Questions on the Development of Germanic Tribes

So, while there is a lot of information out there about what the Germanic tribes were able to do during the migration period, there is very little about how they developed (least that I could find).

I'm interested in: What are some common themes of development?

How did the etymology of tribe-names work?

How were early (as in pre-Romanization) military tactics?

And how did geographical and political location led to different tribes becoming dominant over others?

Now, i know there are some Germano-philes out there, so hopefully there will be some answers.
 
So, while there is a lot of information out there about what the Germanic tribes were able to do during the migration period, there is very little about how they developed (least that I could find).

I'm interested in: What are some common themes of development?

How did the etymology of tribe-names work?

How were early (as in pre-Romanization) military tactics?

And how did geographical and political location led to different tribes becoming dominant over others?

Now, i know there are some Germano-philes out there, so hopefully there will be some answers.

well: The early germanic tribes where lead by (iff I am correct) something like the viking Thing. when they would go to war, they would choose the bravest amongst themselfs to become Leader.

germanic socieaty was in fact a patriachy: the women where subjected to their fathers, and later to their husbands. they would take care for the children.

chastity was very important amongst the tribes: those who cheated and where caught where likely to be banished. a man usely had only one wife.

this didnt mean they would listen to him though;).
warfare of the early germanic tribes where about gaining loot
they where expert raiders and ambushers. laying traps and suprise attacks where the most common forms of warfare, just as raids.

it was not uncommen for Germanic women to give their husbands psycoligical support.
(supposebly) some warriors who worshipped Wodan dressed themselves in wolf skins, believing to atain the stengths of this annimal.

iff I am correct, the early Germanic warriors mostly used spears as a close combat weapon, but this differed with tribes. swords where mostly used by the onse who had the resources to build them, or to steal them. infantry used axes and clubs as other weapons. long distance (I think) mostly bows, javelins and slings.

armour amongst early Germanic tribes was rare: they mostly whore their clothes and a shield to protect them.

I dont knwo much (and my knowlege mostly comes from books and the fact I live only one hour away from the battle site of Teutoburg forrest)
but hopefully this can be usefull:D
 
well: The early germanic tribes where lead by (iff I am correct) something like the viking Thing.
it was not uncommen for Germanic women to give their husbands psycoligical support.
.

:D


Pretty close enough for a start. Germanics came from Scandanavia, hence the common root languages, starting about 2600 years ago I think. They enslaved and later to some degree amalgamated the Celtic & Slavic (and other?) tribes there. Probably they were opportunists, sort of as lions in the savanna or bears in the forest. If hunting meat was available, they took it, otherwise carrion or vegetables. Germanics were pushed out one tribe at a time from the nest of Scandinavia.

What a nest it was, constantly raiding and moving around with herds, not so different than the plains Indians in the US Midwest circa 1820, but much more fluid and competitive. Re: the lion/bear, by some accounts they went over to the Slavic areas first, quite possibly due to harsh receptions from the Celts. Tribes were often weak when pushed out of Jutland, and settled at first in the most marginal areas, which sounds like the Aztecs when beginning to settle in what is now Mexico city. After a while, they were tollerated and soon afterwards they raided.

Some getting to Italy during the Late Roman days were a thousand or so in a band of starving pittiful wretches (and earlier bands would have likely been the same) barely alive and only worth a few months in the mines when captured en masse into slavery. But they could be very daring, one nameless group in small surviving written notation apparently managed to snag a small fleet of ships and sort of bumped around til captured there, not knowing of the strengths or weaknesses of the decaying state, much like Chief Joseph trying to escape from the white people, but in this case being attracted to wealthy lands and loot.

So many tribes we dont even have a name or record, and new tribes were being split off all the time as if musical rock groups experimenting with new sounds and techniques. Only the famous ones of later times are well known, especially those invading France or Italy.

Think of a gypsy army crossed with a Roman legion and the Spartacus rebelion. Like the first and last, families traveled together. As Berserker mentions, wives encouraged their husbands, even in battle. Heard of covered waggons in a circle? They did the same in the Roman times with women beseeching husbands to fight so not to have family sold into slavery, so very possibly did that in the early days. An early version of the election sound truck/megaphone cheerleaders.

My guess, and all records pretty much start 2,000 years ago with incursions into Germanic territory by Romans (there was one Germanic invasion of North Italy I seem to recall in 114 BC), so to extrapolate is nearly a necessity in many areas.

