2. The Earliest Period of Germanic History. Classification of Ancient Germanic Tribes. Alphabets and Written Records of Germanic Tribes

The History of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. PG is the linguistic ancestor of the parent-language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related IE lanuages sometime between the 15^th and 10^th c B.C. The would-be Germanic tribes belonged to the western division of the IE speech community. As the Indo-Europeans extended over a lаrger territory, the ancient Germans or Teutons moved and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of Elbe a few hundred years before our era. This place is regarded as the most probable original home of the Teutons. It is here that they developed their first specifically Germanic linguistic features which made them a separate group in the IE family.

Our knowledge of the ancient Teutons is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman writes, who. The first mention about them was made by Pytheas from Massilia, a Greek historian and geographer of the 4^th c. B.C., in an account of a sea voyage to the Baltic Sea. His work has not come doen to us; only a few fragments have been preserved by the Greek geographer Strabo (63 B.C. – 20 A.D.), the author of a large work ‘Geography’ (chapter ‘Teutons and Guttons’), and by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.)

In the 1^st c. B.C. in ‘Commentaries on the Gallic War’ Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) described some militant Germanic tribes – the Suevians – who bordered on the Celts of Gaul in the North-East. Caesar statement that the Germans lived in tribes and tribal unions is of great value for the historians. The tribal names Germans and Teutons, at first applied to separate tribes, were later extended to the entire group.

About a century later Pliny the Elder wrote about the Teutons in his great work ‘Natural History’. He gave a classification of Germanic tribes which has been basically accepted by modern historians. According to Pliny Germanic tribes in the 1^st century A.D. consisted of the following groups:

1. the Vindili (the Goths, the Burgundians, the Vandals) – eastern Germanic tribes, who inhabited the eastern part of Germanic territory;

2. the Ingvaeones – western Germanic tribes, inhabited the north-western part of Germanic territory – the shores of the Northern Sea, including what is now Netherlands;

3. the Iscaveones (the Franks who eventually conquered Gaul and others) – western Germanic tribes, who occupied the western part of Germanic territory on the Rhine;

4. the Hermiones or the Herminones – western Germanic tribes, who inhabited southern part of Germanic territory (now southern Germany);

5. the Peucini and Bastrnae – eastern Germanic tribes, who live close to what is now Romania;

6. the Hilleviones – northern Germanic tribes,, who inhabited Scandinavia.

Germanic tribes were also mentioned by the great Roman historian Tacitus Cornelius (55-120 A.D). In his short work ‘Germania’ Tacitus characterized the social structure of the Old Germanic tribes around 100 A.D. The historian’s worj contains Pliny’s classification. Tacitus’ results were widely used by Friendrich Engles in his work ‘On the History of Ancient Germans’. Quoting Pliny’s classification of Germanic tribes. Engels introduced one amendment. He pointed out that group 5 (the Peucini and Bastarnae) should be included into group 1, just as they also lived in the east and Pliny didn’t denote it by a generalizing term, but merely gave the names of tribes which made it up. The following classification of the Germanic tribes was accepted: the Vindili - eastern Germanic tribes; the Ingvaeones, the Istaevones, the Herminones – western Germanic tribes; Hilleviones – northern Germanic tribes. In due course these groups split into separate subgroups.

Eastern Germanic group of tribes was made of Goths, Visigoths (western Goths) and Ostrogoth (eastern Goths). Around 200 A.D. they moved south-east and some time later reached the lower basin of the Danube where they made attacks on the eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium. Their western branch the Visigoths invaded Roman territory, participated in the assault on Rome, moved on to southern Gaul and found the first barbarian kingdom – the Toulouse kingdom. It had being existed till the eight century and was absorbed by native population – Romanized Celts. Eastern Goths (Ostrogoths) consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance in the lower basin of the Dniester and set up a kingdom in Northern Italy with Ravenia as its capital. In the 5^th c . their kingdom disappered.

The Northern Germanic tribes lived in the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula and in Northern Denmark. They didn’t participate in migrations and were relatively isolated, though they they came into contacts with the western tribes after the Goths left the coast of the Baltic Sea. Their dialectical variation was little and old Scandinavian came down to us in runic inscriptions dated from the 3^rd to the 9^th c. After the 9^th c. the Scandinavian started out on their sea voyage. The famous Viking age from about 800 to 1050 A.D. is the legendary age of Scandinavians raids and expansion overseas t the same period. Due to overpopulation they spread over inner Scandinavia.

