DOCSLIB.ORG

Barbarian Rites: the Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Barbarian Rites: the Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes 1 This reading consists of Chapter 1, “Introduction,” together with the bibliography, from the book Barbarian Rites: The Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes by Hans-Peter Hasenfratz, Ph.D. (Prof. Emeritus in History of Religions, University of Bochum, Germany) Translated by Michael Moynihan ISBN 978-1-59477-421-8 $16.95 This is a pre-publication version of this material, with permission granted by the publisher solely for classroom use. All rights reserved; this document may not be distributed in any other context. The above book title is forthcoming in spring 2011 from: Inner Traditions, One Park St., Rochester, Vermont 05767 www.innertraditions.com [Note: The designation TN in the footnotes indicates “translator’s note.” All other notes are by the author.] 2 Chapter 1: Introduction A. What is “Germanic”? It would be nice if we could “discover some of our own history” by studying Germanic religion—assuming that we ourselves are “Germanic people” or live in an area “settled by the Germanic peoples.” It would be nicer still if by doing so we could “recover some of our own identity”—assuming that we feel our identity has been lost. In order to do this we would first have to know what “Germanic” means and who the Germanic peoples were. Were they the ethnic groups whom the authors of classical antiquity bestowed with the name Germani, and were all of these groups really Germanic peoples? Were the legendary “Teutons,” who harried the Romans tooth and nail, actually a Germanic group? The phonological form of their tribal name (Teutoni, Teutones) mentioned in the classical sources actually shows no specifically Germanic linguistic features and could well be Celtic (compare the Celtic term teuto ‘people, folk’). And were the bearers of the early Iron Age Jastorf culture in Lower Saxony “Germanic”? What about the early Bronze Age Jutish Single-Grave Culture that preceded them? Should the latter be considered Germanic simply due to the fact that modern settlement archeology or ethnographical research is incapable of demonstrating any breaks in “cultural continuity” for this “cultural region” up through to the “Germania” of the Imperial Roman period? And if that is the case, then what are the “typically Germanic” features of this cultural continuity?1 If it is hard enough to say for sure who the Germanic peoples were, it is even more difficult to know what is “Germanic.” There have been those who thought that they knew what it meant, and their “knowledge” caused worldwide catastrophe. Were “genetic purity,” “bravery,” “love of freedom and honor,” “straightforwardness and loyalty,” and “stern morality” the hallmarks of the “Germanic type,” as is implied by the description of the Roman historian Tacitus (circa 100 CE)? And is the “Germanic world” therefore, as Hegel claimed, the fourth “world epoch”—following the Oriental, Greek, and Roman ages that preceded it—in which the “World Spirit” (Weltgeist) expresses itself most fully, the age of the highest level of historical human development as determined by the Germanic peoples? Or were, as Alfred Rosenberg assumed, “honor and duty” the “highest values” of the “Aryan (Indo-European) racial soul” most 1 In this regard, see Kilian 1988, who provides a good overview of the problem but whose views I do not incidentally share. 3 typically embodied in the “Germanic race,” so that dominion over “less worthy” peoples must in some way be an inherent entitlement of the Germanic human being?2 Although we may barely know who the Germanic peoples were—and those who thought they knew what the “Germanic essence” was may have failed in their claims of such “knowledge”—we can nevertheless be sure of one thing. We can define “Germanic” in terms of language, as the linguistic branch that differentiated itself from its earlier Indo-European predecessor through a specific set of phonological changes that are termed the “Germanic sound shift.” The Germanic peoples can therefore be defined as those who spoke a Germanic language. This language branch—and those who spoke it—are probably attested since the second century BCE with the so-called Negau helmet found in northern Slovenia. This bears the Germanic inscription HARIGASTITEIVA (“[dedicated] to the god Harigast” or “[dedicated] to the god Teiva by Harigast”).3 B. What is “Germanic Religion”? We are now in a position to specify what we mean by the term “Germanic religion.” It comprises the religious practices of Germanic-language speakers before their Christianization (and which continue after their Christianization to some degree in the form of folk beliefs). Although this external designation of “Germanic religion” may be relatively easy to formulate, it remains much