Take later Germanic forays into more "civilized" regions like France, Spain, North Africa and such where we have better records and graft it on to the swampy areas of Poland, except more of trading and accomodation at first. The records of pre Viking eras was one of multiple tribes being swallowed up by others, and general warming to increase populations. Many children of well placed individuals had the choice of living under a boot or potential well being overseas. Put into more of a tribal setting with lots of unique rituals and customs, but fairly uniform in moral and other bylaws, these groups moved off to the continent.

Hope that helps.
 
So, while there is a lot of information out there about what the Germanic tribes were able to do during the migration period, there is very little about how they developed (least that I could find).

I'm interested in: What are some common themes of development?

How did the etymology of tribe-names work?

How were early (as in pre-Romanization) military tactics?

And how did geographical and political location led to different tribes becoming dominant over others?
.

Without historical record keeping, only myth and legend seep in to
such a fluid society. With lots to be forgotten (enslavement, loss
of reputation, dirty tricks, fractionalization) and constant fighting,
just remember the Dorian Dark Ages of Ancient Greece. What we
saw later is about the best indication of former techniques.

Which means you will not be able to find the information beyond very few
snippets here and there. Much is done by digs, and archeological records
are hard to come by with a mobile band over only a few decades. The
ones in Germany moved all over the country and like clans of ancient
Scotland or current Somalia were broken to smaller and smaller levels
with less than total cohesion, and rebellions and joining competitor
clans by no means unheard of. Here are some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Bronze_Age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_German_history


http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ac67

Etymology is a tough one. We know more about many American Indian
bands history and etymology of their self appointed names than those
in Germanic bands. Like everywhere in the world, often the tribes names
are only not so nice labels in other people's languages. Those that
were made by themselves were often of the moment in the early days
of the group. Without a better dictionary of dialects back then, it is
very risky to guess. A model might be for the KKK, which started out
as a way for several ex servicemen to form a fun society starting with
two Greek words and clan. Then it grew.
 
In Indo-European and Computational Cladistics by Ringe, Warnow and Taylor (pages 86-89, 110-111), the authors find that Germanic is impossible to fit into a conventional tree of other Indo-European languages. indicating something very peculiar is going on with the Germanic language family. Their conclusion is that Germanic started as a sister language of the Balto-Slavic grouping, but came under very heavy Italo-Celtic influence for an extended period (several centuries at least) early in its history -- possibly similar, or even greater, in effect to the influence that Anglo-Saxon experienced from Norman French.
 

Sandmannius

Banned
While there is a lot of information out there about what the Germanic tribes were able to do during the migration period, there is very little about how they developed (least that I could find).

I'm interested in:

1) What are some common themes of development?

2) How did the etymology of tribe-names work?

3) How were early (as in pre-Romanization) military tactics?

4) And how did geographical and political location led to different tribes becoming dominant over others?

Now, i know there are some Germano-philes out there, so hopefully there will be some answers.

1) With themes of developement I'm assuming you mean how the tribal confederations came to existence and in what way.


Let's take the Franks for starters, as they are one of the confederations on which we have the most information.


It's commonly agreed amongst historians that the Salian tribe (Salii in Latin) was the spiritual and physical ancestor of the Frankish Confederation, therefore I shall discuss how the Salians created the Frankish Confederation.


The national/regional/tribal identities were incredibly small in Germania, so small that people might have actually considered themselves hailing from a particular village rather than an actual tribe. But, certain tribes and identities did grow, like the Salian tribe, which eventually started growing rapdily, and many villages, settlements and peoples were now being absorbed and consumed into the Salian identity, creating a very large tribal entity, which might have actually covered several tribes that we often consider seperate today. This gigantic Salian entity then started colliding with other larger tribes, some of which who didn't actually become a part of the Salian entity, but were always interacting with it, creating many close ties. This continued up to the point where several different large tribes merged into a bigger entity (while sometimes retaining their own identities like with the Franks, or losing their own identity like with the gigantic Saxon tribal entity). These tribal entities could be considered an alliance, a confederation or at times one large tribe. In the case of the Franks, many of the close tribes slowly started working as one (voluntarily though), but after a while their identities starting merging, and despite someone being from Salian tribe and the other of Sicambrian tribe, they both considered themselves to be Franks. These many tribes now were predominately led by the Salians and eventually migrated southwards, the rest is history.

I hope this is explains anything.

