[gothic-l] Gothic Identity, was: Heyerdahl searching for Odin

[Alburysteve at AOL.COM]

Hi Dirk:

>  Hi Nikolai,
>
>  my understanding is that the question of 'opposing camps' in this
>  matter does no longer arise in modern historical research. Historians
>  seem to agree that there have been Gothic tribes on the continent
>  (mentioned from 1st C. AD) and in Scandinavia (mentioned from 5th C.
>  AD). In all likelihood these groups were in contact at some stage.
>  However, their material cultures are so different that this contact
>  was likely not very intensive (See: Hachmann, 'Die Goten und
>  Skandinavien', or more recently Mazkiewicz et. al.).
>
>  In fact, 'Gothicism' was likely not an ethnic definition at this
>  early stage at all, but rather a  cultic/religious one. Thus, the term
>  Gothic could be transfered easily to different peoples including
>  non-Germans (in linguistic terms) as well.

The notion that tribal societies were cult-focused has been in vogue for a
decade or so and I am curious to know if there is any primary ethnographic
evidence to support it.  Anyone?  Before the christian era, Germanic groups
fit easily into a tribal structure, each tribe comprised of clans who may
have shared a patron deity and places of worship.  But clan membership was
determined by birth and lineage and not religious belief.  In the first
century AD, I would be a Goth because of my parentage and that, in turn,
would determine my gods.  Heather does an excellent job of describing how the
massive displacement of large segments of many different cultural groups
during the fourth and fifth centuries triggered a period of intensive
cultural restructuring out of which emerged the Visigothic and Ostrogothic
groups.  That these derived predominatly from the Gothic populations of SE
Europe is not seriously in question.  That the latter derived from earlier
groups situated in or around the Baltic littoral is not an unreasonable
question.

>Therefore, saying that 'The
>  Goths' came from this or that place is tantamount to saying that the
>  Catholics came from Rome or the Lutherans came from Wittengerg. What
>  is important, is that for the transmission of such a cultic identities
>  you don't need a migration of people.

This is true only if you accept the (false) thesis that gothicness is a
strictly religious construct.

>This view solves the problem
>  with the different material cultures, and it led people like R.
>  Wenskus to come up with the concept of the 'traditional core', to
>  which most authorative scholars like Wolfram seem to adhere.
>
>  Thus, the early Goths may have formed an entity similar to the Suevi
>  and Vandilii-Lugian cultic groups. The Vandilii (Vandals)- Lugian
>  groups incorporated tribes like the Harii, Helvecones, Manimi, Helsii,
>  Narhavales and later also the names Silingi and Asdingi appear in this
>  group. Both the Gothic and the Vandilii-Lugian groups most likely
>  contained even Celtic parts as well as Germanic parts (see Wolfram
>  'History of the Goths').

What do you mean by "entity"?  Culture (belief system, social institutions,
kinship structures, language, clothing styles, building techniques, etc)?  It
is not stretch to believe that the early Germanic tribes (Goths being one
such) shared many (if not all) cultural institutions and that some of these
were also shared with (some) Celtic groups.  It is  difficult to see how this
renders infeasible the splitting off of a segment of a tribe, one segment
remaining (in Scandinavia, for sake of argument) and another segment
mirgrating elsewhere (Ukraine, for example).  History and ethnographic
literature is replete with valid examples of which the isolation of the
Crimean Goths is but one.

>  The biggest of such cultic groups may have been the Suevi, who
>  included the Langobards at the Elbe and streched to the Marcomanni and
>  Quadi in Moravia. The diverse parts of these larger groups were often
>  subject of change and some parts regrouped to form tribes that adopted
>  the name of their former cultic group as the 'common denominator' of
>  the consitutent parts. Thus, we get the later Vandals, which are
>  different, but related, to the early Vandili/Lugians and the later
>  Suevi, which are also different but related to the early Suevi.
>
>  With the continental Goths/Gothones the development was probably
>  similar, i.e. from a loose cultic group to a tighter more 'ethnically'
>  based entity. This also implies that we cannot simply link 6th century
>  Goths in Italy with 1st century Gothones in Pomerania and regard them
>  as the logical development of 'a' people. What all this means is that
>  the question of Goths originating in one certain place, be it
>  Scandinavia or Pomerania, is simply obsolete.

Again, is there a single example of a primitive people who recognize their
cultural affinity solely through a  "cult" practice?  English language and
culture extend over wide tracts of the world yet there is no question of its
place of origin or even the period of time with its constituent elements
coalesced into what we currently recognize as English.  The notion that the
"question of origins" is obsolete is an unfortunate over-reaction to the
theoretical excesses of nineteenth and early twentieth century prehistorians.


Best regards,

Steve O'Brien
Albury, Ontario

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