south germans
appearance: c. -1000
differentiation: c. -500
ascendancy: germans[1]
"In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or recording the past they celebrate an earth-born god Tuisco (thor - j), and his son Mannus (halfdan - j), as the origin of their race, as their founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingaevones; those of the interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istaevones." - tacitus, germania, chapter two.
that tacitus (and also pliny) splits the germans into three nations makes a good deal of sense. the yngvaeones appear to be those who worshipped frey-yngve and were located from the netherlands into denmark, the irminones appear to be those that worshipped odin-hermes and were located in modern germany and the istvaeones appear to be those to the east, near the hister (danube). this provides early cartographic evidence that the danes and swedes were located in denmark and the netherlands until at least the time of pliny.
starting with that breakdown, the next question is to ask where these people moved around to. that this movement doesn't correlate with the linguistic conventions is why my categorization is confusing. after migration, the yngvaeones became the north germans (culturally, not linguistically), the herminones became the west germans (this corresponds to linguistic and cultural convention) and the eastern istvaeones were submerged underneath the (linguistically) east german invasions. so, while linguists normally talk of north (including east) and west germanic, i have chosen to speak of north (including east) and south (including west and what would become north, culturally).
the southern germans did not live in isolation; large amounts of these german cultures were made up of celtic tribes and celts often even gave their names to these tribes [ie. bavarii, semnones, sicambrians]. celtic-german synthesis needs to be kept in the back of the mind moving forwards through this.
now, yes, it's true that most people think that ptolemy puts the angles and saxons to the north very early and hence that this is where they first showed up. however,
1) the saxons appear to have taken over the chauki by force and are probably not the same people as the chauki. an invasion from a little further south or east makes sense, then.
2) the information on the angles is actually very clear and it is inexplicable why so many later readers have been so stubborn. see, the problem is that the anglo-saxons want to take the anglo-saxon sources at face value and ignore the roman sources. however, tacitus is the earliest information and he claims that the angles were a part of the suevi federation, which clearly makes them either irminones or istvaeones. also, it is not until ptolemy that they are located anywhere at all and it's in southern denmark - again, a later invasion would allow this.
3) this later invasion is exactly what we need to push the danes and swedes north into denmark and sweden. the close geographical positioning of danes/jutes and angles/saxons would then compensate for the danes' closer religious ties to the west, while the swedes retained their older yngve worship.
so, it all adds up for the angles and the saxons. the frisians would have been closely related and wandered over at about the same time....
so, then, the interesting thing about the southern germans is that they have done a lot of this work for me in the sense that they descend themselves from a common ancestor, odin. when tacitus/pliny made up their maps/histories they probably split them up based on their religious affiliations more than anything else, which puts the north/west as thor worshippers and the people in germany as odin/hermes worshippers.....
i will certainly delineate these cultures through more historical means but i will include their legendary ancestors as a sort of peripheral joke.
i also reserve the right to swap individual tribes around from any of these three branches to the next as more specific information comes in on each tribe.
odin
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vegdeg
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skjold
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casere
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whitlaeg
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baeldaeg
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thor
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saeming
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whitgils
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to the early danes
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to the eastern angles
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to the mercians
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to the west saxons and then the english
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halfdan
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to the earls of trondheim
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witta
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ingve
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hengst
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to the swedes, norwegians, normans, varangians and later danes
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oesc
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hartwaker
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to the kentish
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to the saxons
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now that this is over with, i would like to refer you to some legitimate history:
descendancy: west germans [irminones][4]
descendancy: original east germans [istvaeones][4]
descendancy: north germans [ingvaeones][4]
descendancy: mythical lines: a way to get to the top of the different mythical families, and there are quite a few of them here.
[1]: the role of migration in the history of the eurasian steppe, andrew bell-fialkoff, 2000
[2]: heimskringla, snorri sturlson, c. 1200
[3]: the germanic invasions, lucien musset, 1965
[4]: germania, tacitus, c. 100
page last updated june 1, 2005