2) Here is an example of Germanic naming, the popular Batavian tribe said that they hailed from the Batawjō (the Betuwe in modern day English), meaning "good-island" ("bat" being good, and "awjō" being island). The Romans then took this name and Latinized it and named the region around the Betuwe "Insula Batavorum", and named the tribe Batavi, which became Batavian in English.


But, if you just want to know what Germanic names were named after, and why they were named this way. I think the most straightforward answer I can give you is that most of the time Germanic tribes simply named themselves after the area they lived in or called themselves the inhabitans of the particular area they lived in (i.e. a Saxon is someone from Saxony and a Frisian is someone from Frisia). Of course not all tribes followed this naming method, and some might be named after a certain object, animal, legendary hero or word from their particular language, culture or history (i.e. the Frankish Confederation was named after the ancient Germanic for javelin, which was "franca"). It's very confusing, but what makes it even worse is that most of the tribal names we know of and have left are Latinized corruptions.


3) I'll briefly go over Germanic military. There is a lot to Germanic warfare, and I believe that wikipedia actually has a few entries on Anglo-Saxon and Frankish warfare, but I'll briefly go over some aspects of it. Like I said there are many diverse aspects and factors to ancient Germanic warfare, as in the way that some tribes would paint themselves black and would solely attack at night in order to inspire fear in their enemies, some tribes had cavalry and others didn't, some tribes were specialized in fighting in swamps, some tribes were great at ambushing, some tribes prefered to wield axes, while some prefered spears or shields and swords (the mainstream depiction of the Germanics solely wielding large axes, hammers and maces is fairly false). There were certain aspects that men from all tribes did, like tieing up and greasing their long hair, to make it harder for an enemy to grab it, bringing your family to the sidelines of the battlefield to encourage you to fight harder and certain men going as berserkers (if you don't know what this, look it up).

I think there might be some decent stuff about ancient Germanic tactics and formations on the web, I can only recall one formation that I think some of the Germanics in Gaul used against Caesar, this was the spear/arrow head formation, where the army was divided in several long pointy columns in the form of, you guessed it, spear or arrow heads. Also, certain tribes that interacted with Romans a lot might have adopted Roman military tactics and customs, like the Ubian and Batavian tribes.

4) Geographical location leading to the dominance of a certain peoples worked the same in Germania as anywhere else, certain tribes could afford chain mail and swords, while some tribes could only afford clubs and spears. This means that the tribe with iron weaponry will obviously come out on top of the tribe with wooden weapons. Regarding leadership of tribes, there were chieftains and nobles, the chieftains being the facto rulers, this normally being a heridatary position. The nobles were rich individuals that often exploited other members of the village/tribes and made the important decisions along with the leader/chieftain.
For some general information about Germania, your fighting abilities were your status, pretty much everyone was a herder or farmer, the people were used to extremely rugged and tough conditions as they lived in and around cold gigantic forests and swamps, and like someone else mentioned, being loyal to your partner in marriage was considered very important and Wodan, Tyr and Freya were the most important gods.

"Germania" by Tacticus covers many Germanic customs, "Histories" by Tacticus goes over some Germanic history and covers the Batavian revolt in detail. "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar go over some military encounters the Romans had with Germanics and "Natural History" by Pliny the Elder covers some fun but random facts and details about certain Germanic tribes.

If I was unclear or if you have any more questions feel free to say so, I will do my best to help you out.
 
There were certain aspects that men from all tribes did, like tieing up and greasing their long hair, to make it harder for an enemy to grab it, bringing your family to the sidelines of the battlefield to encourage you to fight harder and certain men going as berserkers (if you don't know what this, look it up).

a Berserker (in germanic terms) are the warriors of Wodan (Odin). they where a band of warriors able to go in to a state of mind, believing they would turn into bears (berserkers) or wolves (ulfhedin). the name supposible means something like Bear shirt of Bare breast.

probably they parteke in a kind of ritual to "Change" into annimals and call upon their powers. the idea of drugging and alcohol seems a bit dull to me: ever tried running around and fighting drunk or stoned???
dont: it doensnt make you a warrior!
zealotic believs into the change and the massive punsh of adrinaline due to the rituals where probably the instigators of their rage.

to those who never saw a Berserker before, its sight seemed very frightening: man growling, howling and roaring like annimals , biting their shields and somethimes charging into the battle naked.

Kveldulfr, who was described as a berserk in Egil's Saga, was said to change shape into a wolf. What Egil's Saga has to say about the berserkergang, the frenzied state the berserk fought in, is:
"What people say about shape-changers or those who go into berserk fits is this: that as long as they're in the frenzy they're so strong that nothing is too much for them, but as soon as they're out of it they become much weaker than normal."

