The Germanic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, originating from Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic languages that are descended from Proto-Germanic. Migrant Germanic settlers spread throughout Europe, mixing with existing local populations (such as Celts), forming the future basis of diverse nations, to various extents connected by linguistic affinity, as well as a common identity, history, and culture.

See Germanic mythology, Germanic paganism, Migration Period art


The Germanic tribes were each politically independent, under a hereditary king (see Germanic king). The kings appear to have claimed descendancy from mythical founders of the tribes, the name of some of which is preserved:

Angul — Angles (the Kings of Mercia, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, other Anglo-Saxon dynasties are derived from other descendants of Woden)

Aurvandil — Vandals (uncertain)

Burgundus — Burgundians

Cibidus — Cibidi

Dan — Danes

Nór — Norwegians

Gothus — Goths

Ingve — Ynglings

Irmin — Irminones

Longobardus — Lombards

Saxneat — Saxons

Valagothus — Valagoths

Regarding the question of ethnic origins, evidence developed by archaeologists and linguists suggests that a people or group of peoples sharing a common material culture dwelt in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia during the late European Bronze Age (1000 BC-500 BC). This culture group is called the Nordic Bronze Age and spread from southern Scandinavia into northern Germany. The long presence of Germanic tribes in southern Scandinavia - an Indo-European language had probably arrived by 2000 BC - is also evidenced by the fact that no pre-Germanic place names have been found in this area.

Linguists, working backwards from historically-known Germanic languages, suggest that this group spoke proto-Germanic, a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. Cultural features at that time included small, independent settlements, and an economy strongly based on the keeping of livestock.



Archaeological evidence suggests that before their language differentiation (into the individual Germanic branches), the Germanic peoples existed in a region covering from southern Scandinavia and all along North Sea and Baltic coasts from the Meuse river in the west to the Vistula in the east around 750 BCE. •

The southward movement was probably influenced by a deteriorating climate in Scandinavia ca 600 BC - ca 300 BC. The warm and dry climate of southern Scandinavia (2-3 degrees warmer than today) deteriorated considerably, which not only dramatically changed the flora, but forced people to change their way of living and to leave their settlements.

At around this time, this culture discovered how to extract bog iron from the ore in peat bogs. Their technology for gaining iron ore from local sources may have helped them expand into new territories.

The Germanic culture grew to the southwest and southeast, without sudden breaks, and it can be distinguished from the culture of the Celts inhabiting the more southerly Danube and Alpine regions during the same period.

The details of the expansion are known only generally, but it is clear that the forebears of the Goths were settled on the southern Baltic shore by 100 AD. According to some scholars, along the lower and middle Rhine, previous local inhabitants (see Nordwestblock) seem to have come under the leadership of Germanic figures from outside.

The early Germanic tribes spoke mutually intelligible dialects, and shared a common culture and mythology (see Germanic mythology), as is indicated by Beowulf and the Volsunga saga. One example of their shared identity is their common Germanic name for non-Germanic peoples,

walhaz (plural of
walhoz), from which the local names Welsh, Wallis, etc. were derived. A second example of a recognized ethnic unity is the fact that the Romans knew them as one and gave them a common name, Germani, although it was well known for the Romans to give geographical rather than cultural names to peoples. This is the source of our German and Germanic (see Etymology above).

By the late 2nd century, B.C., Roman authors recount Gaul, Italy, and Iberia and Lusitania were invaded by migrating Germanic tribes, culminating in military conflict with the armies of the Roman Empire. Six decades later, Julius Caesar invoked the threat of such attacks as one justification for his annexation of Gaul to Rome.

As Rome expanded to the Rhine and Danube rivers, it incorporated many Celtic societies into the Empire. The tribal homelands to the north and east emerged collectively in the records as Germania. The peoples of this area were sometimes at war with Rome, but also engaged in complex and long-term trade relations, military alliances, and cultural exchanges with Rome as well.

The Celtic Cimbri and Germanic Teutoni incursions into Roman Italy were thrust back in 101 BC. These invasions were written up by Caesar and others as presaging of a Northern danger for the Empire, a danger that should be controlled. In the Augustean period there was — as a result of Roman activity as far as the Elbe River — a first definition of the "Germania magna": from Rhine and Danube in the West and South to the Vistula and the Baltic Sea in the East and North.

Caesar's wars helped establish the term Germania. The initial purpose of the Roman campaigns was to protect Transalpine Gaul by controlling the area between the Rhine and the Elbe. In 9 AD a revolt of their subject Germanics headed by the suposed Roman ally, Arminius, (along with his decisive defeat of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the surprise attack on unprepared Romans at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest) ended in the withdrawal of the Roman frontier to the Rhine. At the end of the 1st century two provinces west of the Rhine called Germania inferior and Germania superior were established. Important medieval cities like Aachen, Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Worms and Speyer were part of these Roman provinces.

The Germania by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, an ethnographic work on the diverse group of Germanic tribes outside of the Roman Empire, is our most important source on the Germanic peoples of the 1st century.

The Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals were Christianized while they were still outside the bounds of the Empire; however, they converted to Arianism rather than to orthodox Catholicism, and were soon regarded as heretics. The one great written remnant of the Gothic language is a translation of portions of the Bible made by Ulfilas, the missionary who converted them. The Lombards were not converted until after their entrance into the Empire, but received Christianity from Arian Germanic groups.

The Franks were converted directly from paganism to Catholicism without an intervening time as Arians. Several centuries later, Anglo-Saxon and Frankish missionaries and warriors undertook the conversion of their Saxon neighbours. A key event was the felling of Thor's Oak near Fritzlar by Boniface, apostle of the Germans, in 723. Eventually, the conversion was forced by armed force, successfully completed by Charlemagne, in a series of campaigns (the Saxon Wars), that also brought Saxon lands into the Frankish empire.