more difficult to describe what it consisted of internally. This is due to the nature of the sources. The most detailed textual sources relating to the religion of the Germanic peoples—the Elder and Younger Eddas and the sagas of Icelanders—were first compiled and written down by Christians in the Christian era. These texts do not simply provide us with pre-Christian religious traditions, but rather they are at the same time the (learned) opinions of Christian antiquarians about Germanic religion, or in many cases they offer us a poetic glimpse into relationships from the Christian era (but not necessarily from “heathen prehistory”) in front of a “heathen backdrop.” Authentic pieces of Germanic evidence from the earlier period present us with many problems concerning our understanding of Germanic religion. They often raise more questions than they 2 See Hasenfratz 1989a for a discussion of the metaphysical representation of the Germanic peoples in National Socialist ideology. 3 The Indo-European consonants /k/, /gh/, and /d/ shift respectively to /(c)h/, /g/, and /t/ in Germanic. These sounds can be seen in the Nagau inscription in the forms hari-, gasti-, and teiva. Regarding the inscription, see the entry “Harigast” in Simek 1993, 132, and an opposing view in Ström 1975, 86. 4 answer, or else force us to rely on the aforementioned textual sources from the later (Christian) period in order to interpret their meaning. Someone who really wants to make sense of the Gothic runic inscription gutaniowihailag from Bucharest (Pietroassa) in the third century CE, or someone who expects to gain truly sensational revelations from it with regard to Germanic religion, may take their pick from the following scholarly interpretations: “[dedicated] to the god Jupiter (Donar/Thor) of the Goths, sacrosanct,” or “powerfully protected sacred object of the Gutania (tribal matronae of the Goths?)” or “ancestral property of the Goths, consecrated, holy,” or “ancestral property of the Goths. I am holy!” And what moderately informed person who assesses a Norwegian runic inscription from the fourth century CE (lina laukaR: “linen and leek”) wouldn’t immediately think of the relevant Icelandic story—the historical value of which is highly debatable—from the Christian period (the thirteenth to fourteenth century) about an (alleged) heathen ritual involving linen and leek (and a horse phallus)?4 It sounds even more daring when a Bronze Age Nordic rock carving of a god(?) with two hammers and a giant phallus is interpreted as identical with the Germanic god Thor, whose hammer is well known from the Eddic tales. This doesn’t mean, however, that a prehistoric drawing depicting a god might not be able to help a scholar of religion to reconstruct the mythology of a later Germanic deity named “Thor.” Probably just as good or better as a source is the Roman author Tacitus, who called Donar/Thor “Hercules” (probably because of his club-like weapon) and who was otherwise knowledgeable in reporting all kinds of things about the religion of the Germanic peoples, but whose description of the latter was not actually concerned with Germanic peoples, but rather with his own Roman contemporaries—to whom he held up a mirror with the image of the Germanics to show how Rome once was and how it could be once more: true to itself, brave, free, and chaste. The term “Germanic religion” becomes even more complicated when we realize that there are actually many “Germanic religions” to consider. There is the religion of those who spoke North Germanic languages and from whom we have the most detailed, coherent group of written sources; there is the religion of those who spoke South Germanic (also termed West Germanic) languages, for which the sources are generally more sparse and in any case more disparate; and there is the religion of those who spoke East Germanic languages, about which we factually know nothing. And even within these respective “religions” there are specific 4 On the preceding comments: the inscribed ring is probably an oath-ring; see the entry “Ring oath” in Simek 1993, 266. 5 distinctions relating to social class that should also be taken into account. The religion of the court poets (for example, the skalds at the courts of Norwegian princes) may not automatically correspond to that of the bands of youthful raiders (Vikings), or correspond at all with that of the peasants (or town dwellers)—even if we accept that there was a certain amount of “social mobility” between classes. It’s quite clear after all that a religion connected with a linguistic community and a particular class will change over time, and therefore one cannot speak absolutely about a “single religion” in chronological terms either. But keeping all of that in mind, we can state what a description of “Germanic religion” is capable of. Only in the rarest instances is it possible to show how Germanic religion “really was.” More often, one can simply show how different sources portray it and how the (Christian) authors of these sources saw it in their own time.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 18Th Viking Congress Denmark, 6–12 August 2017
