The Germanic Branch

The Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family is thought to have originated in Northern Europe, somewhere in the area around Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia, probably within the 1st millennium BC. This makes the Germanic peoples a relatively recent development on the European stage. Similar to other Indo-European peoples, which formed in the first millennia BC, the early Germans were not only descendants of the newcomers from the steppe, but from the native Northern European population as well, themselves a mix of the first Hunter-Gatherers to arrive in Europa tens of thousands of years earlier, and Anatolian farmers, which had arrived from the Near East just a few millennia before.

In the last centuries BC, the Germanic Tribes started to migrate southwards, probably in search of warmer and more fertile regions, hard-pressed by the harsh climate of the North. This brought them in direct contact with other Indo-European speakers, such as the Celts and – of course – the Romans. Centuries of coexistence interspersed with violent confrontations saw the early Germans adopt aspects of these new ways of life and develop into different branches, linguistically typically divided into North-, West- and East-Germanic. Whilst the eastern branch is all but extinct today, its western and northern counterparts survive in the English, Frisian, German (including Low German), Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish languages.

On this page, you will find articles concerning the history, culture, language, and mythology of the early Germanic people. Due to the broad nature of this area of research, providing a comprehensive overview is almost impossible. There will be new articles added from time to time, however, to supply as much information as possible in an area, which suffers from many misconceptions and misunderstandings.