Talk:Germanic peoples/Archive 21

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The Nordic Bronze Age

It appears that Jastorf is the uncontested origin this this article, while we know that this is not true.

"But the consensus at present is that Proto-Germanic was probably spoken in southern Scandinavia in about the middle of the first millenium B.C." Trask, Larry (1994) Language Change. p. 41

Although Mallory & Adams subscribe to an origin in the Jastorf culture, they write:

"It is Widely held that there is considerable continuity in both the archaeological and physical anthropological record of northern Europe from the earliest appearance of the Germans back into the Bronze Age. The Jastorf culture, for example, is regarded as a direct continuation of the local northern Bronze Age after the introduction of some iron metallurgy". Mallory & Adams (). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture p. 223.

As for stage directly before Proto-Germanic (pre-Grimm's law) that is called Pre-Germanic, there is a "least controversial view":

As to the whereabouts of Pre-Germanic during the Nordic Bronze Age (~1700–600 BC), advances in recent years have not upset, as the least controversial view, a homeland in Southern Scandinavia extending into northernmost Germany along the Baltic. Therefore, Pre-Germanic would have been approximately coterminous with the Nordic Bronze Age." Koch (2020) Celto-Germanic, Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West, p. 38

Personally I understand that the Grimm's law sound changes may have started in Denmark and Northern Germany and spread north, because that is what happened with Old Norse. The sound changes that lead to Old Norse probably started in Denmark and the Viking Age Scandinavians called Old Norse the "Danish tongue". It was the most densely populated area of Scandinavia and thus where sound changes are most likely to have started. I mainly wonder why mentions of the Nordic Bronze Age have to be removed from the article. Is it due to its unfortunate name that includes "Nordic"?--Berig (talk) 12:25, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I’d suggest if you have sources on this, that you just add that to the article. I don’t think tagging things as NPOV is really helpful at this stage of rewriting, though it sounds like it’s linguists rather than archaeologists making the connection?—Ermenrich (talk) 12:32, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
I am postponing a lot of things here on WP, until I have got the lists to a more "finished" stage. But I am still curious why the Bronze Age connections have been removed.--Berig (talk) 12:52, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
I wrote that section from scratch, so the real question is - why haven’t they been added yet? I believe Alcaios has some things to say on the Nordic Bronze Age.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:58, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
The Nordic Bronze Age should be discussed in the article, not entirely removed. But as Koch reminds us in your quote, a Jastorf origin of Proto-Germanic remains "the least controversial view"; a Nordic Bronze Age origin of Pre-Germanic, while plausible, is less secure. Alcaios (talk) 13:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
I don't think the trend is anti Nordic, but more anti Bronze age (in any region). FWIW according to Brather's review of how opinions are changing in RLA/GAO (Kulturelle Kontinuitäten und ethnische Kontinuitäten) the trend is methodological caution about asserting links between material cultures, languages so far back. Brather's review shows similar trends in other language/archaeology discussions (Celtic, Slavic). His assessment seems to be widely cited in a positive way. So the "least controversial" options might not change as such, but indeed all options are considered very speculative now, and as such even the case for saying there is one obvious likely scenario is itself seen as weaker. That does not necessarily block us from discussing such things, depending on space etc, but we need to look at recent work to judge due weight. On the Jastorf archaeology; good article here: https://www.academia.edu/10276827/ and same author has a lot of articles on academia.edu you might be interested in.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
This article by linguist Thorsten Andersen seems to be relevant - he seems to suggest that the Nordic Bronze Age hypothesis is actually (or was originally seen as?) incompatible with the Jastorf Culture as the Urheimat of Germanic speakers.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:53, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Standard linguistic sources usually talk about geographical areas, not "cultures", and what is described in modern sources does not match the old Kossinna view (him again!) with Jastorf as reference point for Proto-Germanic. It better overlaps with Nordic Bronze Age and especially Pre-Roman Iron Age. E.g. Fortson (2004) locates Proto-Germanic on both side of the North and Baltic Seas in the first half of the first millienium BC. –Austronesier (talk) 15:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Well, I do not claim to understand archaeology or how archaeologists today view their work as relating to questions of pre-Germanic sources, so if anyone would like to expand or improve the section, which I basically slapped together because the topic seemed completely missing both from the Andrew-Lancaster and the pre-Andrew Lancaster draft, please go ahead.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:36, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
From a quick glance at various sources it makes most sense to me to say that Proto-Germanic was located on both shores of the North and Baltic Sea centered around the Jutland Peninsula, and that Jastorf can be associated with the subsequent spread along the southern shores. But I can't find a source which puts it in this compact way, so at the moment, this is pretty much a SYNTH-narrative. –Austronesier (talk) 15:54, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
First, yes it was always work no-one ever wanted to do. Hopefully Streuer and Brather and so on are now inspiring more interest here. Second Austronesier the problem with a purely northerly origin as I understand it is that one of the main bits of evidence linguists have is that the early Germanic speakers were in contact with Celts and their iron technology, and then the old story goes that this perfectly matches the contact zone between Jastorf and La Tène in the south. (A sceptic can reject that, but then you also have nothing else to go on.) Jastorf was in a good position to spread east, and the material culture shows more influence in that direction than towards the west. Denmark during all this was apparently in close contact with all this one way or another, and indeed all these material cultures probably came out of the same complex going back to the Bronze Age. BTW another debate is about WHEN Grimm's law happened. Presumably there were various related pre-Germanic dialects which did not initially share in that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:18, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Unfortunately there's no mention of the Nordic Bronze Age that I can find in Steuer (maybe he calls it something else?). He otherwise provides a ton of info that really should go into the article though.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:29, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Just after a quick skim see the closing line of ch. 3. I can't claim to know the text deeply but it seems he is accepting something of Brather's argument and just not going into "pre". --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:38, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Future-proofing

This article is looking better by the day—great job, all. I'll have a rewritten section on Germanic paganism and related topics (like Germanic mythology) ready to go here soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to drop a line about future-proofing the article. I'm sure we've all seen articles written a decade or so ago that use the term "recently" or equivalent for items that aren't, well, recent anymore. To future-proof the article as much as possible, I recommend avoiding wording like this wherever possible. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Was Teutoberg a turning point in world history?

I've been reverted [1]. The edit summary is lumping the Battle of Teutoburg Forest into "occasional" defeats is decidedly reductionist. Peter S. Wells, quips “It was one of the most devastating defeats ever suffered by the Roman Army, and its consequences were the most far-reaching. The battle led to the creation of a militarized frontier in the middle of Europe that endured for 400 years, and it created a boundary between Germanic and Latin cultures that lasted 2,000 years. So that is the reason for the revert. My understanding is that this old idea is now generally rejected.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:47, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

First off -- you keep using the expression "a turning point in "world history" and that is not what the text of this article says and that is not what the correction stated. It was certainly not something so trivial to be lumped into an "occasional defeat" when the battle was significant enough to be termed a "major victory" over Roman armies by Germanic peoples, wherein the province "between the Rhine and the Elbe was lost and never regained." [Adrian Goldsworthy, Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), 202–203.] Classics tutor at Oxford University, Stephen Kershaw described it as "the heaviest Roman defeat on foreign soil since the disaster of Crassus at Parthia," adding that "Arminius' massacre of Varus' legions effectively put a stop to Roman expansion east of the Rhine." [Stephen P.Kershaw, The Enemies of Rome: The Barbarian Rebellion against the Roman Empire (New York and London: Pegasus Books, 2020), 315–317.] Maybe we adjust the text to state, after the Roman defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, the province between the Rhine and the Elbe (once part of the Roman Empire) was lost and never regained. Please stop with the "turning point in world history" as you are adding hyperbole not showing in the article. Yes, I realize it was added by a certain editor at some point, citing 19th or early 20th century scholarship (cannot recall) I just know it was outdated. --Obenritter (talk) 18:45, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I think in older versions Mommsen was cited. Authors such as Heather see it differently. I have nothing against any of these people, and it was a notable event. I did not remove mention of it. But...--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:33, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I don't see anything problematic in the article text relating to Teutoberg. No point in arguing over edit summaries. I do see a problem with Germanic tribes eventually overwhelmed and conquered the ancient world. That military transition was additionally spurred by the arrival of the Vikings from the 8th to the 10th centuries, giving rise to modern Europe and medieval warfare. It seems ludicrous to suggest that Germanic tribes conquered "the ancient world". And then we jump to the Vikings (?) and "modern Europe". What is a reader supposed to get from this? The source does not seem particularly strong, so I've removed these sentences. Srnec (talk) 21:45, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Srnec that’s old text that I hope will be completely rewritten and replaced at some point - in particular it seems a military history buff had a lot of fun with an old version of this article. In the meantime, we definitely need to remove anything problematic like that.
Re: Teutoburg I don’t see anything wrong with the current text, although we could maybe use more context in the body (I think it’s mentioned in like a list format? I’m on the road so can’t really check)—Ermenrich (talk) 23:12, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Srnec, Ermenrich was Varus attempting "to conquer a large part of Germania"? This is not just a question of edit summaries. Historians debate about whether and/or when the Romans ever had such a plan, but in the case of Varus's expedition the aims of both sides are not normally described in these terms. In general our lead should keep things simple and not go beyond the body anyway.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Do you not consider the Roman province between the Elbe and the Danube a large part of Germania? I don’t think any serious historian debates that Rome tried to conquer this territory, and if they do they are a distinct minority, as Obenritter’s sources would seem to show. Debates belong at any rate at the Battle of the Teutoburger Forest, not here.—Ermenrich (talk) 11:46, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Reviewing the text currently in the article, it makes no mention of the failure to establish a Roman province in Germania. This needs to be corrected and I would say the list format dispensed with. The form of “control “ established by the Romans afterward is very different from an outright annexation, but the article currently states that the Romans “regained control” over Germania as if this were the same thing.—Ermenrich (talk) 02:55, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Those words are not in our article? Anyway doesn't distinguishing different types of "control", and how they evolved, inevitably require a fairly detailed scholarly discussion? (Beyond what we have in the main articles.) See e.g. GAO "Germania magna als Provinz?" (use quotes) and "clades Variana". Scholars do not all describe this the same way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:35, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

This discussion is somewhat moot as long as it takes place here and not in Early Imperial campaigns in Germania (or "Roman campaigns in Germania (12 BC – AD 16)" since 14 May 2021) – unless we want to create a POV fork. Btw, that other page relies heavily on Wells (2003), The Battle That Stopped Rome.

We don't know the ulitmate goals of the Germanicus incursions, since they ware halted by Tiberius for whatever reasons (personal? geopolitical? financial?). De facto, the Germanicus campaigns became carved into history as solely retaliatory in nature, and Teutoburg in retrospect became the last expansionist excursion into Germania. After that, the Empire was content to exercise control over Germania magna via loyal satellites. These are the plain facts, and all deeper analysis of cause and effect should go into the specialized article. –Austronesier (talk) 12:04, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Roman Germania

In light of recent edits, I checked the Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Roman Germany. Reinhard Wolters addresses directly the question of whether Rome under Augustus established a province across the Rhine. He concludes that "the command of the Rhine army was such a distinct administrative area of competence" as a provincia and that "there are indications that tribes on the right of the Rhine were incorporated into an overarching Roman administrative structure beyond amicitia and foedus arrangements". Finally, he refers to "indications that the triumph of Tiberius fostered a narrower, political conception of Germania—a notion that no longer defined the geographic space up to the Weichsel but a zone up to the Elbe considered as conquered by Rome and essentially subjected to claims of Roman control". As to Teutoberg, he sees it as "a revolt within the Roman power apparatus ... a mutiny" and not "an uprising of the Germanic population". He seems to downplay it as a turning point on the grounds that the Romans were back across the Rhine in AD 10 before abandoning the area in 16 (because Germanicus' campaigns were too costly, he seems to think). Srnec (talk) 01:14, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Steuer says the same things, although he gives more prominence to Teutoburg Forest. He says that the province was giving up "soon after the defeat of Varus in 9 CE because the military power from Germania was too powerful" (p. 994). Slightly later he also notes the problems Rome had due to the absence of an elite class that they could coopt. He states that the final abandonment of the idea was in 16 CE when military campaigning stopped, but suggests that the incursion across the Rhine by Caligula may indicate that the province was not viewed as having been permanently lost yet. On p. 995 that "E. Eck" says that it was a regular province until 9 CE OR 16 CE and mentions the foundation of Waldgirmes, an altar in Cologne that was managed by a Cheruscan, and Germanic lead (tribute?) as evidence.
Whether or not Teutoburg Forest is seen as the turning point, that paragraph is still largely written as though the Romans were just launching a series of military campaigns rather than trying to create a new province. It needs to be completely rewritten. (Normally I'd volunteer to do it myself but the semester is about to begin again here and I'm not going to have time).--Ermenrich (talk) 13:21, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
We can't just base this article on one book though? It strikes me also that some of this requires debate about what making a province meant in this period, and again the issue of avoiding making this article try to be the main article for everything (or OTOH a children's summary of the wisdom from the elders). Maybe you should work on some of the dozens of satellite articles first to work out what we want to summarize. Personally I'd like our article to cover the Batavian rebellion better BTW, which was possibly a more important turning point. (Though not to 19th century German and Nordic Germanicists who seem to be the "template" again.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:06, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
We aren't basing it on one book - Srnec has provided a reference, I have provided a reference, Obenritter has also provided references, and I've asked once again at Classical Greece and Rome for some help from people more familiar with Roman history. I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make - if the Batavian rebellion is significant we should include the Batavian Rebellion, but we can't just not include the fact that Augustus and Tiberius failed to establish a Roman province of Germania. This is a significant historical fact, not a narrative of "19th-century German and Nordic Germanists".--Ermenrich (talk) 16:12, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Since you brought up the GAO above, according to the article "Clades Variana" "it wasn't only the Clades Variana" that led to a loss of Germania, but also "the stubborn resistance of Arminius for a further nearly 7 years" and Tiberius's realization that the conquest wasn't worth it. The other article you mention "Provinzen des Römischen Reiches" states repeatedly that recent scholarship (as of 2003) supports the existence of a Roman province in Germania. It does not look to me like there is any real debate on this point.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:21, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Length of sections on Classical Definitions and "Gaulish" Germani

Do these sections need to be so long? It strikes me we have a lot of paragraphs cited to one or two sources that could be reduced to a sentence. I'm also not sure we need to have a whole section on the Germani Cisrhenenses - Pohl 2004a covers them in a paragraph.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:47, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I've done some work on the "Classical Definitions" section so that only the paragraph on "Germania" still needs major work (I believe). My suggestions would be to shorten and merge in the stuff on the "Gaulish" Germani. It's really just a question of how precise or imprecise the Roman definition was, we know virtually nothing about these peoples. I believe Carlstak is doing some work in at least shortening the section.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Actually in the relevant period, a very famous period, we know more about the western Germani than any others, and they were more important, and clearly defined. These are e.g. the original famous Germanic cavalry. The Gaulish / La Tène Germani were also east of the Rhine, including peoples who remained major players into the 1st century and we are not making that point properly yet. Caesar's less precise terminology is about those further the east, who probably spoke Germanic, but who we are mixing with anyone east of the Rhine. The linguistic definition distorts reality in this period. Pohl 2004a has several different discussions, not only one paragraph.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:54, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
To which I would say that the main topic of this article is the Germanic peoples, not the Germani as defined by Caesar. The Germani Cisrhenani have their own article anyway. They should be mentioned briefly here, but they are clearly not the main subject of the article (whether you define "Germanic peoples" as an illusory concept or not).--Ermenrich (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
I'll let you guys hash this out. I don't have anything ready to go, so I'll just do copyediting and add sources where needed, whenever I have a few spare moments. I'd rather be writing, but just don't have the time to give it proper attention. May add a few bits here or there in the article, but mainly I want to see that what we do have is presentable, even it's doomed to be deleted. I'm always in favor of concision and removing redundancies. Happy to see the article moving forward, however haltingly.;-) Carlstak (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Germani and ancient Germans

"Ancient Germans", although I myself would use it, is a dated term that is likely to be misused or misunderstood by readers without clarification. Germani is not a term we should be encouraging readers to take as synonymous with "Germanic peoples". Srnec (talk) 17:12, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

We have sources using both though, which are cited in the article. They should be listed in the lead, as our readers will encounter them, and both redirect here.—Ermenrich (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
I've moved them down and given a bit of context.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:33, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Better, although I'm still not convinced we need anything else in bold other than the title. Note no Keltoi in the lead of Celts. I think that article's lead is a good guide to how this one's should be. Srnec (talk) 01:18, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
Is Keltoi a term widely used in modern scholarship to avoid confusion with modern Celts?--Ermenrich (talk) 21:03, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Language templates

I realize this is a very minor point, but I'm wondering why the article is using language templates with deprecated markup so that the given language doesn't render in the text, but the referenced foreign language word appears in parentheses as it would anyway. I generally don't care for the templates myself, but I don't see the need for non-functional ones. Carlstak (talk) 02:33, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I used to think that these templates are a matter of putting a technical burden on editors for the benefit of bot-assisted tasks like spell-checking, but apparently, there's more to it: Template:Lang#Rationale. At least the accessibility aspect makes sense as a real non-technical benefit for our readers. –Austronesier (talk) 06:56, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks, Austronesier. Now I see.;-) Carlstak (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

What's left to do

Besides the history section, I currently think that the section on "economy" and "kinship patterns" need the most work. They are cited but if you look at the cites they often don't say what they claim they say and/or the sources are sometimes not very good and generally not very recent. I intend to replace them entirely at some point (I might remove "kinship patterns" entirely), but I'm about to start a fairly heavy workload on Monday and have some other things that are bigger priorities off-wiki first.

Also "classical subdivisions" seems fine content-wise but is lacking citations.

What else is currently missing from the article that should be here?--Ermenrich (talk) 18:44, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I would support a section on art/material culture.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
Is length no issue? Even quite recently the length of the article, when it was shorter, was raised as one of the main concerns.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:23, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
I was under the impression that the article would be assembled here, then sections spun off into other articles or into new ones, with summaries left behind. I could contribute to a section on art/material culture, but wouldn't be able to do much for a week. Maybe someone else could start writing one. Seems to me such a section would be a likely candidate for a spin-off article. Carlstak (talk) 21:20, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
I don't think I ever saw it discussed so clearly, but OK.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:13, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Good guys vs. bad guys

It appears that this is a battle between "good guys" and "bad guys":

"Scholars have been cast — especially by Goffart and his allies — as being either the good ones or the bad ones." (Brink 2008:89, in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe)

This may explain a lot of the edit warring that has been going on in Germanic articles. It has been a battle betwen "Good" and "Evil". There are "heroes" here who fight on the side of Good vs the forces of Evil. What side is each of us on? I guess that I am rather on the Evil side here, a minion of the dark forces.--Berig (talk) 20:29, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

IMHO, there is a real complexity with the basic terminology and definitions and we need a more subtle, on-topic, discussion than this. IMHO one real cause of problems has been this bad practice of focussing on argumentative comments scholars make about each other in reviews and asides, even on BLP articles. We should use the most considered (and cited) remarks from works which are most focussed upon the topics we want to work on. There has also clearly been far too much emotive effort put into categorizing editors into sides ("revisionism" anyone?), and losing track of what we are supposed to be doing. For my part, I find the present "Grimm 2.0" attempt to define "real" Germanic peoples as Jastorf culture peoples creates a lack of coherence for the Lower Rhine and Low Countries which is an area I work on. It seems to imply that Herman the German's alliance were probably not really Germani (according to a "solution" to the definitions issue that Wikipedians have decided). It might be resolvable with careful wording here and there, but we've had trouble being subtle.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:43, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
The scholarly debate has been in parts quite toxic, especially in the 2000s. The recent years have seen more mature contributions. If there is an academic "battleground", WP is not the extension of it. The only meaningful way to ask "What side is each of us on?" is to inquire about personal preference (which all of us undoubtedly have—but everyone is entitled to keep to oneself), but not about what position one is going to "defend" here, which is a mockery of NPOV. Let's move on. –Austronesier (talk) 10:02, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
I fully agree, and that is the kind of response I was hoping for.--Berig (talk) 10:39, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
So we've had the Krakkos/Jordanes version, the Lancaster/Goffart version, and now the Ermenrich/Lancaster/Obenritter/Grimm version? A quarter of the article as it stands now was written by Andrew Lancaster. It seems to me that "complexity" and "subtlety" led to confusing, difficult to follow verbiage that left the reader effectively uninformed, much of it now removed, a great improvement. I thought we were making progress, but I still think that describing the positions of and disagreements among the scholars of different schools would help. I was hoping that material Berig might contribute could be incorporated, which the "different schools" approach would accommodate. No one needs to, or should, take sides, as Austronesier says. Carlstak (talk) 13:30, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
I think Carlstak is right about how we need to proceed. I think we need to keep this article's definition of Germanic peoples as open and traditional as possible while acknowledging the severe criticism that that definition has come under. A great deal of scholarship, particularly outside of late antique historians and some late antique archaeologists, continues to use the term Germanic and the article needs to reflect that. Even the people who want to stop using it make statements about how people keep using it. That's a good example of a negative wp:RS/AC if I ever saw one. The criticisms need to be taken seriously, but we can't overdo it. (And I think, aside from certain obviously rightwing-aligned scholars in Britain, most people are too scared off by the rhetoric coming from Goffart, Halsall and co. and the accusations made by e.g. Kulikowski that supporters of the Germanic concept, or even members of the Vienna School, are crypto-fascists to want to engage in the discussion).
At the same time, I agree with Andrew Lancaster that we can't focus too much on negative statements by particular scholars. That said, some additions to the "reception" section could go into the ire between the two sides, with e.g. Liebschuetz accusing anti-Germanic scholars of being funded by the EU and Kulikowski claiming that Heather is giving comfort to right-wing demagogues who wants to stop migration.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:10, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
A part of my intention with what I wrote is that we should be aware of our biasses in order to write NPOV, and above all we need to be aware of the ideological motivations of the scholars we refer to. I have proposed before that we write about the different schools and where they stand.--Berig (talk) 14:12, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
The article is being expanded, but I think a future challenge here is to make this article more coherent. In practice the "traditional" (Grimm, language) definition has been shattered into different patched-up versions (e.g. use Jastorf as a proxy for language) that don't all work for discussing every topic anymore (e.g the western area in the Julio-Claudian period is supposedly no longer Germanic?). For a normal reader it has to be difficult to follow how the implied definitions are constantly changing?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:35, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean "no longer". In the traditional definition, Celtic speakers were never considered "actually" Germanic. At any rate, they are mentioned and that section will eventually be brought up to snuff. I think the important thing is to acknowledge uncertainty about such things, not to dogmatically insist that because Julius Caesar identified some people who probably spoke a Celtic language as Germani that language was not an important factor in figuring out who was Germanic - Tacitus makes use of it, after all. The article on Kriegswesen in the GAO (from 2000) includes a statement about how we aren't sure whether the Cimbri and Teutones were Germanic according to modern "wissenschaftlich" definitions, whereas the Goths are certainly Germanic according to modern "wissenschaftlich", but not ancient definitions. There never was and is never going to be a 1 to 1 correspondence between how Caesar and co. used the word and how modern scholars want to use it. As I've said before, the only scholars who insist that there should be also don't want us to call anything Germanic anyway so it's hard to take the idea very seriously.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:50, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: I am sorry if this was already clear, but it does not seem it was: "no longer" [2] (which you asked about) references the fact that it is increasingly standard (e.g. in RLA) to admit that concerning even the largest and most iconic Julio-Claudian period Germanic peoples, like the Arminius alliance (Chatti, Sugambri etc), all early evidence points to a "Gaulish" culture on two sides of the Rhine, and none to "Germanic" (La Tène, Celtic names etc). This seems important because you seemed to suggest that such La Tène Germani are not really a core topic of the article [3], but that can't work. (Which article would then be their main article?) I think few scholars have ever been so serious about this linguistic definition that they'd say Varus was defeated by Gauls, and there would be uproar if we would change WP this way. In short, for this period and region, we are forced to admit that linguistic evidence, and the linguistic definition, are not how historians define who was Germanic in practice. If we fudge this problem, in order to be "traditional", then we will have to distort reality and imply things to our readers that are now known to be dubious. So I think this topic should be handled not by treating it as outside the article topic, nor by misleading our readers, but by writing in a way which is conscious and explicit about the fuzziness of the language situation during this important period, in this important region.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:40, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you got that idea - the fact that some names may be Celtic does not necessarily indicate a Celtic speaking population, as Pohl and others repeatedly note. We also have many names that are clearly Germanic, including those of Arminius's family. All the words that Tacitus gives as Germanic are in fact Germanic. GAO says that there's no "zwingende Etymologie" for Chatti, and I can find no mention of anything Celtic at all in the article on the Sicambri. Neumann actually argues that for the Germani Cisrhenani:
Sowohl unter den Ethnonymen wie – noch deutlicher – unter den Personennamen und Götternamen gibt es solche mit eindeutig germanischer Etymologie[29]. Bei den Ethnonymen überwiegen freilich die keltisch zu deutenden[30], bei den PN treten auch zahlreiche lateinische[31] auf. Bei den GN schließlich ist die interpretatio Romana mehrfach so eingetreten, daß der germanische Name als Beiname hinter einer lateinischen Gottesbezeichnung steht: Mars Halamardus, Hercules Magusanus. – Dieser Befund insgesamt läßt sich durchaus so auffassen, daß die germanischen Elemente Reste sind, sprachliche Relikte, die eine Bevölkerung sich bewahrt hat, welche einen vehementen Prozeß der Akkulturierung an ihre gallo-römische Umgebung durchläuft.
Unless you can find a statement of WP:RS/AC that "Germanic peoples" does not primarily equal "people who speak a Germanic language", and that Germanic does not primarily equal "related to people who speak a Germanic language", there's really no point in continuing to insisting on this point. The fact that this may be dubious in many cases is already in the article, sometimes to the point of discussion in the individual sections (e.g. law). The fact that our sources are contradictory is also clear. The fact that some scholars find these contradictions great enough that they want to abandon the use of the term altogether is also clear. But you seem to be ignoring statements such as this from Pohl 2004a: "Eine ganz andere Frage ist es, ob [die Germani cisrhenani] nach modernen Definitionen als Germanen gelten können" (p. 53). Historians tend to treat all of these peoples together, but that does not mean that aren't aware that some of them weren't "really" Germanic.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:41, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
You are working your way, and we'll see how it goes. Whatever terminology you use though, my point is about a period before linguistic evidence, and, IMHO our readers should not be led to believe that the anti-Varus alliance are called Germanic because of linguistic evidence; nor that the doubts about who spoke Germanic in this early period are limited to peoples west of the Rhine; nor indeed that the Lower Rhine was known to be a cultural or linguistic boundary in this period; nor should we imply that there is evidence of massive migration replacing the La Tène peoples of Caesar's time and later periods; nor indeed that the Germanic-speaking Franks must be migrants from the Elbe.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: maybe you should look at long footnote 3 in the old version (e.g. June). Also see the concept of polycentric origins found in Pohl (p.49) and other sources you cite.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:39, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Language