    18th Viking Congress Denmark, 6–12 August 2017 Abstracts – Papers and Posters 18 TH VIKING CONGRESS, DENMARK 6–12 AUGUST 2017 2 ABSTRACTS – PAPERS AND POSTERS Sponsors KrKrogagerFondenoagerFonden Dronning Margrethe II’s Arkæologiske Fond Farumgaard-Fonden 18TH VIKING CONGRESS, DENMARK 6–12 AUGUST 2017 ABSTRACTS – PAPERS AND POSTERS 3 Welcome to the 18th Viking Congress In 2017, Denmark is host to the 18th Viking Congress. The history of the Viking Congresses goes back to 1946. Since this early beginning, the objective has been to create a common forum for the most current research and theories within Viking-age studies and to enhance communication and collaboration within the field, crossing disciplinary and geographical borders. Thus, it has become a multinational, interdisciplinary meeting for leading scholars of Viking studies in the fields of Archaeology, History, Philology, Place-name studies, Numismatics, Runology and other disciplines, including the natural sciences, relevant to the study of the Viking Age. The 18th Viking Congress opens with a two-day session at the National Museum in Copenhagen and continues, after a cross-country excursion to Roskilde, Trelleborg and Jelling, in the town of Ribe in Jylland. A half-day excursion will take the delegates to Hedeby and the Danevirke. The themes of the 18th Viking Congress are: 1. Catalysts and change in the Viking Age As a historical period, the Viking Age is marked out as a watershed for profound cultural and social changes in northern societies: from the spread of Christianity to urbanisation and political centralisation. Exploring the causes for these changes is a core theme of Viking Studies.
    [Show full text]
  • University of London Deviant Burials in Viking-Age
    UNIVERSITY OF LONDON DEVIANT BURIALS IN VIKING-AGE SCANDINAVIA Ruth Lydia Taylor M. Phil, Institute of Archaeology, University College London UMI Number: U602472 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U602472 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT DEVIANT BURIALS IN VIKING-AGE SCANDINAVIA The thesis brings together information yielded from archaeology and other sources to provide an overall picture of the types of burial practices encountered during the Viking-Age in Scandinavia. From this, an attempt is made to establish deviancy. Comparative evidence, such as literary, runic, legal and folkloric evidence will be used critically to shed perspective on burial practices and the artefacts found within the graves. The thesis will mostly cover burials from the Viking Age (late 8th century to the mid- 11th century), but where the comparative evidence dates from other periods, its validity is discussed accordingly. Two types of deviant burial emerged: the criminal and the victim. A third type, which shows distinctive irregularity yet lacks deviancy, is the healer/witch burial.
    [Show full text]
  • The Shared Lexicon of Baltic, Slavic and Germanic
    THE SHARED LEXICON OF BALTIC, SLAVIC AND GERMANIC VINCENT F. VAN DER HEIJDEN ******** Thesis for the Master Comparative Indo-European Linguistics under supervision of prof.dr. A.M. Lubotsky Universiteit Leiden, 2018 Table of contents 1. Introduction 2 2. Background topics 3 2.1. Non-lexical similarities between Baltic, Slavic and Germanic 3 2.2. The Prehistory of Balto-Slavic and Germanic 3 2.2.1. Northwestern Indo-European 3 2.2.2. The Origins of Baltic, Slavic and Germanic 4 2.3. Possible substrates in Balto-Slavic and Germanic 6 2.3.1. Hunter-gatherer languages 6 2.3.2. Neolithic languages 7 2.3.3. The Corded Ware culture 7 2.3.4. Temematic 7 2.3.5. Uralic 9 2.4. Recapitulation 9 3. The shared lexicon of Baltic, Slavic and Germanic 11 3.1. Forms that belong to the shared lexicon 11 3.1.1. Baltic-Slavic-Germanic forms 11 3.1.2. Baltic-Germanic forms 19 3.1.3. Slavic-Germanic forms 24 3.2. Forms that do not belong to the shared lexicon 27 3.2.1. Indo-European forms 27 3.2.2. Forms restricted to Europe 32 3.2.3. Possible Germanic borrowings into Baltic and Slavic 40 3.2.4. Uncertain forms and invalid comparisons 42 4. Analysis 48 4.1. Morphology of the forms 49 4.2. Semantics of the forms 49 4.2.1. Natural terms 49 4.2.2. Cultural terms 50 4.3. Origin of the forms 52 5. Conclusion 54 Abbreviations 56 Bibliography 57 1 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Languages and Migrations in Prehistoric Europe Roots of Europe Summer Seminar