The Ynglinga Saga records:
"… his men went without mailcoats, and were as frantic as dogs or wolves; they bit their shields and were as strong as bears or boars; they slew men but neither fire nor iron could hurt them. This is known as 'running berserk'.

hopefully this answers the question:D
 

Sandmannius

Banned
probably they parteke in a kind of ritual to "Change" into annimals and call upon their powers. the idea of drugging and alcohol seems a bit dull to me: ever tried running around and fighting drunk or stoned???
dont: it doensnt make you a warrior!
zealotic believs into the change and the massive punsh of adrinaline due to the rituals where probably the instigators of their rage.

I too never really was one for the "berserkers drugged themselves before battle" theory, what they did was perfectly possible for any strong man, you just had to have enough guts to do it.
 
Some extra tips. An elected warleader by the Germanic tribes would be called a "Harjanaz" which may or may not be the origin of the Medieval German ducal title of "Herzog". Otherwise, the leader of a tribal confederation's allied army would possibly be a "Druhtinaz". A "Theudanaz", or Lord of the People, would be the leader during peace, and additionally, may be the chief priest during ceremonies and festivals. A "Kuniz" may have been a clan-chief. "Sibbe" would be what the ancient Proto-Germans called a tribal-group.
 
I too never really was one for the "berserkers drugged themselves before battle" theory, what they did was perfectly possible for any strong man, you just had to have enough guts to do it.

exactly!
and to partace in some ritual, your self confidence would get a major boost.
 
This page may help with its very large and illustrated essay on the six main Germanic tribes during the collapse of Western Rome.

The main site itself also has extensive essays on languages and history and politics that may prove useful.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
How did the etymology of tribe-names work?
Germanic tribes, or tribal confederations usual was named for some traits or mythical aspect of their culture.

The Saxons was named after a sword

The Franks and Fries names means the free (likely from the Romans)

Dane mean flatlander.

Langobard mean "long beard" and significate their shift of worship from the Vanas to Asir, or more precisely Odin/Wotan/Woden.

Allemanni means "all(many) men"

Major Germanic tribes was usual tribal confederations, in that several small tribes joined together in a greater confederation, especially the Franks and Allemanni show traits of this, while the Langobards and Heruli (the lords/earls) show traits of being split from other tribes.
 
Very interesting and plausible material on the formation of words. But just about all sources are from Latin, and only so much can be known. Those sources were interested in managing or besting Germans more than anything else. I am a bit hesitant to be sure of origins. Piecing together similar sounding words is only so effective, with the buyer to beware.

Ever heard of that comic interpretation of Washington DC, the place where (future) archeologist say the ancients washed their huge loads of laundry Wash-a-ton, although this is disputed?

The Batavi were situated in a marsh, as were the Fries, but most were not. I could accept the origin of a town there. Marshes were ideal places to impede raiding and form a stable area. Latins Rome had a more stable situation with the Etruscans.

Most of the later invading tribes were on the border of the Roman Empire, Goths/Vandals being early (subsequently temporary) initiators from the Crimea/Ukraine/Volga Hun trouble. The later border groups had better knowledge of who they were up against and when to move. Their flank was more orderly on three sides for over 300 years, but that facing Germany was wide open and nearly constantly changing with herds (I recall of cattle) moving around beside their tribal owners. They also started loose villages and centers, unlike the earlier years or more towards the interior. It was so bad that no one would make an orchard as it was fair game during harvest time, according to Latin sources I read of.

I dont remember how to spell it, but the one named Quadi was particularly harsh and agressive, as if a Navajo on steroids.

Some good word origins here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples
 
Germanic tribes, or tribal confederations usual was named for some traits or mythical aspect of their culture.

The Saxons was named after a sword

The Franks and Fries names means the free (likely from the Romans)

Dane mean flatlander.

Langobard mean "long beard" and significate their shift of worship from the Vanas to Asir, or more precisely Odin/Wotan/Woden.

Allemanni means "all(many) men"

Major Germanic tribes was usual tribal confederations, in that several small tribes joined together in a greater confederation, especially the Franks and Allemanni show traits of this, while the Langobards and Heruli (the lords/earls) show traits of being split from other tribes.

Some minor nitpicking.
The name of the Franks comes from their javelin the Franca. It became the word for "free" in Old French because the Frankish nobles were Freemen not the Gallo-Roman Serfs.
 
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