West Germanic tribes dwelt in lowlands between the Oder and the Elbe bordering on the Slavonian tribes in the East and the Celtic tribes in the south. Under the pressure of Goths they went to the south and to the east. In the 4^th and 5^th century there were several tribes: the Franks, the High Germans, the Low Germans, the Angles and the Frisians, the Jutes, the Saxons. The Franks lived in the lower basin of the Rhine. In early Middle Ages they consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance. Towards the 8^th c. their kingdom grew into one of the largest states in Western Europe. In 768-814 it embraced France and half of Italy and stretched up to the North and Baltic sea. Their empire broke into parts in the 9^th c.The High German group of tribes didn’t go far in their migration. They lived in the mountanious southern region of Germany and expanded only to the east. Low Germans inhabited low-lying northern areas of Germany.

The Angles and the Frisians (the Anglo-Frisian group), the Jutes and Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Nertherland, Germany and southern part of Denmark. In the 5^th c. started out on their invasion of the British Isles. The invaders came from the lowlands near the North Sea: the Angles, part of the Saxon and the Frisian, and, probably, the Jutes. The Frisian and the Saxon didn’t take part in the invasion stayed on the continent. The area of Frisian which at one extended over the entirecoast of the North sea was reduced under the pressure of Low German tribes.

The ancient Germanic tribes used three different alphabets for their writings. These alphabets partly suceeded each other in time. The most ancient one was runic alphabet. The word rune originally meant ‘secret’, ‘mystery’ and hence came to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet, not to be found in languages of other groups.

Runes have a very peculiar look for eyes accustomed to modern European alphabets. The letters (runes) are angular; straight lines are preferred, curved lines avoided. For example the rune denoting the vowel e was Μ, the rune denoting the consonant s was Ѱ. Horizontal lines didn’t exist in this alphabet. They were substituted by broken lines. This is due to the fact that runic inscriptions were cut in hard material: stone, bone or wood. To this day the origin of runes is a matter of conjecture. Some scholars believe that it was derived either from Latin alphabet or from some other Italic alphabet close to the Latin.

Just when and where the Runic alphabet was created is not known. It is supposed that it originated at some time in the 2^nd and 3^rd century A.D., somewhere on the Rhine or the Danube, where Germanic tribes came into contact with Roman culture. The Runic alphabet was used by different Germanic tribes: Goths, Anglo-Sacons and Scandinavians. There are runic inscriptions on the Golden horn which was found in Denmark. The two best known runic inscriptions are the earliest ectant OE written records. One of them is an inscription on a box called “Franks Casket”, the other is a short text on a stone cross near the village of Ruthwell known as the “Ruthwell Cross”. The Franks Casket was discoivered in the early years of the 19^th c. in France and was presented to the British Museum by a British archeologist A.W.Franks.The Ruthwell Cross is a 15 ft tall stone cross inscribed and ornamented on all sides. The principal inscription has been reconstructed into a passage from an OE religious poem “the Dream of the Rood”, which was also found in another version in a later manuscript. A lot of runic inscriptions were also found on movable objects: hemlets, rings, amulets, coins, etc.Eventually the Runic alphabet underwent changes with different Dermanic tribes: new letters were added, some of the original ones were dropped.It is customary, for this reason to distinguish between an older and a younger Runic alphabet.

Ulfila’s Gothic alphabet appeared in the 4^th century. This is the alphabet of Ulfila’s Gothic translation of the Bible, a peculiar alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, with some admixture of Latin and Runic letters was created. It is known as the Silver Codex.

The latest alphabet to be used by Germanic tribes is the Latin alphabet. It is superseded both the Runic and the Gothic alphabet when a new technique of writing was introduced, namely that of spreading some colour or paint on a surface instead of cutting or engraving letters. The material used for witings was either parchment or papyrus. Introduction of the Latin alphabet accompanied the spread of Christianity and of Latin language Chrisitian religious texts. The Latin alphabet was certainly not adequate to represent all sounds of Germanic languages. That’s why letters and signs from runic alphabet were also used. Written records of Germanic tribes are given in the table 2:

Table 2