I won't even bother quoting Liebeschuetz - what he says is freely available online and anyone can check it and see that he says Tacitus mentions a common Germanic language. Pohl however, says: Die Peukiner waren in Sprache und Kultur wie die Germanen, ihr Aussehen entsprach aber eher den Sarmaten; trotz sprachlicher und kultureller Übereinstimmung konnten die Cotini und Osi keine Germanen sein, weil ihnen die germanische Freiheitsliebe fehlte; (The Peucini were like the Germani in speech and culture, but their appearance accorded rather with the Sarmatians; despite linguistic and cultural conformity [to the Germani], the Cotini and Osi could not be Germani, because they lacked the Germanic love of freedom). The source does not support that these people spoke "Pannonian" and "Gaulish".--Ermenrich (talk) 13:56, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: editorial judgement is needed. These two passing remarks (no argumentation, and in the case of Liebeschuetz, there is no citation) about Tacitus are errors. See Tacitus Germania 28 & 43. Also, they conflict with secondary sources more focused on these exact points (e.g. RLA), and as simple asides, they clearly can't be portrayed as part of some notable debate. WP has an established methodology for such cases. Even the best sources contain errors or odd passing statements, and we do not normally use those. Also see my edit summary concerning the can of worms "freedom loving", which you imply Tacitus wrote. (He just says paying tribute is not Germanic.) Simple solutions include deleting bits of this, weakening the wording, using other sources, or perhaps even lengthening the whole discussion. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:40, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
I don't think we can substitute our own readings of Tacitus for what Pohl and Liebeschuetz say - and Tacitus consistently includes Germanic words, so I'm not sure why you think that's an error. The general rule here, which you know, is to follow what reliable sources say about primary sources. Here we have the additional issue of translation from Latin to a modern language.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:06, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
I stand by the "common language" issue, since Tacitus most definitely does talk about the Germani having a common language as at least one criterion for determining Germanicness - however, do you have a source for the Osi and Cotini issue?--Ermenrich (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
Your reaction is surprising: 1. You are rewriting what I said: I colour some key words red above. Note sources (RLA, start with "Osi", "Cotini") but I was writing believing that you know, or could quickly confirm, that these passages where Tacitus mentions languages have been commented upon in print many times. I don't know of any other modern commentators who'd back-up these two wordings you want? Please be open to checking? 2. We do not have to cite every idea from every RS we use, obviously. We can't. We still have to make editing judgements. And best practice is to be aware of more sources than the one you use, to keep an eye out for anything unique to a single source, which is honestly what I believe you'll find these cases to be. 3. Translations do not require an RS, but there are enough translations around for these passages, so that should be no issue anyway?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:23, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
I am interested to learn where Tacitus mentions a single "common language". For now I believe that he only indicates that such a thing as a Suebian language and/or a language typical of Germania existed, and that some but not all Germani spoke one of them. AFAIK none of his comments about this relate to the regions west of the Elbe unfortunately.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:23, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
1) If you have access to the sources, then you should quote them here or cite them when making changes to what another RS says. It is incumbent on the editor bringing the argument to cite sources if they conflict with another source, not tell the person who cited the original source to do so. Nevertheless, I have now looked and so I will remove the incorrect information from Pohl. I'm not sure why you are describing these as "asides" that are being used to portray things as "part of a debate". The point is that Roman sources are inconsistent about how they use the term Germanic and Pohl cites this as an example (whether he's wrong or not). 2) Tacitus mentions language as one of the things that he uses to determine whether something is Germanic or not. Nowhere does it say that all his Germanic peoples spoke it (in fact, he explicitly seems to say some don't). Common does not mean universal. 3) Tacitus is 100% a wp:primary source - you're arguing against an interpretation of that source (that Tacitus mentions a common Germanic language) based on your own interpretation of the text.
In fact, the article at GAO on the Osi seems to prove the point on language: Tacitus says at first they are Germani and then that they aren't because they speak Pannonian An der ersten Stelle werden sie als Germanorum natione bezeichnet, an der zweiten heißt es Osos Pannonica lingua coarguit non esse Germanos. Diese Differenz der Aussagen hat dem Verständnis immer Schwierigkeiten gemacht (In the first passage they are called "of the nation of Germans", in the second "[their] Pannonian language proves that the Osi are not Germani". This difference between the statements has always caused difficulties in understanding). The same for the Cotini: Über ihre Sprache besitzen wir die eindeutige Aussage bei Tacitus a. O.: Cotinos Gallica ... lingua coarguit non esse Germanos. (We possess a clear statement about their language in Tacitus: [Their] Gallic language proves that the Cotini are not Germani") Apparently speaking Pannonian or Gaulish means you aren't Germanic according to Tacitus.
We are not the only people editing this page and I think input from others would be helpful.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:43, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
  • If I have sources? "based on your own interpretation of the text"? Why do you write such things? Reminder: Now you looked at a source I suggested from the beginning, and if we are going to be petty, I was 100% right and this was not just my opinion. :) FWIW I think Pohl just got his sentence mixed-up.
  • What to write: Your point 2 is correct, but it is the position you have been pushing the article away from: Pohl and almost all writers (Timpe etc) use these passages to show that Tacitus did NOT use language in a simple way to define who was Germanic. Although he indicated language was a factor, it was only one factor and he never states that there is ONE Germanic language. I think we can keep it relatively short. But if you want to discuss unusual positions it gets more complicated and controversial, and they can't be presented in WP voice.
  • You oversimplify on one thing: Tacitus says the Osi both are (despite their language) and are not (because of their language) Germanic, in the two different passages. So, as the secondary sources point out, the "proof" of Tacitus was apparently not definitive for him.
  • ONLY Liebeschuetz tries to claim there was one shared shared language. But you should read his whole chapter, not only p.97 with the most over-simplified statement and no citations. He cites Germania 43&46 on pp.94-5, where he also adds that the language might have been related dialects and shows that he has actually also using Isidore. Clearly he is just stretching the same passages Pohl and all others look at.
  • Ermenrich, you went to great lengths to force me to promise not to answer you at length here anymore, and since then you've constantly written long posts which mis-state my arguments, imply that I have no sources, and bait me to give more detailed answers which you know full well I would much prefer to do. But why is it so important to you to insist on cherry-picking on this relatively clear issue? You seem to be desperate to find a way to bend our article towards Liebeschuetz's "revisionist" (so to speak) position?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:14, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
I have neither misstated your argument nor said you do not have sources. I have said that if you have (one has) sources, it is incumbent on that person to post what they say, not tell the person who has already provided a source to look them up themselves. This strikes me as just being polite.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
You seem hellbent on removing any reference to the idea that the Germani (or many of the Germani) had a common language. And yet we know that many of them did, because of the existence of the Germanic languages, which were certainly spoken by peoples identified by the Romans as Germani (see also the chief counterargument to the nonexistence of the Germani, cited from the GAO article on the subject). According to the GAO article on the Osi, many scholars take the statement about the Osi being Germanic as a mistake (I assume by a copyist). Tacitus says no such thing about the Cotini, just that they are excluded from being Germanic by their language. No one is saying that language was definitive, merely that it was certainly a factor that Tacitus made use of. I'm not sure why including this bothers you so much.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:14, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
You're second last sentence is fine, but similar to my edits which you have acted increasingly aggressively against with edits like this [4]. So, don't you seem hell-bent on using cherry picking to make WP say that there was a single Germanic language uniting the Germani in the period between Caesar and Tacitus? Doesn't this make a mess of the modern Jastorf proxy for Germanic languages, and take us back to the 19th century ideas that languages are permanently connected to the names of peoples and can only move by migration? This twists the sources badly, and leaves a large (western) part of the Germani in a grey zone. And who argues that "Germani" did not exist in this period? Your post is quite confusing, and I do not know which counterargument you are referring to. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
Your ANI complaint was, erm, clearly not intended to encourage polite discussion. Being polite means longer posts. You can't have it both ways. OTOH aren't you being a bit over-dramatic? We've both being referring to the same set of online sources, and so we've both been telling each other to look-up things (as you do below), because we can both click on the links and get there quickly. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
Have you ever for one moment wondered why you arouse such animosity, Andrew, as was expressed in so many of the responses to the ANI complaint against you? We've all seen how you operate, as demonstrated when you were harassing EdJohnston, who has shown remarkable patience with you, on his talk page and he asked you to keep your posts brief, and you responded with even longer posts. Why don't you stop playing the martyr and cut out the crap? We're all fed up with it. I don't think I've ever encountered anyone, anywhere, less self-aware than you. In short, knock it off. Carlstak (talk) 22:26, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
How long have you been waiting for me to write a post long enough to start this nonsense again Carlstak? At least you've demonstrated my point.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
Like I said, knock it off, Mr. Gigabyte of this page. Carlstak (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Some quotes from reliable secondary sources on the languages of Germanic peoples:

  • "Germanic tribes... did indeed possess both core traditions and a sense of shared identity, and... these had evolved well before their entry into the Roman world... [T]he Germanic tribes (Germanicae gentes) spoke the same language... Caesar and Tacitus certainly thought that the people they called Germans shared elements of a common culture. Tacitus certainly knew that they shared a language... [E]ven if the different gentes did not share a sense of German identity, they did share a language, or at least spoke closely related dialects... That is why the concept of ‘Germanic’ remains useful, even indispensable... Some traditions, especially language, all the tribes had in common." - Liebeschuetz, Wolf (2015). East and West in Late Antiquity: Invasion, Settlement, Ethnogenesis and Conflicts of Religion. Impact of Empire. Vol. 20. Brill. pp. xxv, 85–100. ISBN 978-90-04-28952-9. ISSN 1572-0500.

  • "Caesar (Bellum Gallicium 1. 47), Tacitus (Germania 43) and Suetonius (4. 47) all refer to Germanic tribes speaking native languages which differed from those of the Gauls, and the philological evidence for the Germanic-ness of this language is provided by the names of persons, deities and places recorded on the Rhineland frontier." - Clay, Cheryl Louise (2008). "Developing the 'Germani' in Roman Studies". Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal. 1. Open Library of Humanities: 131–150. doi:10.16995/TRAC2007_131_150. Retrieved January 17, 2020.

  • "Tacitus... considers Germanic to be a bundle of characteristics, the most significant of which is language. If a population lacks some of these characteristics, he hesitates to call them Germani... The modern expression "Germani" applies exclusively to "members of the same linguistic family" rather than to communities with an identical origin or self- identity or religion..." - Reichert, Hermann (2002). "Nordic language history and religion". In Bandle, Oskar [in German] (ed.). The Nordic Languages. Vol. 1. Walter de Gruyter. p. 390. ISBN 3110148765.

  • "Germani – Collective name for a series of groups speaking related languages." - Heather, Peter (2007). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford University Press. p. 467. ISBN 978-0195325416.

  • "[T]here evidently were widespread similarities which made the Germani seem to be a recognizable group of peoples in the eyes of Greeks and Romans. These included related languages and dialects, as well as other cultural traits...". - James, Simon; Krmnicek, Stefan, eds. (2020). The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Roman Germany. Oxford University Press. p. XVII. ISBN 0199665737.

  • "[I]f we go back in philological history, we can, at least in theory, find some kind of common Germanic origin, get closer perhaps to the origins of that branch of the Indo-European language family whose speakers are known by the useful Roman name of Germani... How, then, does one investigate the concept of what is Germanic? The word is rooted in language and ethnology, of course, rather than in geography, and the original homeland, the Urheimat of the Germani is not Germany in any modern sense, but (as far as it can be determined at all) probably what is now Scandinavia and the North Sea and Baltic coastal areas. ". - * Murdoch, Brian; Read, Malcolm, eds. (2004). Early Germanic Literature and Culture. Boydell & Brewer. p. 1. ISBN 157113199X.

  • "[W]e approach the world of the Germani from the language which they themselves used... - Green, Dennis Howard (2004). Language and History in the Early Germanic World. Cambridge University Press. p. 2.

Krakkos (talk) 10:42, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

The intro to this thread was rather abrupt but FWIW the 2 issues I was being challenged about were 1. whether Tacitus reports the Osi and Cotini as Germanic speakers, as an odd sentence in Pohl seems to say, and 2. whether Tacitus says that "his" Germani were united by a shared language, as claimed by Liebeschuetz. On 2, the relevant wording Ermenrich was insisting on were [5] [Tacitus in his Germania (c. 98 CE), depicted the Germani as sharing elements of a common culture,] with Tacitus also making reference to a common language. IMHO I've now shown that Tacitus does not do either, according to authorities on the relevant passages in Tacitus. T actually refers to a distinct northeastern part of Germania called Suebia (Germania: 43 "dirimit enim scinditque Suebiam continuum montium iugum"; 45/6 "Hic Suaebiae finis"), and Suebian language. (There were also non-Suebian Germani in the west such as those involved in the Arminius and Batavia rebellions. T never discusses their language.) Highly cited authorities on the relevant "Suebenbegriff" passages in Tacitus (including those cited by Ermenrich, Pohl, Liebeschuetz) include Dieter Timpe and Allan Lund.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Then how do you explain the quotes above added by Krakkos that say that Tacitus does discuss language? Besides Liebeschuetz we have Hermann Reichert. Clay makes the same point, even citing Tacitus 43. You meanwhile keeping referring vaguely to scholars names but have not provided a reference that says that Tacitus does not discuss language.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
I have never said that Tacitus does not discuss Germanic languages as one criterion among several! Of course he does, and I have said so many times? We discussed it. You've tweaked my wordings. And yes, all the secondary sources are commenting on the Germania (28, 43, 45, 46) which are relatively simple passages that don't allow much room. BTW Clay also writes "languages", so on the key point you used Liebeschuetz for when you adapted the older wording, she does NOT agree. I am now really wondering what is going on here. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:58, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
I think you've missed some of the detail in those citations, so I will quote again in brief with some bolding:

"Caesar (Bellum Gallicium 1. 47), Tacitus (Germania 43) and Suetonius (4. 47) all refer to Germanic tribes speaking native languages which differed from those of the Gauls, and the philological evidence for the Germanic-ness of this language is provided by the names of persons, deities and places recorded on the Rhineland frontier."

So the "languages" are varieties of Germanic, which Clay then calls "this language", singular. You're also ignoring Reichert who specifically says

"Tacitus... considers Germanic to be a bundle of characteristics, the most significant of which is language.

So yes, both references support the statement by Liebeschuetz. Still waiting on a source that says the opposite.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:32, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
So why did you accuse me of saying that Tacitus does not discuss language?? And why is this discussion still going? Neither of your quotes are from Tacitus commentaries and the contested point is about Tacitus. Clay ("languages ... this language") is a collective singular and there is no more about Tacitus. She also agrees with me that the question of how/when Germanic language came westwards is "controversial", and her specific argument is that it came to specific Germani first (not all). So that disagrees with Liebschuetz, as did the information about the Osi and Aesti, and as confirmed by secondary sources commenting on those passage. If we want to discuss a controversy we need to present both sides. You want to put the most extreme wording you could find in WP voice (even Liebeschuetz waters down his wording in other passages). Your Reichert quote has an abstract singular: language as a "characteristic". That's perfectly in line with my explanations to you. The article is not otherwise about this topic at all. BTW it is not disputed that some authors DEFINE Germani as Germanic-speaking people. It is hard to know what can possibly ever convince you. But just in case a common sense question helps: if there was one language uniting all Germani, why do you think Tacitus talked about Suebian languages?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:41, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
Gee, I don't know why we're still having this conversation. Could it be because you keep saying Tacitus doesn't say something three reliable secondary sources say he says? We have three sources saying that Tacitus regarded language as an important feature of being a "Germanus" and two directly saying that this was a Germanic language in the modern sense (something which the current text does not say). I don't find your arguments for why we should disregard what is said in reliable sources convincing, particularly when you still haven't provided a secondary reliable source saying that Tacitus did not regard the Germani as having had some sort of common language.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:17, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
XXXXXX
Carlstak, I have sent you a personal message about your comment.--Berig (talk) 10:45, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Berig, I'm removing the offending comment, which Andrew has asked me to remove. I've left the Xs in its place rather than striking it out. I agree that it was out of line. Carlstak (talk) 11:38, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Ermenrich, what's now clear: 1. You are reverting to insisting on mis-stating why your edit is contested, despite me objecting to previous mis-statements. See WP:BURDEN. 2. You've failed to find any secondary source to support your putting that one assertion of Liebeschuetz in WP voice (nor any passage in Tacitus which he could have used). 3. You are now using the strategy of demanding that I find a source that specifically says your wording is wrong. Your contested edit says that Tacitus says there was ONE SINGLE Germanic language which was shared by all the peoples he called the Germani. Not only can we see this is not true just by looking at Tacitus, but we've seen that secondary sources that comment on this topic say that Tacitus used language (abstract/collective singular) as one criterion among several, allowing for exceptions, and you and I have also recently discussed how modern secondary sources think many of the Tacitus Germani probably did not speak Germanic in this period (e.g. Sugambri). These disagree with Liebeschuetz. I doubt anyone will bother publishing a rebuttal of a single sentence in Liebeschuetz, especially given that Liebeschuetz himself does not insist on that strong wording throughout his article/chapter. FWIW, what is easy to source is that if Tacitus had made such a claim, then modern secondary sources (like Clay, Pohl p.47 etc) disagree with him. Your added words [6] represent deliberate cherry-picking, i.e. WP:UNDUE, so these words remain contested.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:51, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

What does everyone else think?

@Bloodofox, Berig, Alcaios, Austronesier, Srnec, Carlstak, and Krakkos: While I'm sure Andrew and I can post back and forth for ever, nothing is going to be accomplished. So I ask the rest of you: is the bolded part of this text

Caesar and, following him, the Roman writer Tacitus in his Germania (c. 98 CE), depicted the Germani as sharing elements of a common culture, with Tacitus also making reference to a common language.

Currently cited to Liebeschuetz 2015 p. 97 undue as Andrew has claimed here and in his recent tagging?

The passage in Liebeschuetz is:

It is, in my view further supported by these two passages from other sources:

Andrew argues that these last two sources actually disagree with Liebeschuetz and that Liebeschuetz represents an "extreme" perspective. I leave it to the rest of you to decide who is right.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:17, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The two last sources obviously support Liebeschuetz.--Berig (talk) 13:39, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that they clearly support Liebeschuetz. I see nothing "extreme" about his view. Carlstak (talk) 16:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Comment: if an editor maintains that the sources don't support Liebeschuetz, it is a clear case of WP:NOTHERE.--Berig (talk) 19:54, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
What?? Are you joking? Great way to gather feedback ... if WP were a cult. At the start of a call for feedback an involved admin announces that if anyone disagrees with their preference, they should not be on Wikipedia! Why bother asking for feedback? What is going on here? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:57, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Andrew on this point, Berig - the comment seems like it could hinder honest feedback.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I am probably tired.--Berig (talk) 21:17, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
The Reichert quotation surprises me. "The most significant of which is language" is about the opposite of what I thought of Tacitus' Germania. I'm also unsure why Liebeschuetz thinks "Tacitus certainly knew that they shared a language" (singular). Tacitus certainly provides evidence of Germanic language(s) spoken by his Germani, but where does he refer to a common language or a group of related languages? Take his treatment of the Aesti: they call amber glesum but their language is more like that of the Britons than the Suevi. My understanding is better summed up by this quote:

  • "Tacitus, however, says nothing of a Germanic language, and it is certainly not a major distinguishing characteristic of his Germani." — Patrick J. Geary, Language and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Brandeis University Press, 2013), p. 4

So, as regards the text in bold ("with Tacitus also making reference to a common language"), I think we should modify it in at least two ways. We should not refer to Tacitus "making reference", since Liebeschuetz infers only that he "knew". Given the nature of language, we should not read too much into Liebeschuetz's use of the singular "language". I'm not sure what we're left with after that. The truth, I think, is that modern scholars care about language in a way Tacitus did not (and could not). It is they who conclude from the evidence Tacitus provides that he is speaking primarily of a linguistically distinct group. Srnec (talk) 23:01, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for providing a source Srnec. Let's see what else we can find and what other editors think (I'd like to reduce my involvement in the discussion from making arguments). (FYI, it's Germania 43 that this all rests on as far as I know).--Ermenrich (talk) 23:36, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
@Srnec:, as I mentioned above, L cites ch. 43 and 46 in a footnote on p.95. I agree, Reichert's comment is unusually "close" to L's position, but IMHO it is still incompatible with it, because he admits that there were Germani who did not meet some of the several criteria. He also does NOT say there was ONE language. Does that make sense to you? Did you look at Clay?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:50, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

In a conversation with Andrew Lancaster in my talk page, I have made a point that the textual record about Germanic peoples in Antiquity is finite and quite limited, and consequently historical scholarly exegesis engages to a good deal in endless mastication of and speculation about the same material (in complete contrast to the archaeological record, where analysis can hardly catch up with new discoveries). This also includes moot extrapolations such as "Tacitus certainly knew" (Liebeschuetz). I consider Geary's assessment more faithful to the Tacitus text. A good starting point for rephrasing is Clay's careful statement which clearly separates between explicit negative characterization by Classical primary sources (Germanic tribes speaking non-Gaulish lects), and modern linguistic analysis of onomastic evidence (plus very few lexical items) that can be gleaned from these sources. I won't go into Liebeschuetz's singular of "language". Without Swadesh lists and sociolinguistic surveys at hand, this is a bold claim about the Germanic dialect continuum (or continua) in the Classical period ;) –Austronesier (talk) 07:28, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

PS: Note how Clay flip-flops between "languages", "language" and "dialects" in the same paragraph. This clearly indicates we shouldn't give too much weight to these semantic details when made by non-specialists (i.e. non-linguists). –Austronesier (talk) 07:49, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Would something like “Caesar, Tacitus, and Strabo all mention the Germani speaking languages distinct from Gaulish” be an acceptable compromise?—Ermenrich (talk) 12:04, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
We should note that Suetonius talked about "the Germanic language", and that Caligula forced a group of Gauls to learn that language in order to present them as Germani:
We should also note, as Liebeschuetz, Reichert and Clay says, that Caesar and Tacitus were aware that the Germani had their own language(s), that Tacitus considered language to be a defining characteristic of the Germani, and that modern philology evidences that this language was Germanic. Krakkos (talk) 13:19, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: yes, that is the kind of wording I would prefer. You are adding the Caesar and Suetonius, presumably because of Clay? Those are less frequently cited and a bit more "fleeting" but I have no big problem with that. @Krakkos: that's a good observation about Suetonius and I also noticed that translation, but the problem is that this "the" is coming from the old school translator. The translator could also have written "a Germanic language". The difference is not possible in Latin, which is here [7]. FWIW, here is a recent translation which uses no article, just "German". A modern German edition on De Gruyter says "sie mußten auch noch Germanisch lernen und barbarische Namen annehmen". --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:51, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
If the main issue is language vs. languages I'm fine with any wording that makes it clear that Roman authors (who, except for Caesar, were actually never on the frontier as far as I know, though see Rübekeil in Interrogating the Germanic on the apparent accuracy of their linguistic transcriptions of Germanic words) perceived the Germani as speaking a language/languages other than Gaulish. I'm neutral on whether we need to include that modern scholars identify this/these language(s) as Germanic on the limited lexical and onomastic evidence - that may be better handled in the language section.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:00, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
Next to Clay, another good template to follow (unless you really want to name Caesar and Tacitus in this context) is in James & Krmnicek's introduction to The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Roman Germany, cited above by Krakkos:

  • Nevertheless there evidently were widespread similarities which made the Germani seem to be a recognizable group of peoples in the eyes of Greeks and Romans. These included related languages and dialects, as well as other cultural traits famously set out by Tacitus in his Germania.

Here's a link via WP Library[8], if you want to read the full text (I especially recommend the two paragraphs preceding this quote for inspiration how to present this topic, including the perennial question of etic and emic identity). –Austronesier (talk) 14:35, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
Ermenrich, Not necessarily relevant to the wording, but I do not think the only question is whether T specified a plural or singular (he did neither). The other Q has been whether he said ALL Germani spoke one of these non-Gaulish languages. He did not, and in fact he said almost nothing about the language of the western Germani where a Celtic-associated La Tène culture dominated until the time of Tacitus (e.g. Roymans p.29). Clay writes about that region, for example, and accepts that some of Tacitus's Germani probably spoke Gaulish as well, at least in the early phase of the Caesar to Tacitus period. That is not a radical claim of course but she clearly thinks it is consistent with Tacitus.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:18, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: Where does Clay accept[] that some of Tacitus's Germani probably spoke Gaulish as well? I can't find such a statement there from a first – admittedly not all too thorough – reading. Well, and if she really does so: since you ascribe so much exegetic force to Clay, are you willing to follow her too in two other less peripheral points? Thus 1) her main proposition, i.e. the bold claim that the adoption of the exonym Germanus by individual mercenaries in Roman service is sufficient proof to conclude that their home communities self-identified in the same way; and 2) her cooptation of the long-debunked German 19th-century folk etymology of Ger- in Germani as "spear"? If so, I see you in a completely new light... –Austronesier (talk) 19:38, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
I would also like to see an explicit quote on Tacitus saying that some of his Germani spoke Gaulish. We discuss the fact that modern scholars think the Germani cisrhenani may have spoken a Celtic language in a separate paragraph at the moment, as well as the arbitrariness of the Rhine boundary at the beginning of the section. While nearly every scholar does discuss this, I have yet to see one explicit use this information to reject the notion that the Romans perceived the Germani as speaking a language different from the Gauls. I'd favor citing the Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology on Roman Germani on this.
Anyway, as I have pointed out before, we cannot use our own interpretation of what Tacitus says. We need to follow what secondary sources interpret him as saying. So saying "Tacitus does not say that" isn't an argument if we have RS saying he does.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:35, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
I'll answer on your talk pages, because I don't think these questions and challenges to me help the thread. But Ermenrich I think you are misrepresenting me in several ways.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:23, 1 September 2021 (UTC) (Just to make sure it does not look like I am hiding it, I've admitted Austronesier has a point about one particular statement I made. But I don't think it changes the basic fact that Clay does not support Liebeschuetz.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Ermenrich, my concern would be with any statement which insists, in WP voice, that Tacitus describes the Germani as ALL speaking a SINGLE language, or indeed any statement that he said NONE of them speak Gaulish. Tacitus does not use the modern linguistic definition to "define" Germani, and we've seen many secondary sources which insist on this. I think our wording should also not conflict with Geary's quote which Srnec found?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The issue is not whether any or every Germanus spoke the same language. The issue is whether the romans perceived them as doing so. Keep in mind we mention that the Romans regarded the Sarmatians, Goths, and Huns as speaking one language, although they spoke Iranian, Germanic and possibly Turkic respectively. We have several sources besides Gerry that say that they did regard there as having been some sort of “Germanic “ language(s), and this should be included.

Perhaps Austronesier could propose a compromise wording that could finally bring this long winded discussion to a conclusion? I think all parties respect his editing.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:59, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Ermenrich, I'd also be interested in A's proposal, but the issue in the sentence as it now stands is neither of those things, but rather it is about what Tacitus wrote? If you want to change it to "the Romans" then, my concern is the same, because Tacitus is the main Roman source for this (e.g. in the polemic of Liebeschuetz). "Several sources" are not enough to define a field consensus and put a statement known to be controversial (e.g. the Geary quote) into WP voice. We have to use some judgement to decide how much we want to write in this article, and if we keep it short, we should keep the wording very neutral. It is for example true that several texts indicate the existence of language (one or more languages, because the Romans never specified) considered typical of Germani and different from Gaulish. Unless we attempt to include a major discussion about the Roman definition, including discussion about how Germanic moved west to the Rhine into the La Tène area, I personally think that should be good neutral base line for our short summary.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:45, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Andrew, you keep acting like this information is not in the article when it is:

Although Caesar described the Rhine as the border between Germani and Celts, he also describes a group of people he identifies as Germani who live on the west bank of the Rhine in the northeast of Gall, the Germani cisrhenani.[1] It is unclear if these Germani spoke a Germanic language, and they may have been Celtic speakers instead. Some of their names do not have good Celtic or Germanic etymologies, leading to the hypothesis of a third Indo-European language in the area between the rivers Meuse and Rhine.[2] According to Tacitus, it was among this group, specifically the Tungri, that the name Germani first arose, and was spread to further groups.[3] Tacitus continues to mention Germanic tribes on the west bank of the Rhine in the period of the early Empire, such as the Tungri, Nemetes, Ubii, and the Batavi.[4]

Given that this is already in the article, I'm not sure why you keep insisting that we include it. If you specifically want a statement about it being unclear when the Germanic languages spread to the Rhine, go ahead and add it there rather than holding a completely unrelated part of the article hostage.
Furthermore, Tacitus is not the only (primary) source, we have mentioned the notion of a Germanic idiom in Caesar, Suetonius, and Strabo as well. As I've said, perception is not reality. I don't see you objecting to including information on the Romans thinking that the Sarmatians and Goths spoke a "Gothic" or "Scythian" language. We need to follow what secondary sources say, not your personal reading of Tacitus.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:00, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Here's my idea of it, as requested:
  • Classical authors rarely address the question of language. For Tacitus (Germania 43, 45, 46), language was a characteristic, but not defining feature of the Germanic peoples (Pohl 2004a:9-10). In the few passages where Tacitus and other Roman authors (Caesar, Suetonius) mention the language (or languages) of Germanic tribes or individuals, it is described as distinct from Gaulish (Clay 2008).
I have to admit that "characteristic, but not defining" came first, and I have subsequently looked for a source that best fits my personal interpretation of Tacitus. This is actually bad practice, and I leave it to you to decide whether my reading of Tacitus and my reading this into Pohl are adequate. With Clay, I have only made a slight adjustment to accommodate the fact that Caesar only talks about Ariovistus (hence, "individuals"). –Austronesier (talk) 14:42, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Is there any special reason we need to cite Clay? I think that source was just brought here for the talk page discussion and I did not think anyone was arguing that it was important new information for this sentence. More importantly, this wording still means that all Germani spoke a non Gaulish language, and the last sentence seems to insist there was one language (it). In answer to Ermenrich, we have secondary sources which say the Germani on the east of the Rhine probably also spoke Gaulish at first. Between the time of Caesar and Tacitus (the Arminius period) Germanic languages were supposedly moving west. No one knows the details. I mentioned Roymans and Toorians above for example. Toorians sees the Chatti as a Celtic people who became Germanic dominated relatively early, but it is just an example of the fact that modern scholars do not believe in a Rhine linguistic boundary.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:17, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
The last sentence seems to insist there was one language No. Really, no. Ermenrich long has moved on, and you're still beating the same horse carcass. (What's a world without strawmen?) Replace "it" with "their speech" or anything.
Any other source than Clay that describes the way how Germanic sermo actually appears in classical texts (viz. in every instance as non-Gaulish) would do. Anything else belongs somewhere else in the article, as already explained by Ermenrich. –Austronesier (talk) 15:35, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Proposal: A small number of passages by Tacitus and other Roman authors (Caesar, Suetonius) mention Germanic tribes or individuals speaking a language distinct from Gaulish. Any problem with that? It is not perfect for anyone. The aim I have is to leave all the arguments out of this passing reference.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
That's fine, but we should additionally give some weight to the fact that the Peucini sermone, cultu, sede ac domiciliis ut Germani agunt. Thus one tribe could speak like the Germani without conclusively being Germanic in Tacitus's classification. For Tacitus, there was a Germanic way of speech, which modern linguists equate with a bundle of closely related languages, most likely (based on our knowledge from similar loosely-defined networks of ethnolinguistic groups all over the world, like the Akan, Mizo, or Malays) a dialect continuum. It was just one criterion to include a gens among the Germani, and of course only imperfectly overlapping with other criteria, per Pohl (Ermenrich, please translate, I'm lazy right now): weil es universell anwendbare eindeutige und objektive Merkmale eben nicht gibt und die Zuordnung zu ethnischen Verbänden immer nur auf Grund einer bewußten oder unbewußten Abwägung von Kriterien erfolgt. This applies to Tacitus as well as to modern scholarship.
Since both Reichert and Geary bother to mention language as a characteristic, we should also do so when talking about Tacitus. They only differ in the weight attributed to it, ranging between "most significant" and "not major"; to this I could add Pohl's "nicht entscheidend" ('not decisive'). Personally, I go with Geary and Pohl, who only downplay the role of linguistic cohesiveness, but NB do not ignore it. That's why I still argue to include something like For Tacitus (Germania 43, 45, 46), language was a characteristic, but not defining feature of the Germanic peoples (Pohl 2004a:9-10). –Austronesier (talk) 10:24, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
All those remarks sound reasonable to me. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:39, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Are we agreed on something like: A small number of passages by Tacitus and other Roman authors (Caesar, Suetonius) mention Germanic tribes or individuals speaking a language distinct from Gaulish. For Tacitus (Germania 43, 45, 46), language was a characteristic, but not defining feature of the Germanic peoples (Pohl 2004a:9-10). (I just took Andrew's statement and Austronesier's last call for an addition and put them together). Or what's the developing consensus on wording?--Ermenrich (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Sounds ok to me. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:29, 5 September 2021 (UTC) BTW on a related side issue can we please keep references to the primary sources in cases like this where the secondary literature is about a specific text? I'm also a bit concerned about us switching to penguin editions when there are better online options we can link to (and we did not use the penguin editions). I prefer Perseus to Loeb links when available because Loeb is not open to the public.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Pohl 2004a, pp. 52–53.
  2. ^ Pohl 2004a, pp. 53–54.
  3. ^ Pohl 2004a, pp. 54–55.
  4. ^ Pohl 2004a, p. 19.

