[gothic-l] Re: The Gothic and Eruli Proto-Vikings

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

Bertil,

you lost me here. Nobody wants to make  Germanic people German. As
somebody once said "history is a foreign country". The Alamanni
cannot  be equated with early modern Germans (Deutsche). Many Swiss
people are also of Alamanic decent and many modern Germans have
nothing to do with the Alamani at all.  The same is true for the other
tribes. The fact that Langobards once settled in North Germany does
not make them into Deutsche. They are just Germanic people who
happened to have settled on what turned out to be modern Germany at
one time in the past. Thus, the Goths are not proto-Swedes or
proto-Poles or Proto-Italians or Proto-Spaniards. The Goths have
affected the history of much of Europe and they have probably a firmer
 place in the history of Spain and Italy than in the history of any
other modern nation. When we discuss the geographical origin of
tribes, I prefere to take the first historical mentioning by
contemporaties like Tacitus etc as a starting point of the history of
this tribe, as anything else cannot be proved beyond doubt. However,
if this first mentioning is for example in modern Poland this does not
make these people into early Poles and if the mentioning is in modern
Germany this does not make these people in to early modern Germans
(Deutsche).

Sure in the past nationalists of many countries, Germany as well as
Sweden, have used Germanic history for their purposes, however, that
does not help in understanding the past. Their is a good discussion
about that on the archaeology list about that.



Dirk









--- In gothic-l at egroups.com, bertil <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> Dirk,
>
> Think you don't remember correctly concerning
> Wolfram. Some peoples were of German origin,
> no doubt, like the Suebi, Alemanni, Bavarians
> and so forth. Wouldn't it be godd for this
> list if you informed about the German peoples
> of Germanic origin instead of trying to make
> all Germanic peoples German. It makes me a little
> uneasy.
>
> Gothically
>
> Bertil
>
>
> > yes, but this refers to the 3rd century and their style of
warfare, I
> > meant their self-perception in the late 5th century. However,
just
> > thinking of it,


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