    Languages and migrations in prehistoric Europe Roots of Europe summer seminar 7–12 August 2018 National Museum of Denmark & the University of Copenhagen Languages and migrations in prehistoric Europe Roots of Europe summer seminar 7–10 August 2018 National Museum of Denmark Festsalen Ny Vestergade 10 Prinsens Palæ DK-1471 København K 11–12 August 2018 University of Copenhagen Faculty of Humanities (KUA) Multisalen (Room 21.0.54) Emil Holms Kanal 6 The Roots of Europe Summer Seminar Preface The Roots of Europe Research Center has its origins in a so-called Programme of Excellence funded by the University of Copenhagen and hosted by the De- partment of Nordic Studies and Linguistics. The founding members were a group of historical linguists specializing in Indo-European Studies, a disci- pline that goes back two centuries at the University of Copenhagen, to the days when the linguist and philologist Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) carried out 2 his ground-breaking research. The programme marked a new epoch in modern-day Indo-European stud- ies in that it began to incorporate the findings of archaeology and genetics in its quest to understand the prehistorical spread of the Indo-European lan- guages. This was not the first attempt to relate the many branches of the fam- Preface ily tree to material cultures and, indeed, genes. However, previous attempts were abandoned, after the field was, figuratively speaking, taken hostage by a nefarious alliance of pseudoscientific researchers and politicians around the turn and first half of the 20th century. After the Second World War, collaborations between archaeologists and linguists became rare and generally frowned upon.
    [Show full text]
  • The Oksywie Culture on the Right-Bank Lower Vistula1
    ISSN 1392-6748 The Oksywie Culture on the Right-Bank Lower Vistula1 Milena Teska The late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BC saw major research procedure adopted by the present author is cultural changes and transformations which brought best reflected in the arrangement of the monograph. about a change in the appearance of not only the lands Volume I comprises the textual body of the thesis, i.e. of modern Poland but also of the whole of central Eu- introductory remarks and the history and state of ar- rope. The changes were precipitated by the impact chaeological research on the right-bank lower Vistula coming from the societies of the La Tène culture that prior to 1945. grew in strength, both economically and politically Next, investigations carried out there after 1945 no doubt, at that time (Godłowski, 1977, s. 111–120; are discussed. The study includes a detailed catalogue Woźniak, 1970; 1986, s. 12–13). The arrival of goods of 44 sites (Fig.), forming the source basis of the the- of a Celtic character marks thus the inception of an sis. The catalogue presents artefacts from the 23 cem- intensive La Tène influence process – a far-reaching eteries (18 archival) and 21 settlements (8 archival) impact of Celt civilization – going far beyond the area of the Oksywie Culture. It also presents the sites that of their compact settlement. The impact, in combina- have been explored under the programme of the Ar- tion with the strong traditions of the local sub-stratum, chaeological Record of Poland (AZP) (7 in all) and the caused new cultural patterns, typical of the younger finds the context of which could not be determined.
    [Show full text]
  • 12-Death-And-Changing-Rituals.Pdf
    This pdf of your paper in Death and Changing Rituals belongs to the publishers Oxbow Books and it is their copyright. As author you are licenced to make up to 50 offprints from it, but beyond that you may not publish it on the World Wide Web until three years from publication (December 2017), unless the site is a limited access intranet (password protected). If you have queries about this please contact the editorial department at Oxbow Books (editorial@ oxbowbooks.com). Studies in Funerary Archaeology: Vol. 7 An offprint from DEATH AND CHANGING RITUALS Function and Meaning in Ancient Funerary Practices Edited by J. Rasmus Brandt, Marina Prusac and Håkon Roland Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-639-4 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-640-0 © Oxbow Books 2015 Oxford & Philadelphia www.oxbowbooks.com Published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by OXBOW BOOKS 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW and in the United States by OXBOW BOOKS 908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083 © Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2015 Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-639-4 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-640-0 A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brandt, J. Rasmus. Death and changing rituals : function and meaning in ancient funerary practices / edited by J. Rasmus Brandt, Häkon Roland and Marina Prusac. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78297-639-4 1. Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient. I. Roland, Häkon. II. Prusac, Marina. III. Title. GT3170.B73 2014 393’.93093--dc23 2014032027 All rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • Of the Viking Age the Ornate Burials of Two Women Within the Oseberg Ship Reveals the Prominent Status That Women Could Achieve in the Viking Age