"The Pre-Christian Religions of the North" (Brepols, 2020)

So, a few colleagues and I have been reading the four volumes of The Pre-Christian Religions of the North (Brepols, 2020), which contains extensive material on the pre-Christian religions of the ancient Germanic peoples.

This is certainly one of the most monumental works in the field on the ancient Germanic peoples, featuring contributions from John Lindow, Rudolf Simek, Judy Quinn, Jens Peter Schjødt, Anders Andrén, Terry Gunnell, and numerous other contemporary scholars. It's also about as cutting edge scholarship on the ancient Germanic peoples and their neighbors as one can find, surveying essentially every aspect of ancient Germanic studies.

I'm not seeing any mention about any notable controversy about the concept of the ancient Germanic peoples so far. I also notice that Pohl is cited once and Goffart is neither cited nor mentioned a single time throughout the book's 2,121 pages. Has anyone here spent time with this? :bloodofox: (talk) 02:42, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Are any of them historians? I’m not sure how much attention religious studies is paying to the controversy.—Ermenrich (talk) 02:50, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
It's a book about the pre-Christian beliefs of the Norse people(s) from the time when they actively enter history. This is beyond the definition of ancient Germanic peoples by most – including "conservative" – scholars. So there is naturally little overlap with Goffart's research area. But it's not true that the book is blind to the general controversy–it contains prime scholarschip, after all. Quoting Julia Zernack in Vol. II, chapter 10.1:

The subject of the present handbook — the ‘Pre-Christian Religions of the North’ — has traditionally also been referred to as ‘Germanic religion’ (sometimes ‘religion of the Teutons’, ‘Germanic paganism’), ‘Germanic mythology’ or ‘Germanic religion and myth’. These composite terms pose terminological issues, not least because they make reference to the decidedly ill-defined and moreover ideologically weighted concept of ‘Germanic’, which has more or less lost its scholarly value as an analytical category.
The concept of ‘Germanic religion’ is not completely unknown in other academic languages, but the relevant studies refrain from assuming the comprehensive perspective implied by the term ‘Germanic’ when they in fact only discuss the myth and religion of Northern Europe (e.g., Turville-Petre 1964; also Böldl 2013), Anglo-Saxon paganism (e.g., Stanley 2000; Wilson 1992) or Old Norse religion (Steinsland 2005) respectively, though Ewing (2008) provides a counter-example. The terms used are rarely identical in meaning; there is no internationally consistent nomenclature for the manifold historical manifestations of pre-Christian religions in Northern Europe. (p. 551–552, volume 2)

The religion of the Norsemen surely has inherited much from a common (Northwest) Germanic source, as can be seen from the big overlap with the more fragmentarily attested beliefs of the West Germanic area, but it is not the ancient Germanic religion. It is definitely important to include what is known about pre-Christian beliefs of Germanic-speaking peoples in this aricle, but simple extrapolation of Norse faith back into the common Germanic period is not what modern scholars do. Norse beliefs are an important piece in the puzzle, but they are a topic of their own right, not just a tool to supplement the lacunae in our knowledge of the Germani in the Roman record (based on the implicit, and IMO degrading idea that their religion was entirely static). That's what 19th and early 20th century scholars did. –Austronesier (talk) 08:13, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
Uhhh, are you confusing these four volumes with something else? Specifically, these are the books we're discussing. As anyone can tell by looking at the book's table of contents (or better yet reading the contributions themselves, which I'm currently venturing), there's a reason these four volumes are called The Pre-Christian Religions of the North and not The Pre-Christian Religion(s) of the *Norse*. And that's because these four volumes cover the Bronze Age up until Christianization and all the way into the 19th century—with a scope of the entire ancient Germanic culture sphere—and beyond. For example, from Lindow on page 104:

It has long been understood that even when the Indo-European daughter languages have words that are formally comparable, the concept of reconstruction is fraught, since each word’s semantics depend so heavily on cultural parameters (Untermann 1985). Nevertheless, comparison within both the Indo-European and Germanic areas allows helpful reconstruction. For example, Émile Benveniste shows that although the etyma were different, several Indo-European languages show a two-part division in adjectives for the sacred, as in, for example, Latin sanctus and sacer (1969: ii, 179–207). Within Germanic the distinction apparently existed as well and was captured in such pairs as the Gothic forms hailags and weihs. furthermore, *hailagaz (also found in the runic corpus) seems originally to have had a connection with words meaning ‘hale, healthy’ (Benveniste 1969: ii, 186–87), and it is not inconceivable that the two notions originally informed one another. Such an interaction may be visible in the medical instruments found at Helgö, which suggest that a site containing the derivative of *hailagaz in its first component may have been a place both for healing and for cult activity (Frölich 2011; see also Zachrisson 2004a, 2004b). Wulfila’s preference for weihs in his New Testament translation may also support this possibility, since Christian doctrine does not conjoin medical treatment on earth with God’s holiness. (Lindow 2020: 104)

Again, this is typical of discussion throughout much of these four meaty volumes. There are chapters on the early Germanic Matronæ, frequent discussion of objects like the Nordendorf fibula brooch, frequent mention of Jordanes and Procopius, and the Germani. Lots and lots of discussion on Tacitus. This is a comparative work centered on the ancient Germanic peoples, with a particular focus on their northermost extension (as is just about always the case from a comparative context due to the volume and value of the Old Norse corpus). Glance at Andrén's "The Spatial and Temporal Timeframe" and Schjødt's "Continuity and Break: Indo-European" alongside his "Continuity and Break: Germanic". Simek's chapter on "Encounters: Roman" is entirely about early Germanic contact with the Roman Empire, Słupecki's contribution about the relationship between the Slavs and the ancient Germanic peoples opens with "Slavs and Germanic peoples have been in contact ‘since the beginning of time’, which is natural considering the common Indo-European origin of both ethnic groups". There's a chapter dedicated to the Matronæ. In fact, you might want to just glance at the index in volume four.
Second, exactly where are you finding this quote from Julia Zernack? Zernack is not a contributor in any of the book's four volumes and, according to volume four's index, Zernack is only cited twice (p. 1233 & 1375, cf. p. 2119). Those two citations are on the subject of Heimdallr and Old Norse prose. The pages you mention discuss nothing similar (volume II's pages 551-552 fall in the middle of Schjødt's "Kings and Rulers"). So what's that about?
As another example (of the very many I could paste here), here's an actual quote from the book from Schjødt's "Continunity and Break: Germanic", specifically discussing Tacitus's Germania:

With the few examples presented here, the fundamental problem regarding the literary sources written by Greek and Latin authors seems quite clear: Because it is very often hard to prove that the Germani of the Early Iron Age shared rituals and mythic traits with the Scandinavians of much later times, does this mean that Tacitus and his colleagues from antiquity and the early Middle ages cannot be used as sources for Scandinavian religion? Definitely not! It only means that they, as with ethnographers of much later times, believed that it was possible to portray a religion that was not consistent as if it actually was. They had to generalize, as we all do when we attempt to characterize a people, not to speak of a whole group of peoples. Therefore, it is the task of the modern interpreter to go behind the texts and with an open mind attempt to analyse structures that may be tacit. The extreme position, for example, that the gods described by Tacitus were the ‘same’ as those of the scandinavians of the Viking age appears quite unrealistic, but the other extreme, that there was no continuity at all, is hardly better. The gods were by no means the ‘same’, but in certain respects they shared features, attributes, and functions to such a degree that it is hard to postulate that these are due to pure coincidence. Obviously, no text — not Tacitus’s works and no other texts, for that matter — should be taken at face value. in that sense, source criticism of the kind undertaken by Picard and many other highly qualified historians and philologists is always useful — and necessary. it only becomes problematic when it is assumed that there was ever an unambiguous reality that could have been grasped by the author of the source if he was only clever or honest enough. There was not, and the reality we attempt to reconstruct must reflect that.

As to the continuity problem, it should be emphasized that both the denial of any sort of continuity and the acceptance of every piece of information as an exact parallel to phenomena we know from a much later period are both unrealistic viewpoints. Not least archaeology seems to support that continuity as well as breaks in continuity characterized the pagan religion right from the beginning of the iron age and until the Christianization. (Schjødt 2020: 268)

Schjødt uses the phrase Germanic peoples throughout this section. The phrase and Germanic-this-or-that can be found throughout these volumes in thousands of instances and all from the best-known and most highly cited scholars in the field—and in the year 2020. This is unquestionably modern, as-cutting-edge-as-it-gets scholarship from specialists: These philologists, folklorists, and historians of religion certainly know their field(s) better than anyone else alive today. As a result, everything they publish is open to high levels of scrutiny, including—of course—notoriously fierce peer-review (which, if you haven't had to pleasure to experience yourself a few dozen times, is all too often where the cheap shots ring out and ideological axes go to grind). As for your last paragraph, I have no idea what you're getting at: Anyone contributing to this discussion is expected to be operating with an understanding of fundamental aspects of modern philology, folklore studies, and this side of the humanities in general. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:09, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
That's quite a funny misunderstanding on my side. The series The Pre-Christian Religions of the North obviously comprises several subseries. I have got hold of The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Research and Reception (published 2018, only two volumes, so I have overlooked these important details), while you are reading The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures (2020). "Research and Reception" is entirely Nordic-focussed[9]. I have now downloaded a copy of "History and Structures", too.
I like this part of your quote from Schjødt: it should be emphasized that both the denial of any sort of continuity and the acceptance of every piece of information as an exact parallel to phenomena we know from a much later period are both unrealistic viewpoints. This is the kind of balanced complexity we need here. –Austronesier (talk) 19:57, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
I completely agree.--Berig (talk) 20:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
No problem, I figured it was something like that. I should have included a link with my initial post. Enjoy—lots of great commentary there. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:19, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
The book edited by Schjødt et al. goes into the beef, so agree, there's lots of interesting material there. The two volumes edited by Ross are equally recommendable, focussing on the bumpy history of views on pre-Christian Nordic religion in scholarship, arts and pop-culture, from the Gesta to the contemporary age. –Austronesier (talk) 22:16, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
In any case, it’s still not surprising that Goffart would not be cited and Pohl only once - they aren’t experts on religion or culture but history. The quote from the other volume certainly shows that the book series is aware of the issue, however. It even suggests that it influenced the title.—Ermenrich (talk) 22:39, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
Some interesting additional excerpts from Julia Zernack in Vol. II, chapter 10.1

Since the term [‘Germanic’] continues to be used nevertheless, it is now only suitable as a conventional collective name for a multitude of temporally and geographically distinct phenomena which can be attributed to speakers of a Germanic language... ‘Germanic’ is a modern coinage which is based on the foreign appellation Germani as used by Caesar and Tacitus but does not have the same meaning... It is a strangely unresolved question as to why the term ‘Germanic’ is still in use, given that it is ideologically compromised...". 10.1 – On the Concept of ‘Germanic’ Religion and Myth. Julia Zernack. The Pre-Christian Religions of the North. Vol. 2. 2018. pp. 527-538

Krakkos (talk) 15:52, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Nice quote,Krakkos. It touches on a lot of what we've been arguing about here: Caesar's Germani ≠ modern Germanic, and also the very problematic nature of the term itself. That seems like something worth repeating in the article. But I wonder if the section on modern definitions and controversy is getting a bit bloated (so is the section on the ancient terminology, for that matter - but I suppose there's just a lot to say on both counts!).--Ermenrich (talk) 18:27, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that Zernack represents an NPOV position here. What strikes me is "distinct phenomena", which is at variance with the fact that scholars often connect these phenomena. I can name several phenomena in Old Norse literature that scholars explain by comparing with accounts of the Germanic tribes of the classical era. The reason why Germanic is still in use is because scholars still see similarities between phenomena and assume that they go back to common Proto-Germanic ones.--Berig (talk) 18:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Also, I am a bit troubled by the minimizing of language as a common denominator. Language is not only words, but entails a complex semantic structure that is interrelated with cultural phenomena.--Berig (talk) 18:59, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
This isn’t a topic where you can find something that’s not in some way a point of view. I’m not suggesting we adopt her view as our own, merely that it deserves to be mentioned in the article.—Ermenrich (talk) 20:55, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I would agree that this deserves to be mentioned somewhere, but it looks to me as if the "Modern definitions and controversies" and "Classical terminology" sections deserve their own merged article. Then all the editors with their points of view could go hog wild there, and save this article a little of the disputation that might arise. Just joking about the "hog wild", but you all know what I mean. Hate to be repetitious, but surely this is a case where the opposing points of view could be fleshed out, without being burdensome to this article. Carlstak (talk) 23:34, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
A good idea!--Berig (talk) 15:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
The devil is in the details. I have long proposed that this article's content should, at least in most sections, be summaries of specialized "main articles", so the principle espoused here clearly makes sense to me. But one topic which has no other obvious article is the Julio-Claudian Germanic peoples or Germani, e.g. the people who Arminius united, or who fought together with Roman subjects in the Batavian revolt. (="Classical terminology".) All the other uses of the term "Germanic peoples" are "abstract conceptions" (to use the term sometimes given here), sometimes used to categorize various things in various branches of academia. I have no problem with that, but these usages are not as notable or well-known outside of specialist circles, whereas the history of Rome is not only an academic topic, but also a topic long-term and very broad international public interest. That is important according to WP policy, and so is WP:COI. None of the academic disciplines involved seem to deny that they are claiming a link to Arminius and Civilis and the rest? So there is a big gorilla sitting here in the middle of the room. It would be ironic if these original Germanic peoples, who have no other name or article, were removed, and the article would become a catalogue of how various academic disciplines use the term which would not exist without them. I have asked many times on this talk page where the article is which handles these peoples as its main topic. I don't say we need a solution right now, but I think the question can not be avoided in the long run, so I raise it once again.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:22, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with these usages are not as notable or well-known outside of specialist circles. In the 19th and 20th century, der Germanenbegriff (sorry for using the German term, but I can't think of anything in English with the same precision) has developed a life of its own, which is very popular and goes well beyond the Germani of Teutoburg and the Batavian revolt. The popularity and wide currency of this widened concept that continues until today is whole point of the critical discussion that has emerged with the Vienna and Toronto school.
I have asked many times on this talk page where the article is which handles these peoples as its main topic Oh the irony of it...[10] ;) –Austronesier (talk) 18:41, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, the irony. Carlstak (talk) 19:02, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I am raising a concern I've raised in the past, so what's the irony? I am saying the Germani are the topic that unites all the academic spin-off concepts and they have no other home. A simple problem with any other option is that the Latin term Germani is translated into English as Germanic peoples and we never found any authority for treating those two terms as having different definitions. That remains important to WP policy, and also for deciding what is practical. WP is not supposed to be developing new academic terminology. OTOH if the academic Germanenbegriff is truly a separable topic from the Germani, then maybe it could have its own article? After all, "peoples" has a common meaning which is very different from "concept". But that is not what I was saying. I was only saying that the tendency to reduce, simplify and downplay coverage of the Germani raises some fundamental issues. We can and should start moving discussion about various spin-off topics to specialized articles. This article can not be the main article for so many topics. But there is a good reason why the Germani have no other article. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
I think I speak for all involved when I say: oh brother. Must every topic get hijacked by this?--Ermenrich (talk) 19:54, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Ermenrich the point raised by others was not "every topic" at all, but specifically "this", "Classical terminology" sections deserve their own merged article. Then all the editors with their points of view could go hog wild there, and save this article a little of the disputation that might arise. Just joking about the "hog wild", but you all know what I mean. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Maybe I need to add that I understood Carlstak's comment to be a good faith proposal. I am not being sarcastic about that. The idea of trying to split these topics up better, and the problems that could cause if done badly, has been something many of us have thought about since 2019 I think? I responded in good faith. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:38, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I made a good faith proposal, and Ermenrich is certainly speaking for me. This incessant hand-wringing is wearisome and downright boring. Enough already. Let's just get about the business of constructing the article(s). That's not too much to ask. Carlstak (talk) 01:20, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
No I don't accept that such over-dramatization and ad hominem are helpful or consistent with WP policy at all Carlstak. The article is under-going enormous change by a small group of like-minded editors, and no-one I've noticed has been "hijacking" that. The last thing this article needs is for this talkpage to become even more aggressively defensive about any points raised by other editors. This is still Wikipedia. To me it seems that the "classical terminology" section is already rather minimal now and the two sections you mention are important for letting readers understand the overall article. IMHO removing or significantly reducing such discussion would fundamentally change the article. Please keep such concerns in mind. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:06, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Neither is arguing against consensus helpful or consistent with WP policy, see Wikipedia:Tendentious editing.--Berig (talk) 07:07, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
That's an amazing statement about WP policy to see coming from any admin, let alone an involved admin, but it reminds me of another shocker you posted not long ago [11]! I'm going to colour some relevant words red in my last post. There is obviously no clear proposal or consensus at this time, but even if there was it would be completely in accord with WP policy for me to express disagreement with TWO PEOPLE, let alone raise a point about a "devil in the details". As you are an admin I have to suppose that you are knowingly, and not ignorantly, making-up these fake policy-interpretations?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:16, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Lobbed grenades, code red alert, and soap-operafication of the talk page aside, the article stands at 197,000 bytes presently, so it would seem desirable to go ahead and spin the "Modern definitions and controversy" and "Classical terminology" sections off, because I'm sure some of the excellent editors here would have commentary to add. I believe it was the desire to explicate every detail of the "Germani" controversy that led the previous iteration of the article astray and made it so confusing and convoluted, with no logic thread to follow. Regardless of the problems the present version may have, it's superior to that muddled text. Whenever I read such bewildering content as that was, I suspect that the mind that produced it is muddled and disordered as well. Carlstak (talk) 17:49, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Folks, you're starting to get deep into the personalization problems again. Dial it back. Ealdgyth (talk) 18:13, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I support a spin-off article on "Definitions of Germanic", "Controversy about the Term Germanic" or whatever other title fits best. That section remains too long and doesn't actually summarize the dispute in much detail yet. Sections on the Toronto and Vienna Schools and their positions would be helpful, as well as counter positions among historians. We could split off sections for culture etc. there as well. Then we could cut down the sections here without losing anything.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:22, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
I am still certainly not opposed to the principle of more, bigger and better spin-off articles, but IMHO the "Classical terminology" section is not just of historical value so it can't be reduced too much. Between Jastorf and the first good linguistic evidence scholars still effectively use classical reports (with a grain of salt) to determine who they call Germanic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:54, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Speaking only for myself, but no one has any intention of building a wall/excluding the Roman Germani! But in all seriousness, I don't think that anyone is suggesting we totally throw out information on the Roman era Germani. Just that the main subject of this page is a group of peoples speaking a Germanic language, in which case whether the Roman era ones did is less important. And for the record: despite your continued claims to the contrary, I've seen no evidence of scholars arguing that Arminius united a group of Celtic speakers. The names in his family tree (Segimer, Segimund, etc.) are also easily etymologized as Germanic, besides Arminius's own and his brother's, which are Latin.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:24, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
The way I read the proposals (about this article) above was that there should be further reduction of any discussion about definitions and doubts, and implicitly, further reduction about what historians say. Concerning Arminius I do not disagree of course. The point I would make if that was the topic is that the alliance was probably not united by one language at all. These were not language-based nation states. The Cherusci themselves (the westernmost allies in the group) were perhaps Germanic speaking though, yes. We've already seen texts about how the Sugambri and Chatti may have been Celtic speakers. Polycentric origins: these wars probably played a key role. But in any case linguistic and archaeological evidence does not constitute the reason why the whole alliance is seen as Germanic - Roman texts still do. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:20, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Minor question: Wasn't Arminius a Latinized form of the Germanic "Ermin"? Carlstak (talk) 12:13, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Carlstak the exact origin is unknown and can’t easily be derived from Germanic. I think since he was a Roman citizen it was most likely a Latin name (like his brother Flavius). I don’t think anyone buys that the name is Germanic anymore.
And Andrew - language more than anything else constitutes the reason why he would continue to be discussed in an article on Germanic peoples. Whatever doubts you may have, the Germanic peoples certainly all spoke Germanic by late antiquity and it is in fact a tautology to say so. Whether everyone the Romans called Germani did, is an entirely separate question.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:39, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, Ermenrich. Carlstak (talk) 12:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich:, 1. Remember I replied to a proposal to REDUCE coverage of definitions and doubts in this article. I was not proposing any change myself. 2. In answer to your conversational comments, my reading: would you not agree that the languages spoken to the west of the Jastorf/Suebi in the Caesar-Tacitus period simply aren't known and only subject to variable speculation? 3. Rather than always suggesting (e.g. "tautology") that they might not have all been Germanic, can't we better agree that the "Roman" Germani are called Germanic (by scholars) for different reasons, by a different methodology so to speak (less reliant on linguistic information, more dependent upon Roman information), than the "Germanic peoples" of late antiquity? (It is like your formulation that different fields use different definitions, in case it helps.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:37, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I should point out that the proposal I raised concerns about above has the theme of removing and avoiding reliable sources which are minimizing [...] language as a common denominator, and in context this is connected to yet another push to claim that historians (not only the sources named in the discussion but also the whole part of academia which cites them) are not relevant to the topic of this article, even in the period where there is no clear linguistic evidence.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:26, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
yet another push to claim that historians are not relevant to the topic of this article: This is an abysmally lame straw argument against the bluesky observation that historians are not the only scholars who work about this topic and thus do not own the definition of "Germanic peoples" (oh, and btw actually they don't act like that in IRL academia). –Austronesier (talk) 07:14, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Krakkos (talk) 07:50, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
If I may offer this observation: the chief dispute about Germanic peoples is not whether or not they spoke Germanic languages. This is a red herring Andrew has become attached to for some reason. The debate is whether the fact that they spoke Germanic languages allows us to assume - and use a mixture of Roman and much later sources to reconstruct - a Common Germanic culture as scholars have historically done and some still do. And as far as archaeology is concerned, the dispute also concerns whether we can connect archaeological remains to historically attested human populations without very firm evidence. Does this accord with your understanding as well. Austronesier?—Ermenrich (talk) 11:55, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: FWIW this is a different topic than the proposal made above about removing discussions from of this article. Above you mentioned two topics: Caesar's Germani ≠ modern Germanic, and also the very problematic nature of the term itself. If I understand correctly you are saying the first of these is not really much of a controversy? I AGREE. It is a perfectly orthodox, and not only among historians, to say that we don't know if the Germani were all Germanic speaking in this period (even though we traditionally discuss them in the group). It would also be orthodox is you replace Caesar with Tacitus. There is a specific period and region where there is a specific issue. If the article can admit this, and such admissions will not be removed, my concern is handled. Does that make sense? To be clear, if I have misunderstood what people were proposing then great! No need for further discussion in that case.
@Austronesier: I'm sorry but I have no idea what "bluesky observation" you are talking about, but I think it has nothing to do with the proposal made above or anything I've written. I responded to a proposal, which I understood within the context of the posts leading up to it. I did not make a proposal. Is there a chance you've misunderstood me?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:16, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
No. –Austronesier (talk) 14:20, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The food is good in Sicilia

After interacting with an Italian this morning, and thinking about this subject while doing some rather tedious work, it struck me that our accursed (;-) Germanic peoples article entirely lacks the perspective of Italian scholarship, which one would think surely has bearing on any discussion of Tacitus (Tacito), Caesar, Arminius, the Germani, nay, the whole topic of the ancient Germanic peoples. May I say that the article is very German POV-centric (I'm a quarter German), given that we have a bunch of Germanic studies experts writing here, but no representation of the Italians? We do have Alcaios, but he's French. I'm surprised that no Italiani have jumped into this, but on second thought, maybe not so much. I mean, just look at this page. They'd rather argue about food (so would I, it's more fun, especially in that lovely language, hand gestures and all). Anyway, Barbara Scardigli is the only Italian scholar I see cited in the article, and she was writing in German. By the way, she wrote Germani in Italia. Has anyone read it? (It's in Italian.) Carlstak (talk) 03:25, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I think most relevant literature is in German or English, perhaps at least partially because a lot of scholars on the subject do not read Italian (although I suppose the classicists should).--Ermenrich (talk) 14:35, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
There is probably a lot of good and relevant scholarship in both Romance and Slavic languages.--Berig (talk) 15:07, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
I doubt it. Eastern European academics are still often fairly nationalist in orientation and they're more likely to work on the issue of Slavic identity than Germanic identity anyway.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:09, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I think you are right about East European scholarship in general.--Berig (talk) 16:19, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Uh,oh. Here come the angry English-speaking Poles.;-) Carlstak (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, guys. I would expect the Italians to have plenty to say about the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, for example, but the Italian WP article doesn't look all that great, or even as good as the English version, although that isn't really a reflection of Italian scholarship. Carlstak (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Same thing with it:Germani. Translations of German and English works dominate in the ref section, there is even a translation of a popular non-academic book which was my first very early encounter with the Germanic peoples. –Austronesier (talk) 18:53, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I saw. At first I thought you were talking about The Wolves of Rome, the English translation of Valerio Massimo Manfredi's Teutoburgo, but I see he's not in the sources, and it wouldn't have made sense anyway, being so recently published (I haven't read it). I love the front cover graphics—so sexy. I would imagine that Arminius had a lot of personal magnetism in real life; that would help explain why he was so persuasive to all those German villages and rallied them to his cause, maintaining secrecy all the while.;-)
PS: I'm thinking we should restore the English WP Germani article. It's no longer a mirror of content in "Germanic peoples", and would be really useful if expanded. Perhaps Krakkos, who is knowledgable and writes well, would care to work on it again, and I imagine other editors would want to help. I certainly would, as time allows; I believe it could be stellar. Carlstak (talk) 02:25, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
I expect them to be especially relevant concerning the Lombards and the Goths. I recommend the French scholar Michel Kazanski. His book Les Goths is outstanding, imho.--Berig (talk) 18:50, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
I can half-assed read French, so if I ever have time, I would like to tackle Les Goths; it looks very good. There are so many things I want to read and to write about; my problem is that there are so many divergent things I'm interested in. I'm lucky to have a client now who is quite solvent and very understanding of why it's taking me so long to finish his project.;-) Carlstak (talk) 02:25, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
I understand you. There are so many WP articles I dream of improving that I can hardly commit to any of them, when RL allows me to.--Berig (talk) 04:24, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Germans are considered part of the broad Germanic category

I am not sure why the article seems to imply that Germans are not included in the broad Germanic category, as they obviously are. I added a one word clarification to specify this. Here was the change I made "In modern English, the adjective "Germanic" is generally distinct from "German" in referring not 'only' to modern Germans but ancient Germani or the broader Germanic group". The word in italics is the word I added. Without the word 'only', the article implies that Germans do not belong to the broad Germanic category.

