to old norse. in time, tribes from the south-west, the ingvaeones, invaded the north and took power away from the indigenous inhabitants. these ingvaeones show up in the genealogy as frey-yngvi, frey being a very ancient agricultural deity and yngvi being the tribal name of the new conquerors. the southern herminones (who worshipped odin-hermes) eventually became the western germans.
this is a rather confusing series of migrations that some people may claim is unnecessary [although i would claim is highly incomplete!] but the fact is that, while also perfectly plausible, it allows us to reclaim the lost histories away from the dustbin that modern historians have thrown them into. it may be true that proof is required to classify a theory "true", but lack of proof towards a theory does
not logically lead to discarding it. therefore, the sagas should not be discarded as historical evidence until such a time comes as that they can be demonstrably proven to be false. their written testimony is proof itself and there need not be any more specific proof. will people one day read the writings of howard zinn or noam chomsky and dismiss them as false because the historical evidence is against them? if so, the people of the future will have missed the point that it is the work of these scholars that has saved the true history of the past from the onslaught of media lies. this analogy, while not exactly transferable to pre-historic europe, is still something to think about; in the field of history, the act of writing is the act of creating proof and the burden of this is squarely in the hands of the historian and nobody else. poorly written history (such as that of the sagas) is not equivalent with poor historical writings and myth is not necessarily void of historical value; indeed, it must represent the past in at least the abstract.
another reason to speak of the "vanir" as autochthonous and not finns is that there appears to be a common substrate to finns, balts and germans alike, particularly in the word "sea" and other terms related to the ocean, fishing, etc. this itself may go back to a magdalenian substratum but i really doubt this; it is more likely the result of the trb culture. perhaps "zeeland" took it's name from these people. to discover and bolster the lexicon of the substratum in germany, you would want to go to southern india and study the language of the dravidians, dravidian being a distant relative of the language of the trb but truly the only living language in it's grouping and thus the most closely related.
to tone down some criticism i will (reluctantly) acknowledge that the other option is that these people are all scythians. odin was supposedly from 'swithiod', which geographically fits with scythia quite well. however, there are some reasons why i don't like this:
1) the sources for this are all post-christianity. it seems rather convenient that this particular descent fits in rather well with the biblical lines, which i of course refuse to even remotely consider as anything valid. most of the german sources we have were unfortunately scrubbed by early priests.
2) if you read the sagas carefully you will notice that 'swithiod' was certainly inserted into the stories at a later date......the older stories supposedly had 'mannheim' in replace of 'swithiod' and 'godheim' in replace of 'the great swithiod'. what we have here is snorri recognizing that the legends had been changed over time to fit odin into a biblical descent from noah. remarkably, beginning in chapter eleven, he goes back to the old usage! perhaps it was only the creation stories that needed to be altered to coincide with the new religion from the south.
3) most people seem to think that 'swithiod' means sweden anyways, but i'm not so sure. it is mentioned that there is a great mountain chain that goes from south west to north east and that once you have passed it is not far to turkland. that sounds more like scythia than like sweden, and the mountain chain is clearly the urals. however, that it is not far to "turkland" also shows that the source is rather late, at least after the huns, and even the legendary odin must have been well before the huns. so, this is another reason to be wary of the whole idea behind the sagas. on this point, note the fourth sentence in the ynglinga saga: "Northward of the Black Sea lies Swithiod...". that makes things pretty clear, doesn't it? nonetheless, snorri (or his sources) do appear to confuse swithiod/svithjiod with sweden. in other words, whether swithiod means sweden or scythia depends on the context because somebody got confused over the two a very long time ago.....probably some icelandic copyist that had never heard of scythia but knew all about sweden. anyways, in the context of the creation stories it is clear that they mean scythia and not sweden.
descendancy: original north germans
[2]
descendancy: originally south germans
[2]
[1]: in search of the indo-europeans, jp mallory, 1989
[2]: the role of migration in the history of the eurasian steppe, andrew bell-fialkoff, 2000
[3]: heimskringla, snorri sturlson, c. 1200
[4]: the indoeuropeanization of northern europe: seeworter and substratum, erika sausverde, 1996
[5]: the germanic invasions, lucien musset, 1965
page last updated june 1, 2005