    T The Oseberg ship on display in The Viking Ship Museum. Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo Queen(s) of the Viking Age The ornate burials of two women within the Oseberg ship reveals the prominent status that women could achieve in the Viking Age. Katrina Burge University of Melbourne Imagine a Viking ship burial and you probably think homesteads and burials that tell the stories of the real of a fearsome warrior killed in battle and sent on his women of the Viking Age. The Oseberg burial, which journey to Valhöll. However, the grandest ship burial richly documents the lives of two unnamed but storied ever discovered—the Oseberg burial near Oslo—is not a women, lets us glimpse the real world of these women, monument to a man but rather to two women who were not the imaginings of medieval chroniclers or modern buried with more wealth and honour than any known film-makers. warrior burial. Since the burial was uncovered more than a century ago, historians and archaeologists have The Ship Burial tried to answer key questions: who were these women, Dotted around Scandinavia are hundreds of earth mounds, how did they achieve such prominence, and what do they mostly unexcavated and mainly presumed to be burials. tell us about women’s lives in this time? This article will The Oseberg mound was excavated in 1904, revealing that explore current understandings of the lives and deaths the site’s unusual blue clay had perfectly preserved wood, of the Oseberg women, and the privileged position they textiles, metal and bone.
    [Show full text]
  • Europaio: a Brief Grammar of the European Language Reconstruct Than the Individual Groupings
    1. Introduction 1.1. The Indo-European 1. The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred languages and dialects, including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in South Asia. Contemporary languages in this family include English, German, French, Spanish, Countries with IE languages majority in orange. In Portuguese, Hindustani (i.e., mainly yellow, countries in which have official status. [© gfdl] Hindi and Urdu) and Russian. It is the largest family of languages in the world today, being spoken by approximately half the world's population as their mother tongue, while most of the other half speak at least one of them. 2. The classification of modern IE dialects into languages and dialects is controversial, as it depends on many factors, such as the pure linguistic ones (most of the times being the least important of them), the social, economic, political and historical ones. However, there are certain common ancestors, some of them old, well-attested languages (or language systems), as Classic Latin for Romance languages (such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Rumanian or Catalan), Classic Sanskrit for the Indo-Aryan languages or Classic Greek for present-day Greek. Furthermore, there are other, still older -some of them well known- dialects from which these old language systems were derived and later systematized, which are, following the above examples, Archaic Latin, Archaic Sanskrit and Archaic Greek, also attested in older compositions and inscriptions. And there are, finally, old related dialects which help develop a Proto-Language, as the Faliscan (and Osco-Umbrian for many scholars) for Latino-Faliscan (Italic for many), the Avestan for Indo-Iranian or the Mycenaean for Proto-Greek.
    [Show full text]
  • Architecture, Style and Structure in the Early Iron Age in Central Europe
    TOMASZ GRALAK ARCHITECTURE, STYLE AND STRUCTURE IN THE EARLY IRON AGE IN CENTRAL EUROPE Wrocław 2017 Reviewers: prof. dr hab. Danuta Minta-Tworzowska prof. dr hab. Andrzej P. Kowalski Technical preparation and computer layout: Natalia Sawicka Cover design: Tomasz Gralak, Nicole Lenkow Translated by Tomasz Borkowski Proofreading Agnes Kerrigan ISBN 978-83-61416-61-6 DOI 10.23734/22.17.001 Uniwersytet Wrocławski Instytut Archeologii © Copyright by Uniwersytet Wrocławski and author Wrocław 2017 Print run: 150 copies Printing and binding: "I-BIS" Usługi Komputerowe, Wydawnictwo S.C. Andrzej Bieroński, Przemysław Bieroński 50-984 Wrocław, ul. Sztabowa 32 Contents INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER I. THE HALLSTATT PERIOD 1. Construction and metrology in the Hallstatt period in Silesia .......................... 13 2. The koine of geometric ornaments ......................................................................... 49 3. Apollo’s journey to the land of the Hyperboreans ............................................... 61 4. The culture of the Hallstatt period or the great loom and scales ....................... 66 CHAPTER II. THE LA TÈNE PERIOD 1. Paradigms of the La Tène style ................................................................................ 71 2. Antigone and the Tyrannicides – the essence of ideological change ................. 101 3. The widespread nature of La Tène style ................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Extra Limites. Continuatio” 261 LIMITES CONTINUATIO