I do not see why my edit was changed, as it almost appears as if the authors of this article are trying to intentionally imply to readers that modern Germans are not included in the broad Germanic category. I have found many Nordicists online doing this, implying that only the north sea, Scandinavian, and sometimes northern rhine groups belong to the broad Germanic category. As such, I find it suspiscious. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 22:45, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

To clarify, the word in italics that I added was the word only. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 22:46, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

How to use the word Germanic with MODERN people is not a simple topic at all, and this article went through years of debates about this. (One usage is/was clearly the controversial old racial idea which needs special discussion. Over the years some editors have claimed there is another modern usage which is not racial, but linguistic. However extensive discussion has showed that we can find few examples of good authors writing this way, and Jamaican people, and maybe even Irish people, are not seen as Germanic by such people, whereas Germans and Scandinavians, and apparently even Afrikaners, are apparently seen by such WP editors as more Germanic than English people. In short this is a can of worms which seems very much connected to internet understandings of the world rather than reliable sources. Step by step we've been trying to split the valid parts of the topic into different discussions.) ...But the main point of the sentence you adjusted is simply that Germanic and German do not mean the same thing. It might not be your intention, but your correction waters that statement down, whereas I think it should simply stand, as something which is not controversial or doubted?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
the article seems to imply that Germans are not included in the broad Germanic category: If there is a potential for misunderstandings/misreadings, it is our job to fix this. I have rephrased it, I hope this helps. Although you have to be aware that calling modern Germans as a people (or all other contemporary Germanic-speaking groups and nations, for that matter) "Germanic" is insular usage in modern scholarship. There are things that are characterized as "Germanic" and which have a continuity beyond the period of the ancient Germanic peoples, primarily their languages, but also – geographically and temporally more restricted – mythology and folklore. But this not what the sentence is about. –Austronesier (talk) 09:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the change, I believe the clarification was necessary. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 17:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe Germanic culture is indeed a relevant concept even today. But, I speak as one of those who have lived in both Germanic and Romance-speaking countries. Scandinavians who live in Flemish Belgium or German-speaking Switzerland sometimes remark how "at home" they feel in the Flemish or German-speaking areas compared to how "foreign" the culture feels when going to the French-speaking areas. I don't have that experience myself, but I do feel much more close to home when I visit friends in Dorset, England, than when I meet friends in France, or relatives in Spain. It is not a language issue because I am fluent in English, French and Spanish. This Germanic cultural commonality is probably easier to perceive when you have one foot firmly in Romance culture and another foot firmly in Germanic.--Berig (talk) 20:01, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
My piano teacher and at the same time mentor in all things philosophical once remarked: Der Germane flucht anal, der Romane genital. I thought that made sense, in spite of some considerable crossover (Fuck! Stronzo!) :)
I think it really depends on and varies with personal experiences such as you describe them; the Hessian Germanic part within me had experiences of relating more easily with Moravians and Slovaks than with Swedes and Norwegians, but if I told you the actual figures behind these encounters I would have to admit that these fall way below the threshold of any statistical significance. It probably also varies with location: I have grown up in Germania superior close to the limes (Google maps says I just need to walk four hours to reach the nearest Roman castellum), and this area has seen much cultural transfer with the Romance world (Huguenot churches all over the place!). –Austronesier (talk) 21:10, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

That's SOME edit war

Actually, we could make a headcount to check whether only "some" scholars call for the abandonment of term or rather quite many of them. But no, this is not even challenged here. The conjecture is that even only "some" scholars acknowledge the existence of this very debate and actively engage in it; this is a rather bold claim, considering the fact that the contrary is easily sourced, and also considering the fact that prominent historians who continue to talk about Germanic peoples sine grano salis like Liebeschütz, Heather and others certainly have raised their voice within the debate. If they indeed ignored the debate, they wouldn't write and argue in defense of traditional terminology. –Austronesier (talk) 16:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I would consider the word of the Reallexikon für germanische Altertumskunde to be a good summary of general scholarly opinion on this topic, and we quote them in the article saying "Germanic" "remains important for linguistics, but is no longer useful for archaeology or history." Even if we acknowledge that "not all scholars" call for the abandonment of "Germanic peoples", we can't just dismiss the word of such an important word of scholarship, meant to summarize the communis opinio of the field, as only "some" scholars finding the term controversial. The recent volume Interrogating the Germanic unites scholars from all disciplines - we also have recent work philologists such as Shami Ghosh Writing the Barbarian Past questioning it. Defenders include Neidorf, Heather, Liebeschütz - but the prominent voices are definitely participating in the debate. Rudolf Simek here: It is by no means easy to put a qualified date from when we can start talking about “Germanic religion”, the term “Germanic” being none too easy to define to begin with. Geographically speaking, we are dealing with the area covering the north German plains, the Lowlands and southern Scandinavia, as well as those areas settled by tribal entities described as Germanic on linguistic grounds and settling large tracts of land north of the Alps and west of the river Oder with the exception of areas already inhabited by Celts: Gaul, the Alps, Britain and Ireland..--Ermenrich (talk) 16:58, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Some time has passed and, frankly, I think not including "some" in this construction is highly misleading and greatly overemphasizes the arguments of a group of historians over the rest of the many active scholars in this field. It's today extremely common in Germanic studies, Indo-European studies, and any number of related fields to use the term "Germanic peoples" without asterisk or discussion about the term. This is simply not some white-hot topic for most scholars in the field, unlike what this sentence construction tells our readers. This should be obvious to those of you who are keeping up with recent scholarship in the field. Do we need to start breaking out quotes and examples of recent scholarship to illustrate this, or are we going to cherry pick material that does mention it to strongly emphasize it in the article, rather than the reality of the situation in the field? :bloodofox: (talk) 18:04, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
The problem with your argument is that you're making your own deduction, which is wp:OR. It doesn't matter if it's "obvious" to you. What better authority would you accept if you won't accept the Reallexikon? Why does the general remark of Heiko Steuer (a scholar who, by the way, supports discussion of "Germanic" in some way) that Germanic is now a problematic and controversial term (Heute von „Germanen“ zu sprechen, ist aus der Sicht der modernen Wissenschaft sehr umstritten., p. 28) not satisfy you? Steuer does not say "in the view of some scholars". He says "in the view of modern scholarship". The idea that it is "some" scholars who are discussing this is simply not true, and you're trying to ignore what the sources say by insisting that it is.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:07, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
You're cherry-picking sources in an attempt to prop up your preferred view, and this does not accurately reflect modern a holistic reception of the topic. Again, the reality is that we see a tremendous amount of scholarship that comes out every year that makes zero comment on this controversy, material from scholars that continues to use the wording "Germanic peoples" without qualifier or mention of the discussion centered around this particular group of historians. It's clearly not being given the time of day by much of the field, particularly among specialists exterior to historians, and it's those specialists who produce the vast majority of the material on this topic.
Now, it's clear that you're pretty fixated on this discourse around historians and that this page has historically become exactly that—hyper fixated on what these particular historians are up to—but when extremely important, multi-volume works featuring many of the best known scholars in the field continue to use the phrase "Germanic peoples" without any need for qualification (like the 2020 volumes published by Brepols above)—and any number of other papers and books that come out month after month—then it is clear that this is hardly the massive controversy the wording you're so aggressively offending is nearly as impactful as what you're insisting on: The current wording is quite misleading and by no means represents the modern reality of the field. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:05, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly, your argument is that some sources do not mention the controversy, therefore there is no controversy. Is that your argument? An argument from silence is not a good way of proving something and certainly does not contradict what is actually stated in reliable sources. Do you have any response to what is actually and explicitly said in the Reallexikon and by Heiko Steuer? Steuer, by the way, is an archaeologist. The Reallexikon is the work of a group of philologists, archaeologists, historians, etc. (which I'm sure you know already) - so how can you claim this is "cherrypicking"?--Ermenrich (talk) 21:16, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
The vast majority of scholarship coming out on the ancient Germanic peoples makes zero mention of any kind of controversy. That is important and notable. I am not here to perform original research in response to this particular resource (the Reallexicon is just one example of a particularly German extension of modern scholarship on the topic—thousands of papers and books are published in this area a year).
In my opinion, you're fixating on this discussion and demanding its emphasis to the detriment of the many other discussions occurring in the field—there's plenty of brand new research coming out about early Germanic culture, for example—and insisting that we place what I deem to be inappropriate emphasis on what is just another discussion among historians. It's no secret that figures like Goffart have been centralized on this page years, and that this is clearly residual of that fixation.
In probably-never-been-more-active fields of ancient Germanic studies, Indo-European studies, and the many related fields circulating this topic, the term "Germanic peoples" not at risk of going anywhere anytime soon and is not even particularly controversial, despite what the lead implies to readers. Otherwise one would find a lot more discussion about this problem, less of its use, and there'd even be a realistic push to abandon the phrase. In reality, work after academic work comes out today that simply makes zero mention of this white-hot controversy. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
No-one is fixated on a "group of scholars". This group of scholars simply has managed to set the tone in historical studies for the last twenty years, with strong opinions that have elicited equally strong reactions. The debate is highly noticeable, notable and has a high impact on various disciplines. This is what we are talking about. Nobody should advocate here that one group or the other is right. –Austronesier (talk) 21:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
And if this tweak[12] resolves the issue, sure, at least for my part, it's perfectly fine. –Austronesier (talk) 21:31, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Agree with Austronesier on both points. I also resent the notion I'm "fixating" on scholars when my only concern is that the page accurately represent what's said in reliable sources. And what's said in reliable sources is that the notion of Germanic peoples is controversial. You can vaguely mention as many individual works of scholarship that don't mention a controversy as you want, that does not negate what is explicitly said in reliable sources on the subject. We don't get to substitute our own judgment for what RS say.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
"Vaguely mention"? This is classic WP:UNDUE, and it'd be quite simple to outright list many, many uses of this in very recent pieces, far more recent than what you're clinging to here. Should I start build a laundry list of articles from 2019-2022 that discuss the ancient Germanic peoples without mention this supposedly massive controversy?
This article has long rotated around the opinions of a handful of individuals—and Goffart especially, who the article for a while deferred to at every turn—but the current wording of this part of the lead is completely undue emphasis on what appears to be a pet fixation that has long plagued accurate coverage in this article. While we've seen some progress on this article, a lot of readers are being misled about a grand controversy that is in reality far smaller and highly restricted. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:00, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I can quote (and have quoted) explicit sources (including hostile ones) saying there is a controversy. You can't quote any sources saying there isn't. I don't see how you expect to have a discussion like that. You're making an argument that isn't falsifiable ("These scholars don't mention a controversy so there isn't one. Any scholars who do are wrong.") Also far more recent? Steuer is from 2021. The Interrogating the Germanic volume is from 2020.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Kindly strike out your invented quote of "These scholars don't mention a controversy so there isn't one. Any scholars who do are wrong."—that is not a quote from me, and it is not representative of my comments.
There's a controversy among a group of scholars, the field at large is hardly being rocked by it, and there's been no grand response to date to the notion of purging this phrase from our collective vocabularies. Germanic peoples is still extremely commonly used without any kind of caveat or reference to a controversy. That's an easily cited fact. These sort of inward-looking deconstructions of terminology and concepts are hardly unique to ancient Germanic studies. They're typical of the humanities. Meanwhile, anyone navigating this landscape either engages, adjusts, or ignores it. Sometimes it leads to significant impact, sometimes not. So it goes.
(I also see we even have ill-considered words like "recently" in the article. How recent is that going to be a decade from now? Three decades from now?)
What's notable about this situation on this page is the aggression coming from you in particular about it—reacting intensely negative about suggestion of including the simple word some to qualify that the vast majority of scholars in the field have made no comment on this purportedly huge controversy. To me, placing this front and center and without qualifier raises a red flag and is exactly why we have policies like WP:UNDUE. I see we still have significant work to do on this article. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:14, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

please provide sources for your assertion that only “some” scholars are debating the term “Germanic people”. Sources that say that, not ones from which you infer that there is no controversy. So far you have been unable to counter either Steuer, the Reallexikon, or the volume on Interrogating the Germanic, all of which state there is controversy. As a veteran Wikipedian, you are surely aware that we can’t do that here.—Ermenrich (talk) 22:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

As a veteran editor, I have indeed seen these very things happen before, and I've seen articles slowly or quickly change in reaction to them. The landmark Brepols 2020 volumes I discuss above discuss the ancient Germanic peoples quite extensively and from many angles, yet make no mention of this purportedly so-massive-it-needs-to-be-in-the-opening-paragraph-and-how-dare-you-insert-a-qualifier controversy. But it's just one of many. I've considered this a few times over the past year, and what brought my attention to this again was a 2021 piece from runologist Tineke Looijenga, whose abstract opens with "This paper deals with the runic alphabet, the indigenous script of Germanic people ..." followed by similarly discussion in the paper's body ("How the runes were lost and won...", 2021, in VELEIA 39). As I see it, this is a matter of undue emphasis—there's quite a lot going on out there in academia surrounding the topic of this article—and if nothing else, the statement requires a qualifying "some". I don't have a lot of time for Wikipedia these days, but I'll return when I do. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
no one disputes that runes were used by Germanic speaking peoples or that they spoke similar languages or had similar religions. You can’t take those things to infer that there is not a scholarly controversy about the appropriateness of the term Germanic outside of a linguistic sense. As I said, you appear to be unable to provide sources that explicitly support your point of view. ≥What is all the more baffling to me is that the text says in no uncertain terms that only SOME scholars call for the abandonment of the term “Germanic.” The extra “some” you would like to add is therefore not only completely unnecessary, but, in your words “misleading “. This is a debate being held by the leading scholars in the field, and I’ve provided evidence even someone like Simek is aware of it. By the way Heiko Steuer, who is, as I've said, an archaeologist, argues explicitly in favor of Germanic identity here, from 2022, so the idea that citing him for their being a controversy is someone "paying too much attention to a group of historians" is obviously nonsense.—Ermenrich (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Now where's this emphasized "SOME scholars" in the "text" you're going on about now? It's certainly not in the lead—you've made sure of that. Since this is purportedly such an all-encompassing contorversy, funny how so many leading scholars in the field simply seem to ignore it in their publications about the ancient Germanic peoples. And what's this business about "someone like" Simek—what are you trying to say about Simek? :bloodofox: (talk) 05:23, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
The fact that there is a controversy about the term "Germanic" (and Germanic gentes) should not be in dispute here, since many leading scholars have been debating this ad nauseam for several decades in its multifarious dispositions, whether they are archaeologists, philologists, or historians. Any suggestion that this has not been a major area of concern worth mentioning is patently absurd. The whole notion of "Germanic identity" and its misuse has rendered the term an intellectual minefield going back to the very notion of Völkerwanderung. Classicists and period historians have deliberately mentioned this problem in a number of articles and books. These people include: Geary, Collins, Burns, Halsall, Cameron, Heather, Ghosh, Liebeschuetz, Gillett, Bowersock, Effros, Innes, McIrney, Christie, Demandt, Pohl, Birns, Brather, Steuer, Goetz, Wolfram, Chrysos, Goffart, Brown, Amory, Gruen, Arnold, Backman, and many others. It's so prominent that I can hardly fathom anyone claiming expertise in Germanic studies would dare say otherwise. To this end, I fully support and am in lock-step with Ermenrich and Austronesier here. --Obenritter (talk) 14:06, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
There's no dispute about a debate and controversy existing. That much is obvious. The question is of how prominent this controversy should be represented in the article above all else, and whether or not we should include the qualifier some to make it clear that not all scholars have engaged with it. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:06, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Bloodofox, this has a much bigger political and ideological dimension than a mere phrasing on WP. I hope you understand the guilt by association that any scholar or editor who writes on Germanic culture may attract.--Berig (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Honestly I don't think political sensitivity has anything to do with it, and I think this apparent dog whistle (it is not the first time this insinuation has been made) is silly. Austronesier, Ermenrich and Obenritter are just plain right that here on WP we have a straightforward approach to questions like this which tells us what to do. We don't cite people who never "engaged" in a topic, and demanding that we should count people who did not engage with a topic would be OR to the point of being deliberately silly. That many tendered academics don't engage in discussions about whether their field's traditional terminology needs cleaning up is not unusual in any way (in any field). The edit being demanded WOULD in effect being denying the significance of the debate, and there is no other way I can read it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Nicely stated Andrew, changing the wording would alter meaning and understanding of the debate's significance, which is what brought us here. --Obenritter (talk) 16:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
I've added a chapter to the bibliography and added it to part of the article as well by Sebastian Brather (archaeologist), Wilhelm Heizmann (philologist), and Steffen Patzold (historian) from 2021 that summarizes the history and current state of the field of Germanic studies/germanische Altertumskunde. They say, among other things, the following (quotes in German followed by my translation to English):
Collapsing several quotes for ease of talk page use
"Der Begriff des ‚Germanischen‘ ist heute für die Archäologie und die Geschichtswissenschaft zunehmend unscharf geworden. Er stellt keine fixe Größe mehr dar, wie man früher angenommen hat. Je genauer man hinsah, desto deutlicher wurde, wie sehr die jeweilige historische Umwelt die germanische Welt (die es auch nur in der Außenperspektive der römischen Kaiserzeit gab) geprägt hatte und wie differenziert sie selbst gewesen war. Außerdem lässt sich der Germanenbegriff nicht ohne zeitliche Eingrenzungen verwenden, wenn er nicht zur leeren Hülle werden soll." (p. 31)
[The term "Germanic" has become today increasingly fuzz for archaeology and the field of history. It no longer represents a fixed quality as one assumed earlier. The closer one looked the clearer it became how much the respective historical environment had influenced the Germanic world (which only existed in the external view of the Roman Imperial period) and how differentiated it itself was. Besides that, the term "Germanic" cannot be used without chronological limits, if it is not to become an empty shell.]
"Im Zuge dessen hat auch der Begriff der ‚Germanische Altertumskunde‘ an Konturen verloren. Zwar besitzt die Philologie klare Kriterien, um germanische Sprachen definieren und abgrenzen zu können und um auf diese Weise sprachliche und literarische Zeugnisse zu bestimmen. Doch Archäologen und Historikern ist diese Selbstverständlichkeit inzwischen abhandengekommen. Was wo und zu welcher Zeit ‚germanisch‘ ist und ob dies überhaupt eine analytisch hilfreiche Klassifikation darstellt, erweist sich heute als offene methodische und interpretatorische Frage." (p. 31)
[During this process the term "Germanic studies" (Germanische Altertumskunde) has lost its clear outlines. Philology possesses clear criteria to define and delineate Germanic languages and in this way to order linguistic and literary witnesses. However, archaeologists and historians have lost this matter-of-course-ness. What where and at what time is "Germanic" and whether this is a analytically helpful classification at all has shown itself today to be an open methodological and interpretatory question.]
"Da Historikerinnen und Historiker heute Völker nicht mehr als natürliche, quasi zeitenthobene Akteure der Geschichte begreifen, sondern die Vorstellungen der Zeitgenossen selbst berücksichtigen, ist für sie der Befund zentral, dass das Wort Germani spätestens seit dem 4. Jahrhundert selten gebraucht wurde und zudem etwas ganz anderes meinte als deutsche Historiker des 19. und früheren 20. Jahrhunderts, wenn sie von „Germanen“ sprachen. Zumindest Teile der Geschichtswissenschaft und der Archäologie sind deshalb heute überzeugt: Wenn die Vandalen, Burgunder, Goten oder Franken der Spätantike und des Frühmittelalters gar nicht wussten, dass sie Germanen waren, konnten sie auch ihr Handeln nicht an einem Germanentum ausrichten. Die Interessen, Wünsche, Sehnsüchte, Ziele, Motive – nichts von dem, was die Menschen damals antrieb, können Archäologen oder Historiker dadurch besser verstehen oder erklären, dass sie diese Menschen nachträglich als ‚Germanen‘ klassifizieren." (p. 34)
[Since historians today no long understand peoples to be natural, quasi timeless actors of history, but rather take into account the perceptions of contemporaries themselves, the finding is central for [historians], that the word Germani was rarely used after the fourth century at the latest and additionally meant something very different from what German historians of the 19th and 20th centuries did when they spoke about "Germani". At least parts of the field of history and archaeology are convinced for this reason today: if the Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, or Franks of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages did not know at all that they were Germani, they could not have aligned their actions with "Germanicness". The interests, wishes, desires, goals, motives - nothing that drives people can be better understood or explained by archaeologists or historians in that they classify these persons as "Germani" after the fact.]
"Innerhalb des Kreises der Herausgeber der „Germanischen Altertumskunde Online“ hat dies immer wieder zu einer lebendigen und bereichernden Diskussion geführt. Germanisten können im ‚Germanischen‘ zunächst einmal einen seit langem in der Forschung eingebürgerten Verständigungsbegriff sehen – vielfach unscharf, aber eben auch praktisch. Jenseits der Frage nach Wissen und Wahrnehmung der damaligen Zeitgenossen selbst können Germanisten außerdem aus der Tradition ihres Faches heraus auch fragen, ob es nicht genauso auch Hinweise auf kulturell Gemeinsames und Verbindendes gibt." (p. 34)
[Among the editors of "Germanische Altertumskunde Online" this led again and again to a lively and enriching discussion. Germanists [Germanic philologists] can view "Germanic" firstly as a term of easy comprehension that has long been anchored in scholarship - often fuzzy, but nevertheless still practical. Beyond the question of the knowledge and perception of contemporaries at that time, Germanists can also ask from the tradition of their field whether there are not also indications of culturally shared and binding aspects.]
All of this ought to make clear that especially archaeologists and historians find the term "Germanic" increasingly problematic. The text we're arguing about in the lead is this: The very concept of "Germanic peoples" has become the subject of controversy among modern scholars, with some calling for its total abandonment. The text is quite clear that only some scholars advocate the total abandonment of the term, which is also all that Steuer says, to whom it is cited. But changing it to say that the concept has only become a subject of controversy among "some" scholars is to misleadingly minimize the scale of the debate.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Again, I disagree with your approach here and argue that your preferred wording is misleading to readers and not representative of the reality of the field. Inserting some would indeed reflect the reality of the situation: As anyone who is following the field is aware, many well-known scholars in the field, particularly scholars who have been involved in the field for some time, simply continue to use the phrase Germanic peoples without commenting on this controversy. Additionally, the fact that this particular matter is so aggressively highlighted in the lead over all else—the first paragraph, your preference—and formerly only emphasized those who wished the phrase deleted there (!) is a big red flag.
However, as this article appears to be, as usual, doomed to be a warzone for whatever faction decides to roll in this or that year, I have zero interest in pursuing the matter any further: A nasty combination of axe-grinding, relentless emphasis on personal fixations, the major influence of politics (given the history of the field, anyone who believes otherwise is simply either a liar or a fool), and the eternally slippery matter of identity are exactly why I've long avoided this article and only reluctantly decided to get involved (and only once I had seen it had somehow turned a bizarre, quasi-shrine to Goffart, with what seemed like every other quote deferring to the opinion of this particular individual). Too bad, but it is what it is, and plenty of other articles need more attention than this one. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
It is much better here on English WP, though, than on Swedish WP. I was fed up with Swedish WP when an administrator declared that what Dick Harrison (a Swedish Walter Goffart) has said in an interview falsifies anything other scholars say or have said. This kind of highly ideological scholar seems to create a quasi-religious following.--Berig (talk) 08:26, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
I also avoid non-English Wikipedia these days. I figured time is a lot better spent on the branch everyone actually uses. Unfortunately, I'd say that we appear to be seeing some comparative stuff going on here, but I guess that's no surprise given the trenches that have built up around this article. Alas, why can't we just get more editors who know their stuff and want to build based articles around WP:GA criteria? While our coverage on many topics has improved by leaps and bounds, who knows how many hours I've wasted on ridiculous talk page blather from ideology-motivated editors (which I probably forgot all about a day later) when I should have just been improving other articles instead—that's my one true Wikipedia regret. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
ridiculous talk page blather from ideology-motivated editors: that's sufficiently vague as not to count as a personal attack, but it says enough about yourself, more than about the editors you're alluding to. –Austronesier (talk) 22:25, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, it primarily says that I edit a lot of fringe topic articles and frequent the fringe topics noticeboard, and then now and then have to deal with goofy attempts at sniping like your response. You're welcome. Next. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

The implied argument which keeps coming back is effectively that academics are trying too hard to disagree with the Nazis, and that in reality there are no really good arguments against the simple connecting-up of language, ethnicity and race found for example in Kossinna and much 19th century writing on these topics (now often described as romanticist). The many academics who disagree with the old conclusions and assumptions are thus only doing so because of "politics" and "ideology". For the record, I do not think that this is what is happening in academia in the 21st century when it comes to this specific topic. But in any case this is OR and it would not be a usable argument from the stand-point of Wikipedia policy. So even if I agreed fully I could not agree with editing on this basis.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:14, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bloodofox: it is striking that you simply dismiss whatever scholarship is presented to you, in this case without any comment. If your only response to an entire series of quotes from an article meant to represent the state of the field is to attack Walter Goffart, who has not been mentioned in any of the sources I've cited on this issue, you do not suggest that you have educated yourself in any way about the nature of the debate. The only person obsessed with Walter Goffart here is you. The rest of us are following wp:RS. As Obenritter already said, it is difficult to fathom that anyone claiming expertise in Germanic studies could suggest this is not a major debate in the field. That you would like there not to be significant debate about the usefulness of the label "Germanic" is obvious. But you cannot impose your personal feelings on the matter on Wikipedia.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:36, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
I haven't "dismissed" any scholarship—dial it back. As you know, my comments about the article's previous very explicit fixation on Goffart refer to, well, an earlier state of the article, yet it is from that article that the current article stems, with some parts rewritten (including by myself) and some remaining a poorly referenced mess. Your intense focus on this particular controversy in the field and apparent desire to ensure that it dominates all discussion of the topic is another matter, but they're connected in that they're both a part of the same issue. While no longer a Goffart-fest, the article is generally in a poor state at the moment. While it's beside the point that in fact I find the term Germanic to be a pain in the ass and wish something else had been used to scholastically refer to speakers of this ancient language and shared aspects of their cultures (indeed, I would personally purge the phrase in favor of something else), but it's pretty clear to me (and it would seem a couple of editors who have messaged me) that you're on a mission here, and that you appear to be far less interested in improving the article than you are in making a point by way of doing things like emphasizing challenges to the term over its defenders, as we saw in the lead before my last edit to it. Let the record show that all this pointless text (and, after so long on the site, I can assure you that it is pointless) comes entirely from my apparently daring suggestion to include the word some in the lead, to which you reacted with theatrical Wiki-fury. A little more tact would have gone a long way, but perhaps getting your point across is more important. (Meanwhile, the anonymous editor below has made a better case than I have for including the word some in the lead by emphasizing a quote complaining about scholars who choose to ignore the controversy—which, as the editor puts it, "explicitly makes a criticism of scholars who choose to just ignore this debate"—thanks.) :bloodofox: (talk) 22:03, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
@Bloodofox: The current article does not stem from the "Goffart-fest". On 20 July 2021, Ermenrich restored the version of 2 July 2019 as per the talk page consensus. We re-started from that version, which had two books by Goffart in the bibliography but no citations to him. Srnec (talk) 00:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
So all the Sturm und Drang over one word. If only all this energy went into improving the article.:-) Carlstak (talk) 14:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Bloodofox:, it's utter nonsense that I appear to be far less interested in improving the article than you are in making a point by way of doing things like emphasizing challenges to the term over its defenders. I've (re-)written 34.6% of this article, more than anyone else, with complete rewrites of the sections on warfare, Christianization, large parts of the sections on terminology, and the additions of archaeology, heroic poetry, law, marriage, and writing. All of these are well sourced. Eventually I may get around to rewriting economy and "kinship patterns". In fact, I have been improving this article even during this discussion [13], [14], [15]. You will find references to Walter Goffart or controversy in exactly one of those sections, terminology. You might like to actually read the article and look at what I've done here before you make comments like that. I continue to be struck by the fact that when presented with actual sources, your response is to make ad hominem attacks.
At any rate, there is obviously no consensus for the addition of an extra "some" in the lead referring to this controversy, and we keep digging up more and more sources that support that significance of the controversy. As Austronesier has stated, the article does not state that the people who find "Germanic" problematic are right. But that's quite different from trying to minimize the dispute.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:52, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Bold and italicize all you like, edits like this make clear your preference to emphasize what appears to be your preferred side of the "anti-Germanic" aspect of the controversy. As you know, before my edits, readers immediately heard aspects of the argument of the "anti-Germanic" wing but they needed to actually go digging into the body to hear from the rest of the field. We see obfuscating behavior like this on fringe articles all the time. Leads are summaries of the article's contents (WP:LEAD), not a place to promote a preferred stance over all else (WP:Balance, WP:NPOV). We can discuss the appropriateness of some, sure, that's reasonable, but behavior like that is unacceptable. Additionally, the current state of the article is certainly nothing to crow about—while definitely an improvement over the former Goffart-fest (indeed, in part due to your edits), it's still largely a mess that needs major work. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
That edit was in response to this one. Or do you think there was a better way to explain why certain people do not like the term Germanic? Frankly, your accusation is ridiculous and I do not appreciate your continued questioning of my motives.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
As you know, detailing one side of a controversy in a lead while leaving the other side buried in the article's body does not balance make. It's something we see again and again at, for example, fringe articles when ideological editors—often adherents with single purpose accounts—aim to present material their preferred way. Please review WP:Balance and, more broadly, WP:NPOV. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
And yet despite my nefarious desire to prevent our readers from learning the truth, neither I nor anyone else has reverted your addition here. So what are you complaining about exactly? You might like to review a few policies yourself including WP:CIVIL and WP:ASPERSIONS.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:14, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: @Austronesier: If the 28 authors I've cited, among them experts in philology, history, and archaeology (leaders in their field) cannot convince Bloodofox that this is not an issue for just "some" scholars, not much will. --Obenritter (talk) 22:25, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich:Fwiw, in addition to Meier listed below, James Harland's recent Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the aduentus Saxonum explicitly makes a criticism of scholars who choose to just ignore this debate, pointing out on p. 27: "Substantial scholarship has been devoted to critiquing the concept of ‘Germanic’ cultural identity, but little in the way of substantive response to these criticisms is offered by those who remain wedded to it, who instead treat it simply as an axiom." It's part of a wider discussion of problems with notions of the Germanic. The chapter that's in is available to download for free from the publisher. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.46.41.20 (talk) 15:37, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
One more very well-stated academic opinion on this matter from J.M. Harland's Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the aduentus Saxonum. A Modern Framework for consideration: All interpretations beyond this proceed from the point of aporiae, and this is where the construct of ‘Germanic consciousness’ is normally suggested as a necessary component of our narrative. But this construct, and the ethnic signifiers held to derive from it, have no empirical basis, and consequently explain nothing. They are empty signifiers; a set of modern historiographical notions about cosmology, ideology, and ethnic and cultural affiliation, where we have no evidence for such things, and no tools with which to demonstrate them in the archaeological record. One thing that is certain, however, is that people in northern barbaricum conceived of and expressed power through grammatical frameworks based on their relationship with the Roman Empire. (p. 258) --Obenritter (talk) 16:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
Also from Harland: In late antique and early medieval scholarship, the ‘Germanic’ has widely been rejected as a useful explanatory category to describe various phenomena. Yet its usage persists, and it is thus necessary to briefly discuss the problems with the concept. It is difficult to know where to begin. (p. 24). Also: The utility of the ‘Germanic’ as an interpretative framework has been questioned in application to almost all available forms of evidential material. The putatively ‘Germanic’ aspects of post-Roman barbarian law might well derive from provincial Roman law. In the realm of linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is sometimes erroneously applied to argue that linguistic similarity produces contemporarily recognised cultural uniformity. More recent work on the interrelation of the structures of ‘Germanic’ heroic poetry with the morphology and phonology of the ‘Germanic’ languages offers subtler interpretations of how these phenomena might relate, without needing to assume there was a contemporarily perceived unified cultural ethos. In terms of material culture, the empirical basis for such assertions is handled at length in Chapter 5, but it suffices here to mention that many allegedly empirically ‘proven’ instances of material culture bearing something ‘Germanic’ in its character rely entirely upon assumptions derived from interpretations of the linguistic, legal, and documentary evidence. The degree to which one remains wedded to assumptions of a pan-Germanic cultural ethos is often closely related to one’s historiographical understand-ing of the ‘end’ of the Western Roman Empire. (p. 28).--Ermenrich (talk) 17:56, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

If people want another weapon in their arsenal, might I suggest Mischa Meier's recent Geschichte der Völkerwanderung, a prize-winning recent monograph on the late antique world, written by the Professor of Ancient History at Tübingen. Numerous reviews, including Kulikowski, have suggested this ought to become the standard textbook for understanding of debates on ethnic identity, Germanic peoples, etc, in late antiquity. Suffice to say, it sides with the sceptical position. It's getting a lot of traction in the German popular press, as well. It's a source worth checking out in any case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:908:618:CC60:24:C542:BB34:7B12 (talk) 20:01, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes looks interesting. Thanks. Some can be seen online it seems, and probably all if you have the right credentials https://www.beck-elibrary.de/10.17104/9783406739606-2/ --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:18, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Length of history section

In addition to a number of subsections that need better (or any) sourcing, I think that the history section is possibly too long and detailed. It is also, quite understandably, really only about the interactions of the Germanic peoples with Rome. I wonder if, for instance, we need a whole section on the Cimbrian War... It seems to me we could cut it down quite a bit, especially when there is so much more about culture and society that needs to be added to the article.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be parsed, but recall the vast majority of what we know about the Germanic peoples comes by way of Roman sources, so their interactions bear significantly into their historicity. Otherwise, this article could become an exercise in cultural anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology. Either way, I won't put up a fight here.--Obenritter (talk) 00:32, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
I certainly don't mean we should remove everything from Roman sources or make the article devoid of history. The current history section, however, is bogged down in very minute details such as whether this or that people were really Germanic, what their names meant, which Macedonian king they fought for, etc. These are fine things to include in the articles on the individual peoples, but don't really belong here in an overview article, I think. You can see an example of how I would cut things here.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
The improvements look fine to me. --Obenritter (talk) 19:41, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Removal of discussion of Shaw's challenge to Odin/Woden cognate assumption

Hi @Ermenrich: While I appreciate that it is merely one example of where this problem emerges, and I am perfectly willing to concede that the phrasing used to introduce the point could be altered to be more in accordance with Wikipedia's policies, Philip A. Shaw's scholarly dismantling of the assumption that Woden/Odin were cognates, his argument that the Woden cult was unknown in England prior to the eighth century, and his suggestion that the presumed conflation of these two deities was a product of early medieval intellectual culture, is surely worth retaining and discussing? It might only pertain to Odin, rather than all putatively shared Germanic deities, but it is a thesis that, if correct, has considerable ramifications for many of our presumptions about the commonality of shared beliefs among Germanic-speaking peoples. Woden/Odin might be 'merely one' deity, but whatever side of the scholarly divide over the legitimacy of 'pan-Germanic' peoples we fall upon, I think we can all agree that he's quite an important one and challenges to that commonality are therefore of considerable significance.

I think you meant to ping @Austronesier: - will look at this later.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:50, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: Whoops, that's correct, I did. Apologies!
Without having looked at the specifics of what you'd like to add: While I might agree that the current section is a bit "positivistic", I think that that mostly reflects the scholarship. If most scholarship is "positivist", we should be too. A better place for such in-depth discussions might be at Odin or Germanic paganism.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
"[S]cholarly dismantling of the assumption that..." is an impressive phrase. It would be interesting to know if this presentation of Shaw is accurate and whether this "dismantling" has been accepted by any other scholar.--Berig (talk) 19:00, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Berig also makes a good point. As a summary article, we should try and reflect the majority or most notable opinions on the subject.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:02, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough, but what I have framed as a dismantling (that I should have presented it more neutrally notwithstanding) was clearly accepted by at least two, because it passed a form of peer review in the form of the examination of a doctoral thesis. I do not seek to suggest that it is paradigmatic, but these reflexive challenges to the positivist assumptions of the field are important and do have ramifications. It is a shame that Shaw never disseminated the work in the form of a monograph, but the thesis is at least available to consult should readers of this page be interested.
We generally require a bit more than just the dissertation reviews for signs of general acceptance. I certainly wouldn't count my dissertation as an authoritative document on anything just because two people (who, in the modern academy, often actually have less expertise in the individual topic than the dissertator) agreed it was defensible. I would see if anyone else has picked up on Shaw's views (which do strike me as outside the mainstream on the cognate Odin-Woden) before including them anywhere now that I know it was a dissertation. All the more so if he never tried to publish it.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:11, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
My understanding is that in the UK it still is, and was even more in the early 2000s, perfectly normal, in a way unlike the US, not to publish a PhD thesis in the form of a monograph with that having no ramifications for its scholarly standing. Much of the drive toward the monograph has been a response to job market pressure, and the increased demand for the quantification of research output, driven by processes like the Research Excellence Framework.
Plus, if due for mention here (13 citations on Google Scholar), the thesis should be cited for what it actually proposes. The main point of the thesis is that the originally distinct concepts of Wodan and Odin converged in Anglo-Saxon England. His philological speculation that the two names may not be cognate at all, or the result of late diffusion across the NW Germanic dialect continuum, is not his main conjecture. FWIW, in one paper that cites him, J. Harland writes Shaw (2002), for example, has demonstrated the improbability that the temporally separated deities, Wodan and Óðinn, can be associated with one another beyond etymology. Note the final "beyond etymology" which shows that Harland agrees with Shaw in his main point, but apparently isn't convinced by the "debunking" of the etymology. –Austronesier (talk) 19:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Add I also agree with Ermenrich that the issue is a sub-sub-topic for this article. It should be primarily expounded – again, if due for inclusion in WP – in the main article Odin. Note also that Shaw doesn't make far-reaching conclusions about the wider implications of his case study. To read more into Shaw's thesis ("and this has ramifications for the extent to which assumed shared beliefs among Germanic-speaking peoples can be inferred") than he himself does is WP:OR. –Austronesier (talk) 19:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
All legitimate points, but Harland is not a philologist and therefore, whatever his or the argument's merits, is not well placed to assess that part of the argument in detail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.43.197.76 (talk) 19:22, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
This is by a philologist, and I find no mention of a challenge to Odin and Woden being cognate names: This is a similar scenario to that regarding the figure of Woden presented by Shaw, where he argued that such a deity might never have existed in England, instead being a later Christianized figure based loosely on a localized deity found among the Alamanni and Langobards in the western Danube region of continental Europe. (p. 304).--Ermenrich (talk) 19:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
While not intending to push back on the overall conclusions you're reaching, I would highlight that Shaw says, in the conclusion to his opening chapter (p. 71): Finally, the most crucial assumption - and it is a plausible assumption - set out in this chapter is that Wodan and Odinn need not be linguistic cognates, and, indeed, need not be cognate figures at all. There is no reason to assume, as many scholars do, that Wodan was a deity culted amongst the majority of Germanic tribes in the primitive Germanic period, and whose name therefore reflects the sound-changes which differentiate the early medieval Germanic dialects, and in particular the North and West Germanic dialect families. In fact, it seems quite likely that Wodan and Odinn either arose independently of one another, or at least developed quite rapidly in very different directions, as the evidence for their cults, considered in subsequent chapters, seems to indicate. This point thus appears to be a core plank of the argument he advances. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.43.197.76 (talk) 20:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I would also posit that there seems to be sufficient discussion of Shaw's work among specialists in a range of disciplines to make its points at least worthy of consideration, though I can understand the point about about this being primarily an issue for discussion on the Odin page. As it stands though, the section on cognates fails to highlight that these putative similarities, too, are sometimes more contested than some scholars would like to assume. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.43.197.76 (talk) 20:12, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
This is really fringy stuff. Not every theory is fit for inclusion in Wikipedia.--Berig (talk) 21:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
WP:RS on doctoral theses states, If possible, use theses that have been cited in the literature; supervised by recognized specialists in the field; or reviewed by independent parties. The thesis was supervised by Ian N. Wood, Joyce Hill, and Mary Swan, and as we've noted has been engaged with, commented upon, and positively used by a reasonable number of specialists, none of whom seem to have had major (or indeed any) objections to its core premises. This surely meets those criteria? It's not just some fringe theory.
Or perhaps I should rather say, if it is a fringe theory, it is one first posited in a WP:RS and appears to have had, despite its being a doctoral thesis, sufficiently wide currency among a sub-section of specialists of the field to clearly be regarded in some parts of the field as a legitimate hypothesis (and one that they have used to shape their own arguments about Germanic peoples)

Without wanting to be definitive about it, the supervisors are not strong evidence that a thesis has made a wider mark. But on the other hand, being practical, this is just not the article for this, surely?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I haven't seen any evidence anyone else cites Shaw's thesis on its theory that Odin and Woden might not be cognates. That he himself is not fringe is obvious, but since he hasn't bothered to try to publish this idea (unlike his criticism of the standard theory that the Germanic days of the week were borrowed in the 4th century, which he has), I don't really think it's fit for inclusion on Wikipedia (let alone on this article in particular).--Ermenrich (talk) 22:32, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I've now set out the evidence I have been able to find for for scholarly engagement with and use of Shaw's hypothesis in his PhD thesis on the Talk section of Odin, here. I should again note that it is more normal, and was especially so in previous decades, to not publish PhD dissertations in their entirety in the United Kingdom, and doctoral theses from this period are very much regarded as legitimate, citable scholarly enterprises in their own right. Once the standards of WP:RS are applied, as I've tried to suggest they do, this should therefore not be disqualifying.
Shaw has proposed a lot of things over the years that have not found much acceptance in the field. To name a couple examples, weekday names in Germanic languages are still widely interpreted as strong evidence of interpretatio Germanica and philologists still highlight Ēostre as one of many extensions of the Indo-European dawn goddess. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
@Bloodofox:It's extraordinarily easy to argue for the non-acceptance of something without bothering to provide citation, given it simply relies upon an (alleged) absence. On the other hand, I've assembled in the link in my previous comment, as part of the Odin Talk section, evidence for there being a not insignificant section of scholarship (7 different citations in peer reviewed materials, from 6 different specialists across several disciplines) taking up, making use, building upon, and thereby accepting, Shaw's arguments regarding the non-conflation of Odin and Woden, and arguing for the roots of their conflation in the intellectual culture of the eighth century. It might not be the most widespread view, and some here may not like it, but there is a not-insignificant cohort of specialists on the early middle ages who clearly find it sufficiently convincing to both use it and build upon it. If 7 separate peer-reviewed publications from 6 specialists, all published in the last 8 years, across several disciplines (including philology, archaeology, and history) isn't enough to establish a hypothesis' sufficient notability, what is?134.2.58.250 (talk) 05:57, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
It would be a different matter, of course, if you had assembled extensive literature from philologists rebutting Shaw's theories and decrying their increased take-up by historians and archaeologists, but I fear that this is much like the critical dissection of the notion of Germanic peoples taking place in a wide body of scholarship, in that those who dislike the implications of those arguments prefer simply to ignore them and pretend they do not exist, and then, when forced to acknowledge them, treat this as sufficient indication of their lack of credibility/notability.
For further discussion, see Talk:Odin#Shaw_Odin/Wotan_non-cognate_and_eighth-century_conflation_theory:_establishing_its_sufficient_notability_for_inclusion. :bloodofox: (talk) 09:14, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

deletion of sourced material about the so-called Germanic guard

Ermenrich this edit moves from several sources to relying on one source, which is not normally a good thing. I will try to understand that as part of an effort to shorten the article. (OTOH everywhere else I look you've expanded the article a lot, despite that being the opposite of what we all supposedly agreed upon as an aim.) My specific concern with this edit: you've also removed explanation about the common term/concept "Germanic (body)guard" and it's important connection to the Julio-Claudian dynasty. If that topic cannot be handled here, then where? This subject seems very closely connected to the unifying core concept of what the term Germanic meant (or means), surely? I suggest using the search term "bodyguard" in the Roymans work which you have thankfully not yet deleted all reference to.---Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:18, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster:, I couldn't access the sources used directly, and they mostly didn't strike me as very good. I also don't think the Germanic bodyguard should be the main focus of that section. The Batavian guard is still mentioned, but we need to have a much more flowing style, in my opinion. The history section is constantly bogged down in minutiae to the point where it actually fails to provide a narrative on anything in many cases. The Batavian Revolt's former description is a good example.
At any rate, I'm getting my hands on Wolfram and some other sources soon, so the current wording and sourcing isn't necessarily the final one. At the moment I'm just trying to trim down and make a coherent whole out of the history section. Wikipedia is a collaborative project and anyone is free to make sourced additions of whatever they feel is important. I might suggest that the Germanic bodyguard could be better handled in the section on warfare though.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:24, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Roymans' work is online in several places. I understand you're first paragraph and good luck. There are a lot of dilemmas in trying to shorten these sections, and I still don't agree with those who argue for the Nike motto approach. In any case please keep it in mind that you've removed a topic and I've expressed concern that a new home should be found. This was a Roman unit over a very long period, and would not fit easily in any section about "Germanic warfare". This unit has been relevant to discussions about what the term Germanic meant to imperial Romans. I think Dutch scholars are very important for this topic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:44, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Can you explain what about this unit you would like to see included in the history section that isn't there now? Keep in mind that the history section should not be concerned with defining the Germanic, that's what the definitions section is for (one of the problems with the old section was it kept getting interrupted by "Cassius Dio calls these people over here Germanic" or "it is unclear if these people were Germanic" or "Caesar provided some thoughts on what made a people Germanic").--Ermenrich (talk) 19:50, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
I'd think twice about removing all mention of these things (copy pasting from what you removed): "the Germanic bodyguard (custodes corporis) were dissolved by Galba in the same year[1] because he suspected they were loyal to the old dynasty.[2] The decision caused deep offense to the Batavi, and contributed to the outbreak of the Revolt of the Batavi in the following year". "The Numerus Batavorum was replaced by the Equites singulares Augusti which were, likewise, mainly recruited from the Germani. They were apparently so similar to the Julio-Claudians' earlier German Bodyguard that they were given the same nickname, the "Batavi".[3]" --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:16, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
What do others feel about the necessity of including this material? Obenritter, Austronesier, Berig? Is there a better way to squeeze it in?--Ermenrich (talk) 20:36, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Special military organisations should be a rather peripheral matter. We would not consider the Swiss Guard to be an important and defining part of the article Swiss people, and we would not consider Royal Suédois to be an important and defining part of Swedish people.--Berig (talk) 20:51, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Hmmm. First of all, the section involved is not supposed to be about the definition of the Germanic people, as Ermenrich says. On that basis you'd have to delete the whole history section. Secondly, if, in 2000 years, one of the only things people know about the original that Swiss is there was something called the Swiss guard, then it will have become quite a key point about early Swiss history. But these problems are insignificant compared to the bigger one. You can't just say all military units are the same? This happened to be one of the most important active military and political entities in the Roman empire, and their disbandment apparently really was a "big thing" leading to the creation of a large and dangerous alliance of different groups who saw themselves as having skin in the topic. I still suggest looking at the sources before deleting them? More generally, I think it is certainly not best practice for any single editor to delete things because they have not personally got the sources?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
The sources I do have do not make a connection between the disbanding of the unit and the revolt. Can you show it’s in more than one place? Otherwise I just don’t think a specifically Batavian unit is that important in the grand scheme of things. It’s mentioned by name now, that should do it. If you want to expand on the Batavians then I’d suggest doing that at their own article - I can’t see that most books on Germanic peoples spend that much time on them beyond briefly mentioning the revolt (Todd doesn’t mention it at all). Keep in mind that we don’t even discuss the much more famous Arminius or Teutoburger Wald in much Detail.—Ermenrich (talk) 22:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
From what I recall in Roymans, [Roymans, Nico. Ethnic Identity and Imperial Power: The Batavians in the Early-Roman Empire. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004.] this is fairly important with regard to imperial power and the transition between regimes. @Ermenrich:. You may want to check that source specifically. It can be found in the same place as the Pohl resource I referred you to a few days ago. It was a significant revolt of "Germanic" people so it does deserve treatment in my mind. I've seen it in a number of sources, but I am just too swamped elsewhere to check right now. --Obenritter (talk) 23:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Obenritter, it definitely is and should be mentioned, but looking through the articles in RAO, I can't find any mention of the revolt being caused by the disbanding of the bodyguard. The RAO mentions the execution of Civilis's brother as a reason. Roymans also does not say the revolt was caused by the bodyguard. In fact, the passage that Andrew Lancaster seems to most object to being removed is this (if I understand him correctly): The decision caused deep offense to the Batavi, and contributed to the outbreak of the Revolt of the Batavi in the following year which united Germani and Gauls, all connected to Rome but living both within the empire and outside it, over the Rhine.[4]. That means that the information in question is sourced (possibly) to Tacitus "The History" (the Annals???), given that it is also tagged "re-check". All of which is to say that the old text, even when sourced, was not necessarily sourced well - one of the reasons I feel no compunction to remove "sourced" material in favor of things I can easily bring to hand. Under the circumstances, I think that the current mention of the bodyguard by name while briefly recounting the events of the revolt is sufficient.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:25, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Ermenrich given that this is the Germanic peoples article it seems worth thinking twice about removing all reference to the "Germanic" guard of the Julio-Claudians (at least until you check the sources)? Tacitus wrote a work called the Histories. Possibly we will once again be faced with a complication, and indeed it might be best to handle elsewhere, but just deleting reference to points that are potentially important seems a bit dangerous. As to the more general question of what the narrative section should focus on, FWIW I personally felt it should one day focus on the most "Germanic" things, and especially things which are not handled in other articles. I guess if there is no clear vision it will tend to gravitate towards a traditional story which equates Germanic history with the story of the end of Rome.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:26, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster, what is your "clear vision"? Because the reason the article got reverted back to an earlier version is that no one thought it was clear, even some of us who want to avoid just retelling the "traditional story". Srnec (talk) 13:47, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster, I'm not sure you and I are reading the same text. The article currently reads The Batavi had long served as auxiliary troops in the Roman army as well as in the imperial bodyguard as the so-called Numerus Batavorum, often called the Germanic bodyguard.. So how have I remov[ed] all referrence to the "Germanic" guard of the Julio-Claudians? They are mentioned in the text. I've pointed out that the idea that the disbanding of the guard led to the Batavian Revolt appears quite flimsy - if it were given as a reason in Tacitus, it would be mentioned by the GAO, surely.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:51, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Ermenrich In my professional opinion, I'd go with Roymans and how he couches the situation. Never met him or heard him lecture, but I know his work is respected. He spent a lot of time looking into the Batavians, surely reading plenty of Tacitus included. Nice work by the way...surely I am not alone in commending the astute consideration you've thus far made in trying to keep what is most essential to this topic, while improving the overall quality of this article.--Obenritter (talk) 22:45, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Obenritter - I've made it through all the sections except for "Early Middle Ages" now, and hopefully improved the text. It gets harder and harder as you go along though, since the "Germanic peoples" start having very different trajectories in the migration period. There are probably still some things that could be added (I'd like more information on what's going on outside of the Roman frontier, if I could find it). I think the current version is significantly less Rome-focused though.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:53, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: I have no clear vision I'm afraid. :) I just wanted to register a minor concern. You are right that the word Germanic is still there. The apparent Julio-Claudian connection is gone though (and I thought Roymans did mention that?) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: feel free to tweak as you see fit.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:32, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: of course. @Srnec: my apologies I should have also replied to you. I should perhaps say that I never presented myself as having found any consensus path forward concerning this section. I mainly just tried to trim it after a period of rapid expansion. It is a section which seems to start expanding very dramatically every now and then. In general my "unclear vision" is still that the whole article needs to be shorter, and it therefore should focus as much as possible on uncontroversially Germanic topics not handled in other articles. (IMHO this still means focussing on the early period.) Ironically, while there is not much open opposition to the need to shorten, we are going in the opposite direction, and in practice there is resistance to shortening. I think it is obvious that I at least don't think this article can or should have a long narrative about the fall of Rome and the Dark Ages. To describe those things as "Germanic" is to give our readers a 19th century conclusion as a starting point. To discuss the problems with that properly has proven difficult. I suppose that if we really need to have a very long narrative then it is one of the many sections which could perhaps better be spun off to a satellite article? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Suetonius, Galba 12.
  2. ^ De la Bédoyère 2017, pp. 113–115.
  3. ^ Fuhrmann 2012, pp. 128–129.
  4. ^ Tacitus, The History, 2.5.[re-check]
I had a look and the article is indeed too large. After a long series of cuts I made today it's still about 3500 words over the ideal length of 10,000. However, cutting out the migration period from the history section is not the solution, nor is shunting topics off. We need to cover what this article ought to cover. We just need it to be more brief in some cases, something hindered by the poor state of other articles related to this topic. But there are still topics missing that should be here though.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:18, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: yes. My main concern was to answer Srnec. I don't like the idea of people saying I never proposed anything at all. I just think people did not agree with my rough ideas about what the core is, and what to spin off. The sugestion that my ideas were not comprehensible (or even insane, etc) was carefully developed during much more recent attempts to block me from editing on the talk page. I was hardly editing anymore on the article by that time. It's less clear what counter proposals have ever been made apart from ones which have clearly always been much more controversial. That's why the article keeps growing?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:55, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Time for a reminder....

Comment on edits, not the contributor. There’s too much commentary on this talk page about other editor’s supposed beliefs, and not enough discussion of sources. As an outsider, to me this looks like there is genuine disagreement among the sources...so we should probably be setting forth the various positions, without taking a side. Unfortunately, this is getting lost in the commentary about other editors. Let’s all dial it back from that and get back to the content. -- Ealdgyth (talk) 13:36, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

That is a valid remark. OTOH, it would be good if more editors also please check what is happening at the Walter Goffart article which is mentioned above by Thomas W. The proposal is that we are going to make hundreds of basic reversions such as changing his birthplace back to Brussels. Not seeing much scope for a reasonable discussion about sources there. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
No we are not going to change his birthplace back to Brussels, what I'm proposing is reverting the total whitewashing of the article that has been done by you and a COI-editor in an attempt to portray his fringe ideas as a mainstream view. So how about sticking to the truth for once? - Tom | Thomas.W talk 08:11, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Anyone can check and confirm that the revert you are actually proposing mainly means reintroducing errors such as the wrong birthplace, along with (of course) various bits which other editors have over the years described as an attack piece. That's the facts. I hope other editors will also chime in about this aggressive and thoughtless way of working, which has badly affected several articles over the years including this one. This whole obsessive online battle against imaginary "anti Germanic" conspiracies is not only highly disruptive on Wikipedia but also impacts living people. It has nothing to do with the serious and respectable academic discussions about the complications involved with the wide range of ways in which the Germanic terminology is used.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:47, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
And anyone can also see for themselves that I told you that we for technical reasons should revert to last good, and then redo the very few good edits that had been made, such as correcting his birthplace. So once again, how about sticking to the truth instead of trying to smear your "opponents" with repeated false claims? - Tom | Thomas.W talk 10:52, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ealdgyth: Ironically, the course of the discussion that follows your reminder is a good example why this reminder is very much needed. –Austronesier (talk) 11:56, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

If there is anyone who likes a good source-citing discussion it is me. But making a big effort to cite more sources is not going to fix some of these problems, because we are not talking about source-based proposals. We are talking about Wikipedians deciding that some academics are just being politically correct. See the Goffart talk page. In 2020 we had a little swarm of these hit piece BLP bios connected to Germanic topics, and clearly we are at risk of sliding back to that situation. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Goffart's article is off topic here. And we don't need to be discussing what editors perceive as the motives of other editors. Stick to the purpose of the talk page - which is to discuss improvements to the article...Ealdgyth (talk) 15:44, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Scope of end of history section

Right now, we title the last section of history "Early Middle Ages". However, the previous section on the migration period already includes the Early Middle Ages to 568, the traditional end of the migration period (marking the beginning of the Lombard/Langobard invasion of Italy). This means there is some overlap that I would like to remove.

On the other hand, we also have a very unclear end point. We're in general agreement that "Germanic peoples" aren't really a thing today, but I don't know when we're planning to draw the line. The current section includes:

  1. a brief mention of the Carolingians (c. 800)
  2. an even briefer mention of the Anglo-Saxons from 519 (unsure what that date means?) to the 10th century
  3. a mention of the Scandinavians, including the Vendel period (540-790), but then mentioning the early Viking age (793-1066) and the foundation of Normandy (900) and Rus' (9th century). I'll note that due to not really having a documented history prior to this point Scandinavia hasn't appeared before.

We do not cover:

  1. the further history of the Lombards in Italy
  2. the further history of the Visigoths and Suevi in Spain
  3. anything about the Goths of Crimea

Now, by this point, the "Germanic peoples" have pretty much lost any semblance of being a unity they might have ever had. It gets very difficult to basically give the what are essentially entirely separate histories (as it already was during the migration period). We close with this sentence Eventually they carved out their own unique historical paths., but this has basically been true since the Marcomannic Wars. So my question for you all is: what should we cover, and why?--Ermenrich (talk) 14:03, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