    Extra limites Continuatio Extra limites Continuatio Redakcja Marcin Bohr i Milena Teska Poznań–Wrocław 2020 LIMITES CONTINUATIO Redakcja: dr Marcin Bohr Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego dr Milena Teska Wydział Archeologii Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu Pracę do druku opiniował dr hab. Marek Olędzki, UŁ Opracowanie redakcyjne Magdalena Kozińska Korekta Elżbieta Winiarska-Grabosz Łamanie i przygotowanie do druku Teresa Alicja Chmura Projekt okładki Andrzej Michałowski Przygotowanie do druku okładki oraz ilustracji Paweł Wójcik Publikację wydano z fi nansowym wsparciem: Wydziału Archeologii Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu Instytutu Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego © Copyright by Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy we Wrocławiu, Wrocław 2020 ISBN 978-83-7717-348-0 WYDAWNICTWO UNIWERSYTETU PRZYRODNICZEGO WE WROCŁAWIU Redaktor naczelny – prof. dr hab. inż. Andrzej Kotecki ul. Sopocka 23, 50–344 Wrocław, tel. 71 328 12 77 e-mail: [email protected] Nakład 300 + 18 egz. Ark. wyd. 17,2517,25. Ark. druk. 16,5 Druk i oprawa: KURSOR Spółka z o.o. ul. Jana Długosza 2–6, 51-162 Wrocław SPIS TREŚCI Marcin Bohr, Milena Teska Extra limites. Otwarte seminaria archeologiczne poświęcone okresowi przedrzymskiemu, wpływów rzymskich i wędrówek ludów w Europie Środkowej – sześć lat doświadczeń 7 arcin *** Eduard Droberjar Vinařice-Gruppe In Böhmen. Zur kulturellen und sozialen Diff erenzierung der Barbaren im 5. Jahrhundert 15 Łukasz Różycki Śmierć antycznego miasta. Novae w okresie inwazji Słowian i Awarów na Bałkany
    [Show full text]
  • From Very Early Germanic and Before Towards the “Old” Stages of the Germanic Languages
    F. Plank, Early Germanic 1 FROM VERY EARLY GERMANIC AND BEFORE TOWARDS THE “OLD” STAGES OF THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES 160,000+ years of human population history summarised, up to ca. 10,000 Before Now: Journey of Mankind: The Peopling of the World http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/ The origin of Language and early languages – fascinating questions and challenges for geneticists, palaeontologists, archaeologists, physical and cultural anthropologists. Alas, this is not something historical linguists could do much/anything to shed light on. F. Plank, Early Germanic 2 No speech acts performed by early homines sapientes sapientes have come down to us to bear witness to their mental lexicons & grammars. From human fossils nothing can be inferred about the linguistic working of brains and little about the organs implicated in speech. Speech acts were given greater permanence through writing only much later: from around 3,200 BCE in Mesopotamia as well as in Egypt, from around 1,200 BCE in China, and from around 600 BCE in Mesoamerica. The technology for actually recording speech (and other) sounds was only invented in 1857. F. Plank, Early Germanic 3 What cannot be observed must be (rationally) hypothesised. The standard method in historical linguistics for rationally forming hypotheses about a past from which we have no direct evidence is the comparative method. Alas, the comparative method for the reconstruction of linguistic forms (lexical as well as grammatical) only reaches back some 8,000 years maximum, given the normal life expectancy and recognisability limits of forms and meanings. And it is questionable whether constructions can be rigorously reconstructed.
    [Show full text]
  • Viking Burial in the Danelaw
    This is a repository copy of Pagans and Christians at the frontier: Viking burial in the Danelaw. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/755/ Book Section: Richards, J.D. orcid.org/0000-0003-3938-899X (2003) Pagans and Christians at the frontier: Viking burial in the Danelaw. In: Carver, M.O.H., (ed.) The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300. York Medieval Press in association with Boydell & Brewer , York/Woodbridge , pp. 383-395. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ This is an author produced version of a chapter published in The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300. White Rose Repository URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00000755/ Citation for the published chapter Richards, J.D.
    [Show full text]