To give some external comparisons: Todd sporadically mentions events into the 8th century for a variety of Germanic peoples, however they are broken up into separate sections of the book rather than placed together like we do. Reviewing him, he seems to generally cut off by 800 (so no Vikings). The same practice seems to be followed generally by Herwig Wolfram Die Germanen. Walter Pohl, Die Germanen, seems mostly to cut off around 600, but includes sporadic details to 800.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:17, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
This has historically been a problem, since one could write another entire book about the diffusion and dispersal of the Germanic people into the Middle Ages. I note that in Wolfram's The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples that he cover the Visigoths in Spain up until the early 8th century, and the Lombards/Longobards up until the middle of the 7th century, before transitioning to "The Transformation of the Roman World," whereby he closes the book out with Charlemagne's recognition by the pope and the notion of the "Empire's" transfer. Even Edward James's Europe's Barbarians, AD 200–600, includes brief discussion of Charlemagne, as would be expected. Peter Heather's The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders more or less concludes with the Carolingians, so I believe this might be where the story ends. While the Vikings were certainly "Germanic peoples" they prominently appear much later in the story, much of which had long revolved around Rome, including Charlemagne's corresponding title suggestive of a Roman continuum. My personal opinion is the Vikings do not share this heritage with the Goths, Lombards, Franks, etc., so Karl der Große marks the last and most important vestige of these ancient peoples. However, this is merely my take.--Obenritter (talk) 15:09, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
I would suggest including the Viking Age, such as the late history of the Svear, within the scope of the history section as per WP:BROAD. Viking Age material is included in the other significant sections of the article (such as the "Conversion to Christianity" section), and we should be consistent. Information on the Viking Age as part of Germanic history is provided in the Introduction chapter by Brian O. Murdoch in Early Germanic Literature and Culture. Further details on this are provided by Peter Heather in Chapter 9 of Empires and Barbarians. Krakkos (talk) 15:13, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Krakkos You're right about the additional mentions in the article already about the Vikings, so maybe we should include the Viking Age, but it would really need to be an extremely brief historical synopsis, since their history creates another lengthy tangent that could overburden this page, which already covers a lot of ground. --Obenritter (talk) 15:22, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
I would lean against including the Vikings beyond something like "This was followed by the Viking Age, during which Scandinavians expanded by sea across large parts of northern Europe." or something to that effect. I think 800 is a good cut off date overall. But I'm willing to follow whatever the majority here wants. I would argue that Christianization is something of a special case, since "Germanic religion" explicitly covers to the end of Scandinavian paganism. However, the focus of the article should, in my opinion, remain on the earlier periods - otherwise all the other cultural sections could likewise extend into the Viking age.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:26, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Ermenrich With that said, I think you and I are in agreement at least, but that's not consensus, weil zwei keine Mehrheit machen.--Obenritter (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Germanic peoples were prominent well after 568 AD, meaning that we can definitely NOT end the history of those peoples in the 6th century, because doing so implies that all Germanic peoples were so thouroghly mixed with others by that time that they somehow vanished from history (they didn't, and implying they did is anti-Germanic POV, which we have seen quite a lot of on en-WP lately). The history section also seems to deal almost exclusively with Western Europe, alotting only a single sentence at the end of the history section to Germanic activities in Eastern Europe, and some here seem to want to remove even that little snippet. So no, 800 AD is NOT a good cut off date overall. - Tom | Thomas.W talk 19:26, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Thomas.W:, I'm not sure what you mean by "anti-Germanic POV". Do you mean that the article takes seriously and discusses the controversy over the notion of Germanic peoples? The proposal to end at c. 800 is based on how the issue is handled in other sources discussing Germanic peoples, not "anti-Germanic POV". Do Malcom Todd, Herwig Wolfram, and Walter Pohl have "an anti-Germanic POV"? Instead of making such vague accusations, it would be more helpful to cite sources, such as Krakkos has done.
When do you think we should be end the history section? If you think we should go all the way to the present, do you think that Jamaicans or Yiddish speakers are a Germanic people? They speak a Germanic language and modern scholarship acknowledges that "Germanic" is not a racial category. If you think it should stop later in the Middle Ages then: when? Based on what criteria? 800 seems if anything fairly late to me because by this time the "Germanic peoples" certainly did not have any sort of common identity or history anymore (not any more so than the early French and Germans and Italians or other Western European Christians, certainly).
As for Eastern Europe: You seem to be ignoring that most of the sections dealing with the Goths and Gepids are also about "Eastern Europe" and the Balkans. Germanic-speaking presence ended there toward the end of the Migration Period except for the Crimean Goths, who we could conceivably mention if we had sources that did.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:43, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The most logical cut off date would be 1066 AD (the end of the Viking Age). The Black Sea region and the Balkans are Southern Europe, BTW, or at least Southeastern Europe, not Eastern Europe. - Tom | Thomas.W talk 20:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The Black Sea region and the Balkans are Southern Europe, BTW, or at least Southeastern Europe, not Eastern Europe. EuroVoc contains the region just as Eastern Europe, while United Nations geoscheme contains all of Hungary and Romania in Eastern Europe. Perhaps a more helpful point of attack: What part of the history of Germanic peoples in Eastern Europe do you think is not covered in the article? If you can point us to sources discussing it, we can add it within the boundaries of DUEness (the article is 3500 words over ideal length).--Ermenrich (talk) 20:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
And according to the United Nations the British Isles are part of Northern Europe (see image, blue denotes Northern Europe...) in spite of everyone living there knowing it isn't so, so I suggest we stick to where on a map places are. And how about sticking to discussing the subject of the article, instead of trying to derail the discussion by concentrating on totally irrelevant things? The history section should definitely include trade settlements deep into Russia, including places around Ladoga, Novgorod and down to both the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, to illustrate the importance of Germanic trade routes and trading settlements in the east, plus the foundation of the Rus' state. - Tom | Thomas.W talk 20:56, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
If you didn't want to discuss it why did you say anything about it? Anyway, sorry, to my mind the countries on the Lower Danube/Black Sea are undeniably in Eastern Europe... But as I said, tomayto, tomahto.
What period are you referring to with "trade links"? If it's the Viking age you mean (based on the latter half of your comments) the article actually currently contains Swedish Vikings, known locally as the Rus', had ventured deep into Russia, where they founded the state of Kievan Rus'. The Rus' destroyed the Khazar Khaganate and became the dominant power in Eastern Europe. So if you think we need to include more about Eastern Europe in the Viking Age, we first need to establish a consensus that we should include the Viking Age. We have two in favor and two against so far.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Ermenrich: For information on anti-Germanic bias among modern medievalists see "The Dating of Widsið and the Study of Germanic Antiquity" (2012) and "Writing the Barbarian Past (2017)" by Leonard Neidorf. There is evidence for the existence of a Germanic identity into the Viking Age. The 8th century Anglo-Saxon monk Aldhelm described himself as being "brought up in the cradles of the Germanic people". In his "Beowulf as Pre-National Epic" (2018), Neidorf argues that Beowulf (produced during the Viking Age) is a pan-Germanic poem intended to unite Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians. I would suggest that the final subsection of the "History" section be named "Middle Ages", with a final paragraph covering the period that includes the Viking Age, ending with the Christianization of Scandinavia and the Norman Conquest. A summary of that period from a Germanic perspective is provided in the sources by Murdoch and Heather that i provided in the above post. Krakkos (talk) 21:24, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: That's the snippet I mentioned in my first post in this thread, and halfway up this discussion you wanted to remove it ("I would lean against including the Vikings beyond something like "This was followed by the Viking Age, during which Scandinavians expanded by sea across large parts of northern Europe." or something to that effect"). Meaning that you don't want Germanic/Viking activities in Eastern Europe to be mentioned at all in the article. Which, along with the cut off date 800 AD is what I'm opposed to. - Tom | Thomas.W talk 21:35, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@Krakkos:, Neidorf is one scholar, and his proposals for Germanic identity based on Beowulf etc. are taken apart pretty thoroughly by Shami Ghosh in Writing the Barbarian Past. I also don't recall Neidorf using the phrase "anti-Germanic bias" in "The Dating of Widsith" (which is available at Academia here). He mentions two theories of Roberta Frank and Goffart on the nonexistence of an oral tradition behind heroic poetry that are decidedly not the majority position - but Victor Millet [de], who holds to the mainstream view on heroic poetry and oral tradition also is quite clear that he doesn't think it indicates a common Germanic identity. While Neidorf does say something about Ghosh having a prediliction for anti-Germanic readings in that review of Ghosh's book (online here) he is also for the most part fairly complimentary of Ghosh as a scholar: Writing the Barbarian Past remains an excellent introduction to the principal early medieval sources for Germanic legend. At any rate, isn't this a little like citing a book review by Pope Francis on the 95 theses? Neidorf is hardly a neutral observer.
@Thomas.W:, I assumed you were referring to the final sentence of the Migration Period section. My mistake.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:44, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Does anyone else have an opinion: @Austronesier, Srnec, Andrew Lancaster, Berig, and Alcaios: (feel free to add anyone).--Ermenrich (talk) 21:47, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict)FWIW, Neidorf does not speak out against "anti-Germanic bias". In the 2012 article, he does not even talk about "anti-Germanic". In his review of Ghosh's book he refers to "Ghosh’s predilection for anti-Germanic readings", which is quite something different. "Anti-Germanic bias" implies a negative attitude towards to object of study, which is a weird accusation, while "anti-Germanic readings" means that scholars like Ghosh (and many, many others) prefer to contextualize the early Germanic-speaking peoples without assuming a shared identity, and in cases of doubt tend to press the null assumption even if the evidence (such as presented by Neidorf) can be quite suggestive. –Austronesier (talk) 21:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Tom here. Attempting to keep coverage of the Viking Age off of this page has got to be peak silly for what we've seen here so far. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Again, are Todd, Wolfram, and Pohl "silly"? Perhaps you'd like to provide some "non-silly" sources that discuss the whole history of the Germanic peoples into the Viking Age as a model? Can we have a discussion here based on WP:RS without making accusations?--Ermenrich (talk) 23:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The most recent PCRN volumes (2020) contain extensive discussion about topics—specifically all things Germanic—from Tacitus (and before, in some cases as far back as the Bronze Age) up until the end of the Viking Age from Lindow, Schjødt, Gunnell, Simek, and numerous other scholars.
Schjødt's "Continuity and Break: Indo-European" and "Continuity and Break: Germanic" are solid examples from the first volume (sample quote: as we shall deal with relevant archaeological sources, both from Scandinavia and the wider Germanic area, in many of the chapters of this work, we shall not go into details at this place, but it is important to emphasize that continuity in religion from the early Germanic periods to the Viking Age can most often be seen when archaeological finds are interpreted in combination with the written sources, both those written by foreigners and those from the Scandinavian Middle Ages. & At the same time, Germania may serve as an example of many of the problems we face when we are dealing with pre-Viking age, Germanic sources, not least the problems concerning continuity (or lack of continuity), which is why we shall treat it in some detail.—both Schjødt 2020: 257). Common topics of discussion in the four volumes—and just about everywhere else in much of ancient Germanic studies—are the continental Germanic peoples (as in 'speakers of ancient Germanic languages') and how they connect (or not) with our understanding of the North Germanic sphere, which means much discussion of material associated with Viking Age Scandinavia.
Given how extensively the topic of the North Germanic corpus plays in discussion of the concept of the ancient Germanic peoples, yeah, silly is indeed how I'd describe an attempt to keep coverage of the Viking Age (and, say, the North Germanic corpus as a whole) off of a page about the Germanic peoples on English Wikipedia. As an example, imagine discussing the matter of Nerthus and intentionally avoiding mention of Njörðr. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:54, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Ermenrich you called for comments. I'll try to keep it short.
1. Thomas.W's understanding of what Germanic means equates it not only to the accident of what language we grow up with but also equates that to a racial/genetic definition. See his own wording which focuses entirely on the question of whether Germanic peoples "mixed with others". We are still in danger of slipping back to the silly old discussions about why Jamaicans are not Germanic. As far as I can understand them, this is also what underlies the constant pushes of Krakkos, Bloodofox and Berig. Berig has for example stated that the academics will be proven wrong when more genetic evidence becomes available. Undoubtedly there are academics who think the same way. (Heather's wording has been convincingly accused of sliding in this direction, for example by Florin Curta.) But for the most part academics do not state things like this in clear ways in publications. (Berig and Krakkos believe this is only because academia is under the influence of political pressure.) For better or worse though, Wikipedia is quite consciously based off of what people publish when they are being most careful. My understanding of the genetic evidence as published by the geneticists however is that we already have enough data to know that it extremely unlikely that any specific Germanic genetic signature will ever be identified. Europe is geographically small and intermixed. The last big influx of genetically distinct people seems to have been the one which brought Indo-European languages, carts, wool, milk and Bronze. This is in any case unlikely to become relevant to WP while we are editing.
2. Clearly some words, like Germanic, can be used in several different ways. Generally we split those into multiple articles. A bit more complicated are the cases, like Germanic, where the different ways are sometimes seen as amounting to the same thing, but not by everyone. In other words, disambiguation becomes complicated, and a topic in itself. In many such cases what we do is that we make a short concept article which acts like a disambiguation page, explaining the concept, and the reason there are different definitions, and directing to the specialized article. I have never felt a strong desire to push for it, but I tend to think this is what needs to happen. I started going in that direction but did not complete it. There was at least consensus that the article needs shortening. Creating a concept article still seems like the only way to achieve that consensus aim without doing things there is no consensus for? Even if we all agreed on everything, we would still be talking about how to split this topic up because it is too big.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:59, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
And you are, as always, pushing POV and deliberately misinterpreting/misrepresenting others' views. Germanic peoples are not defined by race, and I have never ever claimed they are, but defined by language, culture (incl religion) and a common geographic origin (Scandinavia), and "mixing" has nothing to do with racial mixing but cultural mixing and adopting a new (local) language, and through that losing the traits that defined them, as seen early on in Southern and Western Europe and later on in Normandy, Russia and other places where Germanic peoples settled. As I'm quite sure you know, it just suits your anti-Germanic POV better (basing articles almost entirely on Goffart, I mean how far away from reality can you get?) to present your opponents as racists or whatever. It is, BTW, interesting to see that you and a person who judging by their early edits have a close personal connection to Walter Goffart (so close a connection that I have posted a COI-warning on their talk page) have completely whitewashed his article here, removing every mention of his views being regarded as very controversial, and very far away from the mainstream views. - Tom | Thomas.W talk 12:10, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
I have not called you a racist Thomas. Other words would be more appropriate. Your editing history speaks for itself. You can't deny that what you are talking about is a movement of one original more-truly-Germanic population, supposedly from Scandinavia, which was then "diluted" in new areas that it supposedly expanded to and conquered. This article is about "peoples" and we were talking about "peoples". This might not be racist but it is a belief centred upon ideas of race and purity, which connects race to language and culture in a simple way. And to be clear, no one denies there are generally movements of real physical people (and genes) whenever cultures and languages move into new places. The question is whether changes in language or culture require massive movements and replacements of significant blocks of distinctly different populations. I think the academic consensus is that it does not. And this is what you are fighting against. I do want to make sure we all realize that this is what we are really talking about. Effectively, the proposal is that we must over-rule academia about this because they are being too politically correct. I am saying "strong no" to that proposal.
Your insistence that Germanic languages are known to have originated in Scandinavia is also not a mainstream consensus. It is just one possibility for where the predecessors of the languages we know were before we find them near the Elbe. But this is a different topic, that has been considered by others in previous discussions. Please look at those first.
BTW please remember our Walter Goffart article is a biography of a living person. 2ndly, adding the using the word "controversial" only one time instead of repeating it several times per paragraph is not really a way of avoiding the word is it [16]? I'm afraid that insisting that a word needs to be repeated over and over is typical of everything I've seen you do on WP (which has always been about topics related to this article).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:26, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Bloodofox:, the question is not whether or not we should remove places where scholars discuss e.g. Viking religion and its relation to early Germanic material, but where we should end the history section. Schjødt is a religious studies scholar discussing religion, mostly, where no one denies continuities. Can you provide a source that discusses the history of the Germanic peoples as a whole, a la Todd, Wolfram, and Pohl, that goes up through the Viking age? The main thrust of this article is and should remain the common Germanic past, in my opinion. Our article on the Proto-Indo-Europeans does not go into detail about the various successor peoples, even though PIE issues are obviously illuminated by subsequent IE peoples. Why should we take a different approach here?--Ermenrich (talk) 13:50, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
The PCRN volumes are focused specifically on the ancient Germanic peoples and their associated history with an emphasis on the North Germanic sphere due to its expansive corpus and, for example, contacts with surrounding peoples. That's why it contains articles like "Encounters: Slavic" by Słupecki, which opens with the paragraph Slavs and Germanic peoples have been in contact ‘since the beginning of time’, which is natural considering the common Indo-European origin of both ethnic groups ... However, the contacts between them are, at least for the prehistory and ancient history, tangible only in the form of linguistic material, which is difficult to attach to any specific chronological period. This is related to the question of the so-called ‘ethnogenesis of the Slavs’ as well as the original location of the ‘cradle’ of the Slavic peoples is still under discussion, although it seems it might be located somewhere in Eastern Europe. The earliest undisputed written and archaeological testimonies of the presence of Slavic peoples and their contacts with germanic peoples (including interrelations and similarities in their respective pre-Christian beliefs) are available to us only from the Migration Period onwards. (Słupecki 2020: 319) and why Słupecki's piece includes comments like The route from scandinavia to the southern shores of the Baltic sea and onwards along rivers to the Black sea was not forgotten by the scandinavians after the Migration Period, and the ‘Vikings’ travelled to places where the Goths and other Germanic peoples had dwelt (or passed through) before. followed by plenty of discussion of Viking Age Scandinavian contact (Słupecki 2020: 322).
In "Encounters: Celtic", similarly opens with ‘Celtic’ and ‘Germanic’ peoples have been in close contact ever since antiquity. Since the late nineteenth century at the latest it has repeatedly been argued that this contact has resulted in substantial Celtic influences in Germanic religion (Egeler 2020: 289) before going into in-depth discussion about the two groups.
In the same volume, DuBois discusses contact between the Germanic peoples in the Nordic region and Baltic Peoples, as well as the Sámi ("Encounters: Baltic", "Encounters: Sámi", and "Encounters: Balto Finnic". In fact, all of these "Encounters" papers are about Germanic peoples and surrounding peoples. A sample quote from the latter from "Encounters: Sámi": In examining contacts between Germanic and Sámi populations in the Nordic region over the course of centuries, it is important to adopt a workable model for how intercultural contacts could have occurred and how these cultures existed alongside one another over the course of millennia. Especially when dealing with the earlier periods before the Viking age, a model of contact based on later medieval monarchic institutions, or on the cataclysmic power imbalances of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European colonialism, leads to flawed assumptions concerning the ways in which peoples speaking Germanic and Finno-Ugric languages interacted. (DuBois 2020: 353).
All of this is obviously a matter of history, and it is irrelevant whether this discussion of, yes, history stems from any of the historians you're repeatedly emphasizing over all the other many scholars (very) active in ancient Germanic studies. I note also that our current article completely avoids these topics and should be expanded to cover the relations between speakers of ancient Germanic peoples and other peoples exterior to Rome. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:40, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Have you considered editing the article if you think things are missing and have sources for them? There's nothing stopping you from inserting more info on Germanic-Slavic or whatever contact prior to the Viking Age (the period we're trying to gather consensus for excluding/concluding). If the article currently focuses mostly on the relationship of the Germanic peoples with Rome, well, that's what most of the scholarship is about. I've been trying to remedy that in some ways, but we just don't have a lot of sources for what was going on outside of the Roman sphere of influence.
It is not at all surprising that a volume titled "The Pre-Christian Religions of the North" with a focus on Scandinavian Religion would have a heavy focus on... Scandinavia. No one (well, I'm not) is saying that Scandinavian peoples do not count as "Germanic" the question is, as both Berig and Austronesier have stated, how do we draw a line on how far to go chronologically and how do we tell a "single story". It's pretty hard when the Vikings are just off doing their own thing by the end, whatever their cultural continuities with earlier Germanic peoples.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: the overall issue of "Germanic" and the scope of the entire article is off topic for this section. There's no reason to start that all over again. Even if some contributors feel that not covering the Viking age is an attack on "Germanic", that's not what this is about. It's about how to end the history section. I've provided three sources supporting an end date of 800. Krakkos has provided one that might support including Vikings, and Bloodofox has as well (though I'd like to check that it's actually about history). Let's keep this section on topic please.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:59, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Just regarding the later Scandinavian peoples connections to the Germani: this is from "The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Research and Reception, Volume I: From the Middle Ages to C. 1830", ed. Margaret Clunies Ross (Brepols, 2018), the first book in the series Bloodofox has been mentioning. The article is by Henrik Janson, "Pictured by the Other" since the advent of Romanticism much effort has been invested in trying to connect these names [from Tacitus] with names of gods in the Germanic languages found in later, mainly old Norse sources. The guiding idea has been that Tacitus is here mainly practising an interpretatio romana, that is, interpreting foreign gods as domestic, Roman gods. Through the methodology of comparative religion scholars have found it a feasible claim that what Tacitus actually refers to is Wodan/Óðinn, Donar/Þórr, Tiwaz/Týr and so forth, which, if correct, would date these deities more than a thousand years before they appear in old Norse literature. However, systematic studies in contemporary source material — votive inscriptions by Germanic-speaking individuals in the late Roman era — have persuasively shown that these Germanic names, and consequently these gods, were not known at this time, nor do any other ‘pan-Germanic’ gods seem to have been, even if, in accordance with Tacitus’s information, the worship of Mercury was more widespread along the Rhine than that of other gods. However, instead of the interpretatio romana attributed to Tacitus, there seems to have been an interpretatio germanica in play, going in the opposite direction, transforming Roman gods but yet not knowing the names of gods we meet in later sources (e.g., Derks 1998; Shaw 2007: 393–95; cf. Shaw 2011). While Odin etc. are obviously worshiped later by multiple Germanic peoples, it's not clear this goes back to Proto-Germanic times nor, then, how the Vikings help us understand the earlier period.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:34, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Over the years, Shaw (and a few others, in different manners, like Picard) have made proposals about this that have not found a lot of acceptance. This is why one can find quotes from John Lindow (Lindow 2020: 113) that flatly say The etymology of Frigg, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘love’, helps explain how she came to be equated with Venus in the interpretatio Germanica and offers challenges in the deep history.), from Schjødt also other sources from the south Germanic area are important and some of them, for instance, mention names of gods, such as Ziu, Wodan, and Donar ... Their existence all across the area is confirmed by the Germanic weekday-names ... and placename evidence from many Germanic areas ... (Schjødt 2020: 256) and why recent discussion of the matter of intepretatio Germanica on this topic in the same PCRN volume from Simek (Simek 2020: 280-287) does not mention Shaw's proposals at all while going in depth about Germanic weekday names and interpretatio Germanica. When Shaw's proposals on this topic do come up, they're often mentioned as a "critical evaluation" (as Shjødt puts it, Schjødt 2020: 1129).
Additionally, it's relevant that the quote above does not make it clear that these deities suddenly pop up in Old Norse literature, which is not the case—they are attested much earlier exterior to the Old Norse corpus, like a 6th century mention of the deity on the Nordendorf Fibula mentioning Odin, Thor, and quite possibly Loki, and that the same material where interpretatio Romana is thought to occur (importantly Germania) now and then provides us with Germanic theonyms with straightforward descendants in much, much later material (like the aforementioned Nerthus). The likelihood of early Germanic (reconstructed as Proto-Germanic) forms of these deities is quite widely accepted. For a modern overview of individual Germanic deities by scholars, complete with up-to-date surveys of scholarship, see volume III of PCRN 2020. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:12, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

We have to delimit the article somehow, and IMHO it may make sense to end at the beginning of the Viking Age. C. 800 the Germanics on the continent and on the British isles were Christianized, unlike the North Germanics, and the Scandinavians had not only gone through a drastic linguistic change that made communication with other Germanic languages harder, they also started to express their Scandinavian identity in art styles. If there ever was an ethnic identification between North and West Germanics, it had definitely been compromized c. 800.--Berig (talk) 14:42, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

I fully agree with Berig here. The cultural and linguistic continuum of the North and West Germanics at the latest ended with the Christianization and the emerging nations. Germanic peoples did not disappear, they just diverged to the point where it's a hard to tell a common story—remember, this is about the history section. We don't necessary have to follow Wolfram and Pohl here, because they explicitly limit their discussion to those Germanic peoples that were in the interaction radius of the Romans. The Germanics of Scandinavia were outside of that radius, but nevertheless part of the Germanic cultural complex. My preferred model is Todd. He includes a short chapter about the pre-Viking era Scandinavians, but considers the Viking Age a different topic of its own.
Since Scandinavians show a continuation of clearly identifiable Germanic cultural traditions beyond that "cut-off" point, material from later periods still has its place in other sections of this article, e.g. in "Germanic paganism". –Austronesier (talk) 17:34, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Berig:, @Austronesier: we have (or had?) a consensus that the article needs shortening, and bits spun off, and your proposal is going in the opposite direction? IMHO even if we all agreed about everything, and the widest and simplest possible definition of Germanic, there would be no way we can make one single article the primary article for everything ever called Germanic. That is what we keep doing. If that stops, then all other problems will be easier to handle as well I think.
@Ermenrich: "the scope of the entire article is off topic for this section"? First, why did you address that remark to me? Are you reading the posts above? Secondly, on behalf of all the other editors you should have been addressing instead of me, how did you gain the special authority to make such a demand? As far as I am concerned, the question I was asked to comment upon is absolutely unavoidably connected to the fact that this article is too long and trying to do too many things. Is that a "scope" issue? For me, not so much, because it even if we all agreed on a very wide range of meanings of Germanic, the very wide range would still imply that this article somehow needs to be split up.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: I addressed it at you because your post was mostly about "what is Germanic?" ([17], No offense was intended, but that's simply not what we're discussing here. There's no reason to further derail this discussion. If you want to discuss shortening the article or splitting the article than you can create a new discussion about it. This discussion is about whether to include the Viking Age in the history section (which is not "expanding it" as you imply above, but would involve removing things already in the history section).--Ermenrich (talk) 19:47, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Well that is pretty strange to me. Firstly the question of whether Vikings are part of this article is clearly a scope question, at least in the way the other editors posting above see it. Secondly the 2 topics, length of the article, and length of the narrative section, can not be separated from questions of scope and article length. The article length problem on its own tells us we can't just increasing the coverage of this article. No one is denying that the term Germanic gets used for Germanic speaking peoples, strong connections between folklore in northern Europe, and so on, so that is a straw man. The practical question is whether this can be the primary article for all these things.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:12, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Ermenrich: The two sources currently cited that include the term "Germanic peoples" are The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples (1997) by Herwig Wolfram and Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (1998) by Carole M. Cusack. Wolfram's book is about Germanic relations with the Roman Empire, so it is hardly surprising that he refrains from covering post-Roman periods such as the Viking Age. Cusack's book on the other hand covers "Germanic peoples from the third to the eleventh centuries". Dennis Howard Green's Language and history in the early Germanic world (1998) covers a time period which "ranges from about 300 BC through to about AD 900, occasionally later". It is true that several German-language historians, such as Walter Pohl, have a narrower scope on Germanic history, but, as John F. Drinkwater says, "Pohl's Germani are not all Germani. In his Die Geschichte der Germanen (2002), which was praised by Wolfram, Arnulf Krause provides pleny of Viking Age coverage, and includes a separate chapter titled "Die Wikinger - Die letzten Germanen". Die Germanen (2011) by Rudolf Simek and Die Germanen: von Ariovist bis zu den Wikingern (2009) by Bruno Bleckmann [de] also provide coverage of the Viking Age. There is clearly a substantial proportion of scholars who considers thee Viking Age to be within the scope of Germanic history. Including such material in the history section would not only be in accordance with WP:BROADCONCEPT, but also make the article more synchronized and informative. Krakkos (talk) 20:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Those are certainly the best argument I've seen so far for including the Viking Age, however I still have concerns about space. If we were to include them, I'm not sure it should be more than we currently include (and perhaps removing that rather weird sentence about the Rus' destroying the Khazars). I'd also note that Todd's "The Early Germans" provides a counter example (with an older terminology).--Ermenrich (talk) 20:59, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I hope it is clear that no one is arguing that reliable sources never use the term Germanic peoples in ways which include Vikings. I don't think this has ever been the real issue. I am sure we can also find sources who use such terms for later medieval people. But we won't find a consensus either. The question we have is how to break similar-looking topics up into articles, and without ignoring differences of definitions and debates between academics. If space is consistently given as a reason for not mentioning things, or needing to simplify things in ways which risk misleading, then pretty much by definition we need to think about using more articles in some way?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I agree with Berig and Austronesier. This is about the narrative history section. Whatever special position the Norse of the Viking Age have as bearers of earlier common Germanic traditions lost by contemporary Germanic-speaking Franks, they are also something distinct, as Berig notes. Their history is not just that of a pagan Germanic-speaking rump. None of this has any bearing on the chronological limits of sources discussed elsewhere in the article, such as the "North Germanic corpus" mentioned by Bloodofox, which is mostly post-Viking anyway. Srnec (talk) 01:44, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
@Srnec:, would explain why you have written North Germanic corpus with quotation marks? :bloodofox: (talk) 05:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
@Bloodofox: Because I was quoting you! It's the exact phrase you used. That is all. I wanted to be clear that I was merely referring to whatever you had in mind, since obviously the corpus we're talking about is not simply "everything ever written in a North Germanic language". I did not want to presume to know what chronological or generic boundaries you may have intended, so I just quoted you. That's why I said "mostly post-Viking", since if you have in mind the sagas and law codes that is entirely post-Viking. Runestones are different. But I don't think there are any chronological limits per se on source material. Srnec (talk) 15:01, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Anything still missing?

I think I've basically completed going over all the existing sections of the article. It's currently at around 11300 words, which is slightly longer than ideal, but not so much so that I would consider it a problem at this point. My question for you all is: are there any areas of the topic that the article should cover but currently does not?--Ermenrich (talk) 01:24, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

As I've mentioned above, the history section of the article currently very strongly rotates around Rome and the Roman record, which is ultimately just one portion of a much broader historical mosaic. There has been much discussion from scholars about contact with neighboring peoples, especially speakers of Slavic languages, Celtic languages, Balto-Finnic languages, and so on. While we don't have a tremendous textual record to draw from on these matters comparable to the Roman record, there's still quite a lot to be said about this, and all of this needs to be covered in the article. Distortion by viewing this aspect of history through the lens of Rome is something we need to be especially careful about on this article. If someone doesn't beat me to it, I'll go ahead and insert sections about this as time permits, but the recent PCRN articles I highlight above (2020) are excellent candidates for source material. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:25, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Which aspects of these topics are missing and how can we address them? The prehistory section currently mentions interactions with Celts and Finns, while Slavicization is mentioned at the end of the migration period section (just as examples of where more might go).—00:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
For starters, although a people in close contact with speakers of ancient Germanic languages from as far back as we know, the Slavs are only mentioned twice in the whole article. Słupecki's article contains some handy, up-to-date info, and there have been some other recent developments on this matter, including an Elder Futhark inscription discovered in what is generally believed to be a century Slavic settlement on a bone dated to around ~600 CE. This is a major development in runology and in Slavic studies in general, as this inscription is now frequently interpreted as the oldest known script in use by the Slavic peoples — and a direct result of Germanic influence. (This post-dates Słupecki's paper, of course.) Beyond this example, it appears the runes were both native to (and in fact otherwise only used by) speakers of Germanic languages, a defining feature of early Germanic peoples, which the article could make more clear. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:24, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
I think something specific as a runic inscription in Slavic is probably more detail than we want on this page, but more general stuff on connections can certainly be added. Slavs are generally only considered to have been a group since c. 500 CE, so it’s not surprising they aren’t mentioned more. At one point there was something about closer connections between Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages I believe that I either added or considered adding, but that’s pretty deep prehistory.
As far as Celts go we could probably add how they were assimilated in southern Germania-this is sort of hinted at the terminology sections.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:44, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Parallels

"Motz adduces parallels with Frau Holle and Frau Perht of German folk tradition (Motz 1992; accepted by Simek 2003: 56), but nearly all these parallels will hold for Freyr and Freyja as well."

This sounds like a decent source to use on the articles on Frau Holle and Perchta. While you are focusing on this particular article, could you check whether the related articles are properly updated? Dimadick (talk) 08:25, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I think a lot of related articles will need updating. It’s a pretty big task.—Ermenrich (talk) 11:46, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Nordic Bronze Age

@Berig: I don’t see why a sentence about it couldn’t be added to the prehistory section. If you have a source, go ahead and add something about it to the end of the first paragraph there. I see that article has one suggesting a connection from 1991 - if we can it would be nice to have one more recent. Certainly my intention was not to exclude it - I’ve just added what the sources I have contain. It’s just that scholars seem pretty agreed that we can’t really talk about Germanic peoples till 500 BCE so we shouldn’t make them a major focus of the article.—Ermenrich (talk) 11:41, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The Nordic Bronze Age is the material culture that evolved into the Jastorf and its related Scandinavian Iron Age culture. It is usually considered the direct cultural predecessor of Germanic culture, and often compared and connected to it. If a language form is mentioned or discussed it is called Pre-Germanic, but pre does not mean "non-Germanic" here, but a linguistic stage directly before grimm's law, see Germanic parent language. I have been thinking about it, but as the paragraphs are phrased, I don't really know to insert it, and I have basically been hoping for someone else to do it. It is hardly "fringey".--Berig (talk) 12:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
It seems that some scholars argue for such a connection, but I can't find anything about it in Steuer, the most up to date book on Germanic archaeology, and a search doesn't turn up anything in Pre-Christian Religions of the North, which I searched since I know Andrén argues for continuities between bronze age and Viking Age religion, but again nothing. Searching the GAO, there is no article on the Nordic Bronze Age, and their article on the Bronzezeit makes no mention of it. I found this article about Ernst Sprockhoff:
Sprockhoff stand mit der Ansicht, die Träger der nordischen Bronzezeit wären Germanen gewesen, nicht allein. Er folgte damit einer weit verbreiteten Ansicht jener Zeit, deren Wurzeln bereits im 19. Jahrhundert zu suchen sind. [...] Die Annahme einer weitgehenden Bevölkerungskontinuität seit der Steinzeit, vor allem Jungsteinzeit war in der nordeuropäischen Forschung in der Zeit vor dem zweiten Weltkrieg weit verbreitet.
Sprockhoff wasn't alone in his opinion that the bearer of the Nordic Bronze Age were German. He followed a widely spread opinion of that time, the roots of which are already to be sought in the nineteenth century [...] The assumption of an extensive continuity of population since the stone age, especially the Neolithic, was wide spread in Northern European research in the time before the Second World War.
I also found this article by Andrén where he refers to a theory by Claes-Christian Elert that Nordic began to develop as its own branch in die späte nordische Bronzezeit oder die Zeit des Übergangs der Bronzezeit in die Eisenzeit ("in the late Nordic Bronze Age or the time of transition between the Bronze Age and Iron Age"). Elert considers what language was spoken in Scandinavia before this time and argues it might have been Finnic or a Baltic language. Andrén himself argues, on the basis of place names studied by Eva Nyman, that Germanic in Scandinavia dates at least to 500 BCE (the transition period), but that Da Spuren anderer Sprachen, die noch älter wären, fehlen, muss die Kontinuität aus noch früherer Zeit stammen. Wie weit zurück sie sich erstreckt, lässt sich allerdings von bloß rein sprachlicher Seite nicht beantworten. ("Since traces of other, older languages are missing, the continuity must come from an even earlier period. How far back it goes, however, cannot be answered only from the linguistic side.")
I think what this shows is that a few scholars may argue for such a continuity, but the lack of prominence that the theory receives means it shouldn't take too much space here.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:33, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I'll note that a search in Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures just for "Bronze Age" does get a lot of results, but they are all mostly couched in fairly cautious terms about any continuity. Schjødt mentions that its generally agreed that Indo-European speakers reached Scandinavia by 2000 BCE, but not that these are the ancestors of Germanic speakers (and Elert indicates competing ideas).--Ermenrich (talk) 13:50, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
The specific quote from Schjødt here is, ... most scholars believe that they reached scandinavia around the beginning of the Bronze age (c. 2000 bce)" (Schjødt 2020: 228). In the same piece, Schjødt also straightforwardly says, In conclusion, it appears obvious to most that there is a form of continuity from Indo-European times (understood as the period before the migrations) to the late Iron Age in Scandinavia (2020: 246). This should be in the article, which appears to be mostly allergic to the wide world of Indo-European studies at the moment. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
According to Koch (2020:38):
As to the whereabouts of Pre-Germanic during the Nordic Bronze Age (~1700–600 BC), advances in recent years have not upset, as the least controversial view, a homeland in Southern Scandinavia extending into northernmost Germany along the Baltic. Therefore, Pre-Germanic would have been approximately coterminous with the Nordic Bronze Age. Its timespan as proposed here (~1900–500/400 BC) contains all of that archaeological period’s usual date range (~1700–600 BC) extended into the final metal-using stage of the Scandinavian Neolithic and the first 150 years of the Nordic Iron Age.
The phrase least controversial view indicates that an origin in the Nordic Bronze Age is the most mainstream view of the various theories, and that it should be mentioned here.--Berig (talk) 17:26, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
@Berig: You write: It is usually considered the direct cultural predecessor of Germanic culture. Based on my reading so far I would suggest "often" instead of "usually" and "a" instead of "the". In any case there is no doubt that the Scandinavian cultures before Jastorf are generally seen as ONE of the complex of related predecessors which also stretch into northern Germany and Poland. So there is some common ground between how we are all reading. What I feel far less confident about concerning your implied understanding: (1) that Scandinavian Bronze Age cultures are the ONLY cultural predecessors of Jastorf (?) and (2) that there is clear evidence for a DIRECTION of movement from Scandinavia to the Elbe (and Poland). We should also keep in mind that much of the cultural distinctiveness of the Jastorf culture (like Przeworsk) is associated with the strong influence of the apparently Celtic peoples to their south. The resulting new Celtic/Germanic material technologies, including iron, then began to push north, right? So at that point, which is well before linguistic evidence, how can we make bets going further back? How has anyone proved that early Germanic language did not move from south (Poland or East Germany) to north? I've not seen anyone even addressing this very clearly. Has anyone else? My reading is that many academics are now more cautious because they realize that they can't easily narrow down from a large number of possible scenarios. What's more, the original reason for the Scandinavia "womb of nations" model was, let's face it, Jordanes, and his Bible-derived story about Gog and Magog. To some extent Jordanes is clearly still the basis of thinking for some modern archaeologists. But is there any other evidence? To ask a simple question, how are closer areas in Germany and Poland being excluded (according to you) from the range of possible places where the Jastorf language came from?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:47, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That's a great source - can you give the full citation?--Ermenrich (talk) 17:48, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
It is an entire paragraph. It is preceded by this paragraph (Koch 2020:37f):
The phylogenetic calculation preferred by Chang et al. 2015 shows an independent Pre-Germanic branching off ~1900 BC. A different approach, results in a similar estimate, briefly sketched as follows. The first-order subgroupings of Indo-European of Ringe et al. 2002 has the ancestor of Germanic as originally part of a dialect continuum also ancestral Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. In the light of aDNA evidence, this stage can now be identified with CWC of ~2800–2500 BC, situated approximately between the Rhine andUpper Volga.50 The realignment of Pre-Germanic towards Italo-Celtic now suggests the spread of the Beaker phenomenon into Central Europe, where it overlapped and partly fused with CWC in the area between the Rhine, Upper Danube, and Jutland (§22; cf. Heyd 2007; Østmo 2009; Cunliffe 2010). This Beaker/CWC overlap occurred ~2500–2100 BC. Then, after ~1900 BC, the Beaker phenomenon lost momentum and began fragmenting into regional Early Bronze Age cultures (cf. Cleary & Gibson 2019). These realignments are a plausible context for Italic and Celtic separating and leaving Pre-Celtic in continuing close contact with Pre-Germanic.
It is from Koch's CELTO-GERMANIC, Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West, where he discusses Pre(-Proto-)Germanic vocabulary in context with Nordic Bronze Age petroglyphs.--Berig (talk) 18:09, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I will add it to the bibliography. By the way, I also found this in the very long "Germanen" article of the GAO: Da anscheinend die Jastorf-Kultur um Christi Geburt mit überlieferten germ. Stammesnamen verknüpft werden kann (34, 133), gibt es einen genetischen Zusammenhang zw. den germ. Stämmen und der BZ-Bevölkerung, was jedoch nicht im sprachwiss. Sinne gültig ist. ("Since apparently the Jastorf Culture around the birth of Christ can be associated with transmitted names of Germanic tribes, there is a gentic connection between the Germanic tribes and the bronze age population, which, however, is not valid in a linguistic sense.") Also this: Neigte man bis um die Mitte des 20. Jh.s dazu, den gesamten Nord. Kreis der BZ für germ. zu erklären, so ist man heute mit der Anwendung des Begriffs ,germanisch` im Bereich der Arch. aus guten Gründen sehr viel zurückhaltender ("If one was inclined to declare the entire Nordic area of the bronze age Germanic into the middle of the 20th century, then one is today much more reticent with the application of the term "Germanic" in the field of archaeology") This is slightly older (1998), but might contribute to some nuancing.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree. Would you like to add the information? I am sure you would do a great job.--Berig (talk) 18:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Done. Please let me know if everything is as you'd like it, or feel free to tweak/correct etc. on the article itself of course.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks :-). I think it looks good!--Berig (talk) 19:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: you now cite "Koch 2020, p. 38" which seems to be the quote above, for The subsequent culture of the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 1700-c. 600 BCE) [...] is often supposed to have been the culture in which the Germanic Parent Language, the predecessor of the Proto-Germanic language, developed. In effect aren't we then ignoring all the sources which we have seen who are actively critical of such extrapolations back beyond Jastorf? Our readers won't be getting the fine points on how we are sourcing this. Our lead is still more correct IMHO where it says Most scholars view the Jastorf Culture (6th century BCE to 1st century CE) in what is now Denmark and northeastern Germany, as the earliest material evidence for the Germanic peoples. A related point is that you are pushing the Jastorf culture into Scandinavia. It was based on the Elbe river stretching into the south of the Danish peninsula. See https://www.academia.edu/10276827/ for example. If North Jutland were included in the Jastorf culture, the effect would be that this notion was deprived of any meaning. North Jutland is better grouped among the other regional Nordic culture groups, as a culturally independent entity but with connections both to the Jastorf culture and to its eastern neighbours. I don't think WP should be taking sides. I think we should be cautious about using Koch to over-ride archaeologists on archaeology?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

If you think we need to qualify it in some way, go ahead. I think that "often" is in fact more or less correct wording based on the reference though. I'll admit that more sources I've seen seem to argue for some sort of cultural rather than linguistic continuity. What we don't want is to get mired down in some sort of extensive discussion about what is ultimately a marginal issue for the article - as I said, it doesn't even seem to feature in any large ways in most places I looked.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:58, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
It would not be a marginal issue if we wrote about a cultural connection, which would be more justifiable. As it is now we are clearly taking a side in a very "non marginal" issue, i.e. Nordicism, and "back to Jordanes". Please let's not slide in this direction.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:04, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Religious continuity

Following Bloodofox's advice, I have been looking at the article "Continuity and Break: Germanic" by Schjødt in Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures. I do not yet have the full volumes, but I expect to receive them soon.

What has struck me throughout reading this chapter is that it is in fact very much in dialogue with the larger issues of Germanic identity etc. that we've been discussing here, starting with Schjødt occasionally using quotation marks around the word "Germanic": 'Proto-Germanic peoples' (p. 247), Whether one can meaningfully talk of 'Germanic' peoples before that time is hard to say. (p. 250). What's more, for a good summary of scholarship on the Germanic peoples he refers the reader to Herwig Wolfram 1997, Dieter Timpe, Malcom Todd, and Peter Heather. All of these scholars are very much involved in debates about whether or not there was a Germanic identity.

More significantly, Schjødt also repeatedly refers to questions about the degree of continuity between early Germanic/general Germanic religion and Norse religion. Schjødt is arguing for such continuity, obviously, but nevertheless, he shows that it is rejected by "many [...] scholars". A few representative passages:

...Tacitus's famous description of the cult of Nerthus (Germania ch. 40) occupies an important role in all works on Germanic religion and also all general expositions of P[re-]C[hristian ]R[eligions of the]N[orth], because it may reflect some early version of a cult of the vanir, which is elsewhere known only from Nordic sources, mainly from the Middle Ages. There is no doubt that the name Nerthus from an etymological perspective is the same as Njǫrðr. But Nerthus is only one out of several spellings of the name of this terra mater, and many scholars have argued that the form Nerthus that figures in most editions is only chosen because it can be used as evidence for continuity (e.g. Picard 19991; see also Motz 1992). [...] [we] simply note that the cult of Nerthus is rejected by many scholars as evidence of continuity. (p. 260-261) He later goes into more detail on Eve Picard's challenge to using Tacitus as evidence of later Norse gods, saying: What Picard demonstrates, then, is that we cannot be certain that the name Mercurcy is used to designate Ódinn (p. 262-263). Schjødt proceeds to offer arguments in favor of the identification, but note he feels the need to do so.

Finishing his discussion of Tacitus: This said, it must be conceded that Germania ch. 9 can hardly be seen as anything like conclusive evidence of continuity from the time of Tacitus to the Christianization of Scandinavia. Scholars are, as mentioned, greatly divided when it comes to questions of continuity: some take the information gained from Tacitus and many other ancient and medieval sources dealing with various Germanic peoples as evidence for such continuity, whereas many others argue that this is far from certain. (p. 265) He of course is on the side of there being continuity, and musters some more arguments in its favor, but his statements satisfies WP:RS/AC: there is no scholarly consensus for continuity.

All of this suggests to me that the religion section here and probably in many other articles throughout Wikipedia need to emphasize that this is an area of controversy: there is not widespread scholarly agreement on these larger religious connections anymore.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:51, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

So is there any school of thought that posits that the Germanic religion was entirely forgotten, and that there was an "areligious period" prior to which a "Norse religion" was made up from scratch?--Berig (talk) 13:57, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Not exactly. There is a school that posits that Germanic religion changed so much and was so un-uniform even before that that there is little continuity between it and later attestations. Even Rudolf Simek argues for some rather major changes: Thus it seems by the ninth or tenth century, a common, personalized Germanic pantheon had been developed and widely accepted in all Germanic areas. Despite a late development toward more widely accepted and commonly venerated deities... (Simek, "Germanic Religion and Conversion to Christianity", in Early Germanic Literature and Culture, p. 83).--Ermenrich (talk) 14:06, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Also relevant: Sometime between the Iron Age and the Viking Age, Germanic beliefs seem to have changed from a general belief in holy places, in the powers of the Aesir generally (in the sense of the gods), some of which, like Odin or Thor, must have stood out early on, in favor of a more personalized pantheon. (ibid., 88) I would say the major difference is the degree to which someone like Simek or Schjødt is willing to look for later aspects in earlier information, whereas someone like Picard would argue that these other changes indicates we must be careful assuming that we can find later Germanic/Norse paganism in e.g. Tacitus.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:16, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
I recommend waiting to receive the rest of the volumes, including the volume covering individual deities (vol. III). The matter of continuity with Nerthus isn't a new discussion nor is it a matter of particular controversy exterior to, say, those few who follow Motz, much of whose work is, to put it lightly, generally not widely accepted (and here and there dives into essentially fringe territory, especially regarding historicist interpretations and Great Goddess-related matters), and whose proposal on this matter is a throwback to theories proposed before the development of (scientific) historical linguistics, when the reading Hertha was embraced because of its similarities to then-popular personal names. Despite Simek following Motz, this etymology is no longer a question, and because of that and parallels among the deities beyond etymology (like the name Njǫrðr's vagna guð 'wagon god' and all sorts of wagon procession stuff in the Old Norse and Scandinavian archaeological record), a certain level of continuity here is widely accepted (and has now been for over 100 years) primarily because the Germania manuscript form nerthus is exactly the form modern historical linguistics would expect, whereas the gender shift has usually been the primary question (and has been explained a few ways). Lindow (2020: 108) comments on the matter in the same volume:
Language history can suggest changes over the course of the longue durée. Thus it matters little what the etymology of the name Njǫrðr originally was, even though we think we know it. Even if we are wrong, however, the so-called ‘laws’ of sound change require us to accept that his name is identical with that of the goddess Nerthus in Tacitus (*nerþuz > njǫrðr). Given this equation, we can accept both continuity in the connection with fertility and fundamental change in the sex of the deity.
And in a footnote on the matter on the same page:
Rudolf Simek takes seriously the suggestion of Lotte Motz (1992) that other name forms in the humanist editions of Germania are as valid as Nerthus and that the deity in ch. 40 has nothing to do with Njǫrðr but rather should be associated with Frau Percht or Frau Holle in recent folklore (Simek 2003: 56–57). But as Simek admits, Nerthus has manuscript witness. Furthermore, Motz’s argument for conceptual similarities seems forced.
Note the 'takes seriously' here—Simek is indeed one of few to take Motz's proposal seriously. This is also all typical discussion among philologists in this area, and on Wikipedia we regularly outline these discussions on our better-developed articles.
The matter of continuity and innovation has long been a major question in ancient Germanic studies, primarily due to the big gap between Germania and later sources. Whether some kind major shift occurred in Germanic religion around the figure of Odin right before he pops into the written record so commonly, for example, has been discussed by thousands of scholars over the years, and is a classic question (and probably one of the most popular topics) in the field, but there remains no consensus except that the comparative method indicates a very high probability of an early Germanic form, and some level of continuity starting with when the theonym appears on the record is expected. However, while the insights we do get into Germanic religion and myth are limited, they are sometimes remarkably similar to how the material appears in much later eddic material, like we see with the second Merseburg Charm and the origin myth of the Langobards. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
You're ignoring that Schjødt quite explicitly says "many scholars" and "scholars are divided". This means that, whatever the authors write in the volume, it does not reflect an absolute scholarly consensus, per WP:RS/AC. We cannot decide to follow just one side in an ongoing scholarly controversy or that one side has better arguments than the other (even if that side will invariably claim that). The content of The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures represents a particularly direction of scholarship, not scholarship itself. Elsewhere, I've pointed to chapters in other volumes of this same series, such as that by Henrik Janson in the first volume of the series (The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Research and Reception) making the opposite argument to Schjødt and co. If we have a statement that there is no scholarly consensus, we cannot ignore it. We have to present both sides of the argument. Right now, we're only presenting "continuationist" arguments, as though they are uncontested.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:23, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
I see that you're new to this topic and our better developed articles contain extensive discussion from various scholars, which is not a cut and dry matter. Again, you've got ahold of Schjødt's essay, but not the rest of the volumes, including extensive discussion regarding specific deities and the history of scholarship surrounding them in volume III. Our better developed articles on these topics discuss takes from various scholars, but there's no real question about the etymology of Nerthus at this point, as Lindow (and many others before him) makes explicit, and which he further discusses in chapter III ("Njörðr", p. 1331, footnote):
Motz (1992) casts doubt on the reading Nertum (accusative singular of *Nert[h]us), because it is only one of several in the manuscripts of Germania; the others include necthum, Neithum, herthum, Neherthum, and Verthum (Robinson 1935: 317). According to Motz, modern editors prefer it because Jacob Grimm preferred it, on the basis of the etymological similarity with Njǫrðr. However, it is the reading found in Codex Aesinus, the most important manuscript, and thus the reading favoured by Rodney Potter Robinson in the standard critical edition (Robinson 1935: 317). and would it not be extraordinarily coincidental that a deity who fits the pattern of the later fertility gods should have a name that is etymologically identical with one of them? Motz adduces parallels with Frau Holle and Frau Perht of German folk tradition (Motz 1992; accepted by Simek 2003: 56), but nearly all these parallels will hold for Freyr and Freyja as well. On the veracity of Tacitus in general, see Naumann (1934a).
Again, Motz is a minority opinion here, and finding many scholars discussing the Nerthus and Njǫrðr is an easy task and Lindow is easily one of the best-known and most widely published scholars in the field. Fixating on a quote you like from Schjødt's paper while ignoring all nuance and exterior discussion and complaining that we're not emphasizing it enough, or not applying it widely enough here or there (on a topic it seems you're finding your footing in, no less) is not helpful. In any case, pinging @Yngvadottir:, @Haukurth:, who regularly work in these circles. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:23, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Providing a quote from a scholar who has a particular opinion or agenda does not negate a statement by a scholar (with the same opinion) that Scholars are, as mentioned, greatly divided when it comes to questions of continuity: some take the information gained from Tacitus and many other ancient and medieval sources dealing with various Germanic peoples as evidence for such continuity, whereas many others argue that this is far from certain. In this situation, finding "plenty" of scholars arguing one way or the other does not make a difference. My "newness" to the topic does not change an explicit, recent (2020) statement of WP:RS/AC, a policy which have so far avoided addressing. Stating that so-and-so has a minority point of view is not possible without a source to that effect. And again, we have Schjødt stating the opposite: many scholars have argued that the form Nerthus that figures in most editions is only chosen because it can be used as evidence for continuity.
Additionally, pinging only editors you think are likely to support your point of view is bad form and is an example of WP:CANVASSING. If you think that an issue needs more eyes, the appropriate thing to do is to ping many editors, including those likely to disagree with you, or neutrally give pointers to a discussion on project talk pages.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:14, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
The matter of continuity is complex and nuanced, as these volumes make explicit at every turn, frequently invoking and discussing Germania. Simek makes for another example: He curiously embraces Motz's (otherwise obscure) explanation but otherwise highlights continuity between North Germanic and early Germanic paganism by way of the Scandinavian archaeological record (in PCRN 2020). In the past, it is with this foundation that Simek proposed that the Vanir are essentially an invention of Snorri, which has been at this point pretty solidly rejected by others (as discussed in depth at Vanir and by Lindow in PCRN 2020 as well).
Discourse around these topics is not only a matter of continuity, but also innovation and break, and in some cases revival, and each figure or topic mentioned by Tacitus in Germania has seen extensive discussion for centuries, with a major shift around the development of modern historical linguistics. A great example is Andrén's paper on the Indo-European motif of the divine twins in volume III ("Divine Twins"). Once you've got the rest of the volumes, you can talk about them, but it sounds like you've got quite a lot of reading ahead of you to become more familiar with these matters.
As for the other editors I've pinged, we're hardly aligned and have had plenty of disagreements about this or that over the years. (We've already got @Berig: here, or I'd have pinging him as well.) What's important is that we have editors involved who are familiar with the material we're discussing. Go ahead and ping anyone else who you think might be familiar enough with the topic to discuss it. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:34, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
This looks like a typical lumper vs splitter debate, and as I don't find such debates neither very rewarding or worthwile, nor amenable to WP consensus, I will stay away. I think you two should try a different approach to the topic--Berig (talk) 21:56, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
(After edit conflict) I got pinged, so I've looked up in this section ... there are many things I could say, including about older scholarship often including points that later resurface in different scholarly languages, but since this article's title got reinterpreted as only applying to the Germanic "tribes" known to the Roman Empire, I'm afraid that's the source of this kind of negation of connections with other Germanic peoples not known to Roman historians, both when Tacitus wrote and later. Comparisons to the argument that evolution is only a hypothesis would be invidious; the fields of mythology and religious studies don't operate on the same standard of proof, and even archaeology has an element of motif analysis that resists scientific rigor. But much has been written on the interpretation of the small amount of continental evidence for Germanic belief, including parsing the statements of Classical authors, among many other sources for Germanic belief, and much has also been written on what the realities may have been that Snorri neatened up and added to, and on variations over time, distance, and class boundaries. Some indication should be present in this article that the small part of the field of Germanic studies to which this article has been limited leads to studies of later periods; the studies of Germanic religion are part of this; but since the article has been reduced in scope to 1st-century usage of the title term, I am not surprised to see a terra incognita argument being made for everything lying outside this narrow scope. Long way of saying, I'd like to help, but I see it as a definitional problem that follows from editorial decisions made here, and on that basis, it's easy to reject scholarship more or less a priori. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:07, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Bloodofox, you appear to be simply trying to distract from the statement of academic consensus found in the the same volume that you have been touting as the definitive source on Germanic religion. You don't get to say that Lindow writing on Njørðr is the definitive answer when Schjødt says that he is not. Furthermore, the introduction to the volumes makes clear that What is included in the individual chapters will mirror the viewpoints of the individual authors, of course. (p. xxvii). Lindow's arguments about Njørðr are his own (well-founded, well-argued) scholarly opinions. They were not carried down as holy writ from Sinai, they do not represent absolute scholarly consensus. To quote our policy to you: A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources. You are unable to produce such a statement. I can name to you several scholars from as recently as this year arguing the opposite of what Lindow says. I can (and have) point to other scholars in the same series edited by Lindow that disagree with him.
Despite your continual instance that only you know enough to contribute on these topics, you seem to have trouble producing sources that say what you want them to say. I would suggest you stop acting like an WP:EXPERT and start following our WP:RS and particularly our WP:RS/AC policy. You don't get to personally decide what is or is not scholarly consensus based on your supposedly far vaster knowledge of the topic than mine.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:12, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
I get that you're new and excited about all this (and clearly have a pretty strong POV about rejecting the phrase "Germanic peoples" and all), but you're going to have to try different approaches than first complaining that I'm pinging other editors who regularly edit in these quarters followed by claiming that I believe only [I] know enough to contribute on these topics, lol. You can't have it both ways.
Again, get ahold of the rest of the volumes, do some more introductory reading, and we can talk about it then. In the meantime, you're just going to encounter reference after reference of material you should already be familiar with before diving into this stuff (or attempting a rewrite of Germanic paganism, which is already not exactly excellent, but doesn't look like it'll be getting any better under your current draft, unfortunately). :bloodofox: (talk) 22:57, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
So I see you don't have any sources to cite then? :-) I thought not. You're dealing with someone who has actually studied Germanic philology to a doctoral degree, so I suggest you change your tactics.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:22, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Funny, this should all really be old hat to a scholar with a PhD in Germanic philology. But I suppose we can all be who we want to be on the internet, so I'll simply say could have fooled me. In any case, I'm not here to out myself (I've gotten enough threats, including a death threat, from certain fringe corners on this site to not want to have to deal with that again) but suffice to say I myself come from a formal background in Germanic philology (and so do at least a few others here). So what sources, exactly, are you looking for? Generally statements about scholarship? I'll see what I can dig up. There's nothing especially new about any of these matters in the PCRN, much of the volumes primarily consist of overviews and discussions of well-established scholarship, but they're worth putting that institutional library card to use for. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:59, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I've provided a source that satisfies WP:RS/AC (something you keep avoiding commenting on). You've provided no counter except to cite the opinions of one individual scholar. So it's the word of Bloodofox against Jens Peter Schjødt of the University of Aarhus. Maybe you really do have "a background in Germanic philology", hell, maybe you're even telling the WP:TRUTH about the direction of scholarship, but unless you can cite some actual sources that say what you're saying (that continuity between early Germanic religion and later religion is the academic consensus), policy is clear that we have to follow WP:RS/AC.

And I won't out myself, but I'll be giving a paper on a subtopic of all these Germanic debates at Kalamazoo this year. So you can claim to know so much more than I do all you want.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The source you've "provided" is in fact a source I told you to read and informed you existed, lol. Schjødt has produced much excellent scholarship. In fact, I've commented on it plenty—cited it plenty, in fact—and will gladly introduce you to more sources as time permits. I had actually sliced a little time out today to begin writing about Germanic personal names for this article before this pointless exchange siderailed my plans.
Also, you forgot the word formal (that is, 'institutional, degree-granting'), in your misquote above, and "continuity between early Germanic religion and later religion is the academic consensus" is also certainly not a quote coming from me: From me, that'd be "academic reception of the record varies greatly by time and place"—but we're not here to discuss my opinions. Again, don't put words in my mouth.
Anyway, you can catch me later this summer on Mercury discussing alien spaceship technology, but, as in your case, I'm going to need to brush up on the topic before taking the stage there. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Yes, you brought up the source - what's your point? Do you think Germanic Philology is entirely composed of religious studies? Do you know what Germanic Philology is?
More to the point, you failed to accurately cite Schjødt for what he says, and you still can't seem to admit that you're wrong.--Ermenrich (talk) 01:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Germanic philology? Hmm, yeah, I don't know, I just memorized a whole lot of paradigms in some poorly ventilated old buildings for a bunch of years, then some schools sent me some papers with those words and some acronyms next to them. It's a mystery! More seriously, I'm not quite sure what you're communicating at this point but you're invited to get whatever it is you're bemoaning out of your system on my talk page rather than clutter this page further with it. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:05, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Seriously, Bloodofox, why don't you write a draft of a section (to start) of this article you find especially problematic in your sandbox and let everybody take a look at it for comparison? Carlstak (talk) 02:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Right now I'm adding material as time permits (like the new personal names section), but I'll do that if I identify the need. In geneal, the article has improved significantly over the past few years but still needs a lot of work. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:54, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I know I'm not the only one who would be interested to see what you come up with. It's good to see you working on this article.;-) Carlstak (talk) 02:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Nice to see you as well, Carlstak. Unfortunately, I don't have the time I once did to invest in editing these pages, but now and then I can still pop in and help out. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:07, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Any time you can spare is appreciated. Carlstak (talk) 02:29, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
PS: I think Ermenrich should be commended for the effort he's made to improve the article and the positive energy he brings to working on such a contentious project. I still have faith (don't ask me why) that something good is going to come out of all this—drama and everything. I may die of old age before that happens, though. Carlstak (talk) 03:22, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Thank you Carlstak. Editing this article is like sailing through Scylla and Charybdis - one side or the other of the Germanic wars, the positivists or the deconstructionists, is always unhappy. I suppose Odysseus made it home eventually, but all his crew died along the way.—-Ermenrich (talk) 05:23, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that Ermenrich should be commended for his work on this article. Not long ago it was a confusing eulogy for Walter Goffart, but now it is starting to look like an article. I am not happy about everything, especially not about excluding the Nordic Bronze Age (Ermenrich seems to take exception to it), but you can't expect always to be happy about everything in an article like this.--Berig (talk) 06:13, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Categories for discussion

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_April_8#Category:21st-century_Germanic_people – this discussion might be of interest to page watchers of this article. –Austronesier (talk) 17:59, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

WP:ERA

For what it's worth, this edit established the use of BCE/CE, so kindly maintain it pending a new consensus to the contrary. Seems there was one but other editors subsequently changed their minds (?): see Archives 3, 4, and 5. — LlywelynII 17:38, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Edit war

Seems to be a silly edit war going on. Of course you should leave a cite. What is the issue? — LlywelynII 17:32, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

The issue is that the cite is repeated in the next sentence; however, it is there because if every sentence in that paragraph is not cited directly to a source, various IPs and even some established editors will try to remove it. Having the cite there prevents more of the horrible talk page discussions we've had here in the past.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:46, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, WP:REPCITE is great²³, but its point²⁴ is about not wanting²⁵ paragraphs²⁶ of text to look like this²⁷ for no reason²⁸²⁹ in general.³⁰
I think that the 21 page archive detailing numerous edit wars since 2003 on a page that is tangentially connected to Nazism and has something like 1500 edits in the last year very much justifies your fears. Kindly leave the damned cite, editwarbro2. — LlywelynII 17:52, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Pictures

I nixed a pic of a bust only very tenuously connected to Arminius in favor of a map showing the expansion of the material culture of Germanic speaking peoples. This seems to be a page with a lot of contentious editors, so I'll just say that if it isn't this one, fine, there should be something similar. Most people will otherwise assume that Roman "Germany" = Germans and won't assume Celts or similar groups used to be hanging out there so far into recorded history. The pic I put up has a link to its original source on the Commons page. Maybe that could be used for better graphics and/or polished up with any recent insights.

As far as the Arminius bust, I don't think it's a huge loss but I will note that Germany during the Roman Empire is probably a rich enough topic that you could helpfully add a row or two of 4-6 images at the bottom of some of those sections to better illustrate your points. You could use a template or just straight gallery markup. See below: there are options to adjust the picture sizes:

  • This should really be kept, for instance
    This should really be kept, for instance
  • This one maybe less so
    This one maybe less so
  • Codex Aesinas of Tacitus's Germania
    Codex Aesinas of Tacitus's Germania

 — LlywelynII 18:13, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Our opening sentence, defining the article

Is this article about ALL "Germanic-speaking peoples" in EVERY period? Here is where things have devolved to as of the situation today. Supposedly all this can be sourced from Steuer...

The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and early medieval Germanic languages and are thus equated at least approximately with Germanic-speaking peoples, although different academic disciplines have their own definitions of what makes someone or something "Germanic".

Not great writing. But is this article about historical groups OR about a language family with no geographical or temporal bounds? The editors of this article need to pick one or the other. Please admit there is a problem here, which is not solved.

  • Ideas about these things have in fact changed since the 19th century, so language families and historical peoples ARE now two different concepts, and I think our readers should be allowed to know that? I suggest people who want to stay in the 19th century should start a 19th century Wiki.
  • I will continue to point to the fact that we have lots of articles about the Germanic languages, which is great, but no article about the category of groups historically known as Germanic peoples, who did NOT necessarily ALL speak a Germanic language OR live in central Europe. By letting in just a bit of the idea that this topic is about languages, this article is never going to settle. It will always slide back to the internet/19th-century-wisdom of racial language groups, and Scandinavian wombs of nations. It is either about languages, or not, surely?
  • We need an article for the history apart from language history because it is an important topic that scholars publish about. We should stop conceding to internet trolls and allow the proper use of historians as sources, who are currently being distorted and censored in this article which was supposedly about historical peoples. Or is it no longer about historical peoples, but now about all Germanic speaking peoples in every period?

This is a Frankenstein article until we can create a simpler mission statement for it. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:47, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Your first question is easily answered by the text itself which says during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. So, no, not every period.
Why don't you start a draft in your userspace of an article on Germani? I support a separate article on what you call the category of groups historically known as Germanic peoples, but others have objected. Perhaps if they see what you have in mind, they can be persuaded. Srnec (talk) 19:19, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Hmmm, AL's comment sounds like a salvo from the nightmare of old. This is ironic, if that's the right word. User Krakkos created an article titled "Germani", but it's been totally disappeared. I think I contributed a little, maybe just some small copyediting, but the only trace I could find on the internet are snatches at Wikiwand of the Germani talk page. Murphy help us all.;-) Carlstak (talk) 21:12, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
So @AL, when we have opinions that fucking differ from yours, it must be because we're conceding to internet trolls? And not perchance because we're also intellectually honest individuals just like you that happen to draw different conclusions from our readings of modern scholarship? I refuse to engage in a discussion that starts under false well-poisoning premises. –Austronesier (talk) 19:56, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Like Austronesier (talk · contribs) and many of the other scholars—yes, I said scholars—that have contributed to this page, I resent being categorized by AL as an Internet troll. He bludgeoned this Talk page for years and now he's back for more. Ermenrich (talk · contribs) along with many others who regularly keep tabs on this page, did some marvelous editing to bring this article in line with contemporary scholarship. What the page does not need is more "Vienna and Toronto school of history debate" rhetoric as that does not serve the readership very well. We all know which side of the coin AL dwells within and this poisoned chalice he offers is not one I wish to drink from ever again. AL would be much better suited to write the article on the Germani that he turned this page into years ago and leave this one be. But hey, that's just my take. --Obenritter (talk) 21:27, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Amen. Carlstak (talk) 21:36, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Obenritter and Austronesier being intellectually honest about it, I don't think I disagree with either of you (nor Ermenrich) on the relevant sources or policies, and I don't recall such disagreements ever being a big issue between us. Please stop trying to attribute me with positions I don't actually have? @Srnec: I am not going to try to work on this article. But the last part of the awkward second sentence clearly over-rules what went before it (before "thus"), and pushes for a broader linguistic definition. It also emphasizes continuity since the 19th century. If you think that's a misunderstanding, maybe you or someone else can try tweaking the wording. I believe the balancing act Ermenrich was going for was "sort of" accepting that the term is not always linguistic; "sort of" accepting that we are no longer in the 19th century; and at least being strong about the term now being bounded within a historical period. I feel we should at the very least not allow any sliding away from that wobbly compromise. (I don't think it is enough to say "but it is fixed by a comment later on" either. One position I really have had is that different parts of the article should be consistent with each other. This does not mean we can't explain disagreements. WP insists that we do explain disagreements. But that does not mean different sections should be based on different realities.) That's my opinion anyway. I happily leave it with the rest of you. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:47, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I have nothing to add except that there was no reason to bring this up again. Whether Andrew Lancaster likes it or not, linguistics is the primary way of determining whether or not a people were Germanic, or it is the assumption associated with this usage when a scholar calls a people Germanic - the inability to prove the language many ancient people spoke is used to argue not to use the term, not to follow Roman usage. What the Romans meant by "Germani" and what modern scholars do are not the same thing, and AL has simply refused to accept this. We had a similar, multiyear battle against someone who insisted that Vikings were pirates, not Scandinavians, based on medieval usage. We follow modern usage here. Modern usage says that, in calling a people Germanic, we assume they spoke a Germanic language.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:02, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: I understood you've come to insist upon the final sentence. That's what happened in the past, and archaeologists can read about the strategies used in the archives. But are you now arguing that the Germanic peoples are defined the same as Germanic-speaking peoples with no other limits? We're not even going to insist that the term applies only in certain regions and periods anymore? If that's not what you are saying, then why don't you just fix the wording to make that clear in every part of the article and especially at the top? Based on the history of this article and related ones we are heading back to the discussions about Afrikaners unless we can trust in some red lines like that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:31, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Please don't strawman me. The lead is clear that we're referring to antiquity and the middle ages. I'd suggest just letting it go.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich: first I feel the need to reply to your strawman arguments. For example, have I argued that we should write from a Roman perspective? As most posts above seem to be about rewriting history with straw men, I'll do a collapsed summary of how I see the gorilla in the room which you all want to talk about:
Extended content
  • I argue (1) that the core topic of this article as it would be understood by most people is a real set of Roman-era groups, and (2) that this means the anchor for the article should be the publications of modern experts on those peoples and that period. There are scholars out there who publish about their agreements and disagreements concerning those peoples. We don't need to decide what to "assume" (your word). Your core disagreement with me is not about what such scholars say IMHO.
  • To use your own words, you argue that our readers, and your fellow editors must learn to accept this, which I do indeed find nonsensical: "Modern usage says that, in calling a people Germanic, we assume they spoke a Germanic language." Clearly scholars don't all make such assumptions, and there is no logical reason to pretend otherwise in our articles. There are more honest ways of handling such terminological complications. Are birds dinosaurs? Yes and no. It can be explained. We don't need to choose.
  • Connected to that you've also used a pseudo-logical argument that we can't write from the viewpoint of any experts who question the coherence of the concept the article is about. Without any exaggeration, this is exactly the same logic that creationists or nationalists use when they demand that articles about "their" topics should not be based on the publications of experts from outside their group.
  • There is no secret about why such convoluted argumentation became position of the "dreamteam" group who are "scholars yes scholars". It is because the study of myths, legends and folklore is a personal interest of several editors, and it made some of them extremely angry that experts in the Roman era question the assumptions and terminology often used in their field. You went with that. The well was poisoned quite deliberately at an identifiable point in time. This had nothing at all to do with any new disagreements about how modern experts agree and disagree.
Anyway IMHO, for a reader who does not know all your background argumentation, the opening sentence would do what you say, but the awkward 3-step second sentence currently implies that things have changed because since the 19th century there is a new definition which no longer appears to be historically de-limited. If that is not the intention, then the sentence should be improved. This looks like a cause and effect sequence: ...and are thus equated at least approximately with Germanic-speaking peoples. Also keep in mind that Germanic-speaking peoples is now in bold and it is the name of a redirect to this article. The Germanic peoples are clearly delimited to a period, but nothing clearly confirms that the overlapping term Germanic-speaking peoples is also intended to be limited in that way. Many of our readers will be familiar with articles on WP with similar titles, which are (for better or worse) supposed to define ethnic identities based on whole families of languages, whether the people supposedly in them know about it or not. Without any other explanation added, our second sentence implies that this is another such article, which includes modern people. Here's an example of something with simpler English which simply delimits the two over-lapping terms together:
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and early medieval Germanic languages and are thus equated at least approximately with Germanic-speaking peoples, although different academic disciplines have their own definitions of what makes someone or something "Germanic". The Germanic peoples, approximately the same as the Germanic-speaking peoples, were historical groups of people that occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during the Roman era and into the early Middle Ages. In some contexts modern scholars use the term "Germanic" to indicate when peoples probably spoke early Germanic languages, which these peoples played an important role in spreading. However, different academic disciplines have their own definitions of what makes someone or something "Germanic".

FWIW I preferred "Roman era" to "antiquity" because it is more precise, and modern scholars clearly doubt that the geographical range we describe would be relevant in earlier antiquity. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I make no claims to be an expert on this subject, and although I do know a thing or two about someancient Germanic peoples, I follow this page as a layman. Respectfully, though, Andrew, it is clear you don't have editor consensus for what you are proposing, and the arguments have been hashed out in detail before. Indeed, as a layman who is interested in readable and useful articles, I am not really sure this article is better for the changes that have been made on this topic following those discussions, particularly regarding the lead. That first paragraph of the lead is way to detailed for the very first introduction that a reader gets to the subject. Compare that with how it was in 2019: [18]. The word 'scholars' is found 9 times in the lead now. I would treat that as an indicator of discussion that could be in a section in the main, and a simpler and clearer lead be written in line with the current editor consensus. Leads summarise the article and are not the place for a discussion over article scope. They state the scope, and that is all. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:05, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Sirfurboy, in the main I agree with you. The problem is this topic attracts rancor on par with the Israel-Palestinian conflict - everything gets argued heatedly and to death and every aspect of the lead gets attacked as biased unless it’s very carefully sourced and worded. We can’t say “some scholars” oppose using Germanic without mentioning the obvious fact that others don’t, for instance. We can’t mention Germanic peoples speaking Germanic languages without Andrew trying to say that we don’t know if they all did. Etc. fortunately the article has been stable for a while now, and, since AL says he won’t edit it himself, I think it will stay that way.—-Ermenrich (talk) 12:11, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
@Sirfurboy: nice to see you but honestly I don't understand your comment. Do you think my draft changes the meaning? My understanding of what the others were saying is that what I am asking for is already what the text says. We all supposedly agree that the topic here is about historical peoples, right? So I'd like the English to be more clear. The 2nd sentence is not good is it? Can you tell me what else I'd be changing? Can you perhaps find another way to make sure the historical delimitation applies to both article names in bold, and not just one? Do you think the words "in some contexts" is a problem? I would have no big problem tweaking that to something like "in most contexts" if necessary. (It was not "all contexts" in the old version though, and that would be extremism. We already said: "different academic disciplines have their own definitions".)
@Ermenrich: I appreciate this caricature being closer to the real me now, at least as a vague generalization! Yes, I like wordings which don't hide doubts or differences of opinion. WP policy agrees. OTOH I don't see that this is such a case today. I am just making the English better by breaking up an obviously bad sentence (which I suppose I played a role in) and making sure the supposedly intended meaning can not be misread? Or not? In case it is relevant please note that the word "approximately" comes from the old version. By the way, just to be clear, I don't intend to, but please don't think I've signed any sort of contract here about not editing. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:51, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Wonder

So according to this article (top), Germanic peoples existed from the period of Nordic Bronze Age or Jastorf culture? 222.252.110.207 (talk) 18:45, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

There were no "Germanic people" before that, but there were predecessor peoples. Does that answer your question?--Ermenrich (talk) 21:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
This issue is still controversial when it comes to the period when the Germanic peoples appeared. 14.231.171.203 (talk) 03:50, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
The problem is actually not with the period when the Germanic peoples appeared, but about when "Germanic peoples" becomes a meaningful label for peoples that we don't have historical/linguistic records about and who are only known to us through archeological remains. –Austronesier (talk) 10:20, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Most scholars

@ Ermenrich - quote please and source please - GizzyCatBella🍁 19:49, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@GizzyCatBella: I provided three sources, nor is the statement controversial that most scholars agree that the Jastorf culture is associated with the Germanic peoples. I'd ask you to kindly remove your tags.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:09, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich - All I’m asking is a quote that "most scholars agree", I can’t find it in those sources you provided. Could you please provide a quote and a page number for verification purposes. Thanks. - GizzyCatBella🍁 20:14, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
Page 51? - GizzyCatBella🍁 20:22, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
Unclear what that last reply meant? @Alcaios:, I assume you have direct access to all those sources. Can you either confirm my wording or else change it to something that the sources better support? The problem is that we need to emphasize the Jastorf Culture over the pre-Nordic Bronze Age to accurately reflect how the sources discuss this.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:26, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich You asking someone else to confirm? You brought sources to the table but you don’t know? Is it possible that the statement "most scholars agree" is on other pages than 51? Or that the author used a different narrative? (that's possible) Search for "most scholars agree" brings nothing for me. - GizzyCatBella🍁 20:34, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
@Ermenrich to be clear - I’m asking for a source that says "most scholars agree" GizzyCatBella🍁 20:36, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
You don't need to keep pinging me, I have this article on my watch list. I copied sources from the body to the lead, which is a perfectly acceptable practice when someone who has never edited the article before suddenly appears demanding a citation for something. While I wrote much of this article I did not write most of the section those sources were taken from or add those sources, so I'm asking the person who did to and thus has access to them to confirm what they say. --Ermenrich (talk) 20:42, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
@User:Ermenrich|Ermenrich (asked not to be pinged) Not in this source --> [19]. I can see that --> more scholars agree that the horse was at least domesticated by the time of the Yama. GizzyCatBella🍁 20:42, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

May I step in here, please? If our article says "most scholars agree" ... searching the sources for that exact phrase is not going to be helpful, as we are supposed to paraphrase the sources and so ... should not be using the exact wording in the sources. Can we drop the confrontational tone and try to collaborate in good faith? This isn't a battlefield. Ealdgyth (talk) 20:44, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Of course, you may. ---> "most scholars agree" has been introduced with this edit I’m attempting to verify that (or comparable description) in the sources provided but so far without success. - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:00, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
How about "evidence suggests" instead of "most scholars agree"? - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:09, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
Agreed and done.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:12, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
While we're at it: do Timpe & Scardilgi (2010) and Koch (2020) really support the claim that "The Nordic Bronze Age in southern Scandinavia (c. 2000/1750–500 BCE) is often considered to be ancestral to the Germanic peoples"? Or are these sources just two attestations for this view? I'm confused to see that the more plausible claim (in terms of temporal distance from the first mention of the Germani in historical sources) is seen as more problematic than the speculative one. –Austronesier (talk) 21:12, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
I've been thinking about that too - honestly we should talk about it after the Jastorf culture (I assume someone put it first because of chronology).--Ermenrich (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Evidence suggests is fine, but still, our readers deserve to know how widely accepted a hypothesis is, and we should be able to find secondary sources which do the job. –Austronesier (talk) 21:16, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
What do you think about this source? - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:41, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
That's a commercial DNA "test-and-find-your-ancestry" company - not a reliable source for this sort of thing. Ealdgyth (talk) 21:56, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

What about Steuer, 2021, p. 89:

Mit der Jastorf-Kultur wird gegenwärtig das Aufkommen von Germanen gleichge-setzt, sprachwissenschaftlich aufgrund der ersten Lautverschiebung, die zur „germa-nischen“ Sprache geführt hat, während die Latène-Kultur mit den Kelten verbunden wird.
At present the Jastorf Culture is equated with the Germani, linguistically because of the first sound shift, which led to the "Germanic" language, while the Latene Culture is associated with the Celts

This does say "most scholars" but the use of "at present" (gegenwärtig) indicates that Steuer is summarizing the current scholarly consensus. Compare page 1310 as well:

Von Germanen spricht die Wissenschaft, eben-falls aufgrund der Sprachentwicklung, seit den letzten Jahrhunderten v. Chr. und sieht archäologisch parallel dazu die Jastorf-Kultur.
Academia speaks of Germani, likewise because of linguistic development, since the final centuries BC and sees the Jastorf Culture as the archaeological parallel

I think especially this last quote is enough to say something to the effect of "most scholars equate". But there's more. Michael Zerjadtke, Das Amt ›Dux‹ in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter 2018, p. 22:

In der Archäologie wird die Jastorf-Kultur als die Erste gewertet, die mit den historischen Germanen verbunden werden kann
Archaeology judges the Jastorf Culture as the first that can be connected historically to the Germani

And Elmar Seebold, "Die frühen Germanen und ihre Nachbarn" in Altertumskunde – Altertumswissenschaft – Kulturwissenschaft 2011, p. 252:

Dabei bleibt westlich der Jastorf-Kultur, die üblicherweise mit den Germa-nen gleichgesetzt wird
Besides the Jastorf Culture remains, which is usually equated with the Germani

I think we can say "most scholars" or possibly "most archaeologists".--Ermenrich (talk) 00:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Since the establishment of the Jastorf Culture is not tied to historical documents inasmuch as it is to archaeology, it seems much more appropriate to use the expression "most archaeologists" in my view. --Obenritter (talk) 14:47, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
Should we also mention that this view has been attacked in recent years in the lead? Not sure on verbiage but most sources mention dissent from specified or unspecified archaeologists.
Would everyone be agreed to changing the mention of the Pre-Nordic Bronze Age to something like "the Pre-Nordic Bronze Age shows significant continuities with the Jastorf Culture" and placing it after we mention Jastorf? The PNBA appears in fewer sources about the ancient Germani.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
No issues for me with that suggestion. --Obenritter (talk) 21:56, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
Well.. that’s WP:OR folks. Unless you can quote a RS that says "most scholars" or possibly "most archaeologists" I’ll have an issue with that. - GizzyCatBella🍁 23:13, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
Paraphrasing is not OR. –Austronesier (talk) 12:42, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
Indeed. Also: German scholarship very rarely uses phrases like "most scholars" because "Wissenschaft" is a supposedly de-personalized endeavor. Saying "archaeology connects" is about as close as you're gonna get. It literally means "most scholars who are archaeologists connect". Plus, we have "usually" in the last quote, which also indicates that "most scholars" do it.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
Great points Ermenrich. Unfortunately, writing things like "archaeology connects" in English doesn't work, since it is an anthropomorphism. Thus the solution is "most" or "many" to account for this difference between English and German. --Obenritter (talk) 14:06, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

New name for this article.

We should change the name of the article to something on the lines of ¨Ancient Germanic Peoples¨ then we should create an article named Germanic peoples which would be like the Slavs article. Another example for a name change could be Germanic History. Zyxrq (talk) 00:11, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Zyxrq: This is a logical move that I support. 021120x (talk) 00:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

March 2023

Ermenrich, I fail to see why Jamaicans speaking English has any relevance to this page. There are millions of Central and South American natives that now speak Spanish as their mother tongue, yet this does not stop the Spanish from acknowledging their own existence. 021120x (talk) 00:16, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

"Spaniard" is not the same thing as "Germanic people". It's closer to something like "Romance people", which, you'll notice, redirects to Romance-speaking world.
What's a "modern" Germanic people? Is it based on language? Then why exclude Jamaicans? Is it based on "ethnicity"? Do English people consider themselves part of the same ethnicity as Danes and Germans? (No, not usually). Is it based on "culture"? What do modern "Germanic peoples" share culturally that they don't share with other Europeans? Is it based on "race" or "genetics"? There are no racial or genetic features shared by "Germanic peoples" (whoever they are) that are not also widely shared with other Europeans.
In short, the idea of there being "modern Germanic peoples" is a bad, 19th century idea. The difference between it and other 19th century European ethnic categories is that it is no longer in scholarly usage (or really popular usage, outside the far right), and hence, we don't use it on Wikipedia. Even the idea of there having been ancient Germanic peoples is contested in modern scholarship, as well as there having been ancient Celtic, Slavic, etc. peoples in any meaningful way beyond what language they spoke.
As I said in my revert, this has been discussed numerous times before here. See Talk:Germanic peoples/Archive 7#Do modern "germanic people" exist?, Talk:Germanic peoples/Archive 6#modern germanic peoples, Talk:Germanic_peoples/Archive_8#Scope of the article, Talk:Germanic_peoples/Archive_15#Genetic Legacy of Germanic Expansions Map, among other sections in the archives. I doubt you can add anything to the arguments already put there. Consensus is strongly against stating that there are "modern Germanic peoples" in the article.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:58, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
100 % concur with Ermenrich. Consensus is against any modern correlation between these disparate Germanic barbarians and the German people of today. Ancient Germanic identity was misappropriated by German nationalists, British and French eugenicists in the 19th century and then most overtly, by the Nazis in the early 20th century. A host of scholars that include leading experts in this field: Guy Halsall, Walter Goffart, Walter Pohl, Herwig Wolfram, Edward James, Michael Kulikowski, Shami Ghosh, Andrew Gillett, Thomas Burns, among others make it clear that such comparisons are not only specious but dangerous. --Obenritter (talk) 21:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
While I think we agree Obenritter I think the wording could sound wrong to some people. There clearly can often be "correlations" between languages, the ethnicities of medieval peoples, and modern national identities. (An example might be the English.) However, these correlations are often only one weak correlation among many other factors, as in the case of the English. For example there is no reason to believe that someone with English ancestry has more Roman era ancestors who were Germanic-language speakers, than someone from say Czechia. The Germanic-language speakers of the Roman era are just one part of the Roman era pool of ancestors of everyone in Europe. Furthermore, when such correlations exist they rarely involve language families, which are not really all that important in most people's understanding of their identity. One of the strange things about some of these 19th century positions is that they assert that whole language families defined ethnicities, even if the peoples involved had not actually noticed it themselves. (The English spoke one language, not a whole family.) Perhaps most importantly, ethnic or national identity is basically defined by the people themselves (together with the people around them) and not by pundits, whether they be in universities or on the internet. The 19th century approach involves "experts" telling people they don't understand their own national identity. These experts are often quite desperate to rewrite history to match their narratives, and they cause a lot of confusion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:29, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Categories for discussion

Here is a discussion that is closely related to the topic of this article: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_July_30#Category:Germanic_people. The definition of the category directly refers to this article. Austronesier (talk) 20:29, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Should we at least mention the Teutonic terminology

Just noticed this edit and edsum [20]. I believe the article did once mention the term "Teutonic" and I can't think of any reason for removing it. Anyone recall? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC) @Asarlaí and TylerBurden:

Yes, we should mention in the lead and the body that "Teutonic" was another name for the Germanic peoples. I was surprised to find it missing from the article, as it was very common up to the 20th century, and I recall it being in the lead before. Teutonic peoples also redirects to this article. – Asarlaí (talk) 12:12, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I’m not aware that it was ever conscious removed. We should mention it in the lead and in the terminology section, hopefully with a source saying it’s no longer current.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:29, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to adding it back, as long as it's established again so as to avoid future issues. TylerBurden (talk) 21:12, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes I agree that's the reason for posting here to see if anyone can come up with any issues. I personally can't think of any. I have not checked the records but perhaps it was just forgotten during one of the bigger editing bouts.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:38, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Certainly the omission of "Teutonic" in all its infamous glory was an oversight from all the bickering we've done over the years on this page. It deserves requisite attention, provided it's stressed how outdated such terminological/topological references to Teutonic are in the aggregate.--Obenritter (talk) 21:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Well a simple and typical approach might just be a parenthetic note in the opening sentence and a short remark somewhere under terminology in the body.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:13, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Recent edits about purported lack of use of "Germanic peoples" among historians and archaeologists

Right now the lead contains the quote "While several scholars continue to use the term to refer to historical people groups from the 1st to 4th centuries CE, the term is no longer used by most historians and archaeologists for the period around the Fall of the Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages". It is cited to this 2022 paper. Could you provide a quote from which this based? All I am seeing in this paper is a favorable reception from Steinacher of for example Interrogating the Germanic and a lot of discussion among historians about the Germani.

We need some kind of quote for a dramatic statement like that, especially when we're seeing conferences this year like "Early Germanic Poetics and Religion from Linguistic and Comparative Perspectives" at the University of Copenhagen. And we've seen a tremendous amount of published discussion about the broader Germanic implications of a variety of major runic finds, especially discussion of bracteates. It seems like our lead is omitting that philologists produce the great majority of material around this topic.

As far as I can tell, the statements in question seem to be as follows:

It can be observed that the debates of two decades ended up in a somehow paradoxical compromise. While many historians plead against further use of the umbrella term Germani to describe historical societies in antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, several other scholars not only continue to use the term, but have further built the concept of a major exhibition in Berlin and Bonn on a renewed definition of a Germanic world spanning from the Rhine to the Vistula in the first four centuries CE.  For later periods, namely the transformation of the Roman World and the Early Middle Ages, the term Germani is, however, no longer used by most scholars. (p. 291-292)

But it also contains quotes like:

In most modern archaeological or historical studies, many gentes (barbarian groups) are classified as Germani without further discussion.

This is quite different than a claim that only a few historians and archeaologists are still using Germanic peoples. It's also doesn't reflect broader use. The term Germanic peoples and/or Germanic-speaking peoples is on the other hand probably in more use today by philologist than it has been in decades. Anything to with for example Germanic mythology and, well, Germanic philology is all but exclusively handled by philologists. Runology, a philological subfield, in particular has seen a boom period. Yet we're currently placing a ton of emphasis on especially German and Austrian historians in this article.

Meanwhile, there has been lot of discussion in philologist circles about a wave of greater interest and utilization of comparative folklore studies in a Germanic context, like in Folklore and Old Norse Mythology (2021, FF Fellows).

Finally, there's the question of how much weight we should be giving this article. It contains an argument. Statements like "Only in the late 15th century, when Tacitus’ nearly forgotten De origine et situ Germanorum liber was printed for the first time, was Caesar’s concept revived. A zombie resurrected." don't exactly fill me with confidence that we should be presenting this as an objective assessment. :bloodofox: (talk) 11:07, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that for the purpoose of discussing improvements to this article, we should once and for all bury the fallacy that English "Germanic peoples" (especially as a topic of this article) means anything else but German: Germanen, Swedish: Germaner, French: Germains or Polish: Germanie. Talking about these ancient peoples is a completely different thing from the meaningful applicability of the identifier "Germanic" (≠ Germanic peoples) in other disciplines. Obviously, in linguistics it extends to the present, and also in comparative folklore studies, you can identify elements into the Modern Age that are meaningfully labelled as "Germanic" by scholars (for all in doubt of the latter, @Bloodofox has presented a sufficient amount of sources to illustrate this usage).
But then, how many scholars actually call the agents/bearers of these features labeleds as Germanic "Germanic peoples"? I can see that in studies of religion and folklore, usage of "Germanic peoples" extends well beyond the Fall of the Roman Empire but maximally to the time of nominal conversion to Christianity, which is in contrast to its use in contemporary archeology and history.
Note also that the inserted text does not cater to radical deconstructionsts. It reflects that talking about "Germanic peoples" is in good standing in archeology and history, albeit with a more limited scope than in the 19th/20th century (also some other related disciplines to this day). –Austronesier (talk) 13:06, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Bloodofox, You yourself have quoted the text in question in your first long quote. Our policies on WP:RS/AC are pretty clear. The quote goes along with the general trend along historians and archaeologists already observed in other studies quoted in the article, including by pro-Germanic scholars like the philologist Neidorf. I think Austronesier is right and we need to be careful about equating “Germanic people’s” with the term “Germanic” itself-while the latter is also controversial, it’s still widely used, often without comment, by people outside the disciplines of history and archaeology. Its meaning also depends somewhat on the field it’s used in.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:15, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Here's a second statement of WP:RS/AC from the same article: Steuer’s point of view reflects a widespread use of the term in question in archaeological, as well as in historical debates. Many problems are, however, attached to the use of Germani as a historical term. Consequently, many historians with an expertise in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages meanwhile tend to avoid the very use of the term Germani. This thus compliments the statement about "most scholars" from earlier.
As for this statement In most modern archaeological or historical studies, many gentes (barbarian groups) are classified as Germani without further discussion. It should be clear from the context of the article that he's referring to most studies that refer to different groups of people as "Germani" rather than saying that most historical studies overall use the term without further discussion.
Also worth mentioning that he says this on the context of cooperation between archaeologists and historians: While it may be problematic to completely give up the terminology Germani /Germania, the many problems and the complicated history have to be faced.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:30, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Austronesier has stated this pretty well. There is indeed no reasonable dispute about the wider application of the term "Germanic", when it is not connected to "peoples". I think there is also no real doubt that the periods in which academics are happy to join those words and ethnic identity, remains fuzzy and controversial, but has tended to shift back earlier in time. I have my doubts about the implications of the term "good standing" though. I think the point being made is only that it is still reasonably common? That's fine, but the traditional habit of rushing to connect archaeological cultures to languages and ethnic identities has in itself become controversial among many mainstream academics even though it is still common. I also don't like the way terms like "deconstructionist" get used on this article talk page, as the implication seems to be that certain mainstream authors can be ignored as extremists because they are critical of older theories. We can't. In fact such criticisms have "good standing". (It reminds me all to much of the polarizing word games of the "culture wars" which are spreading out of America. While most culture war ideas don't stick, the style of discussion spreads like a virus. No doubt there will one day be various alternative polarized Wikipedias which will make everyone happy by no longer forcing people to come to any consensus with people they don't agree with.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:50, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
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