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    Default Celts and Germans

    I just now remembered this article:

    Celts and Germans
    Stephen A. McNallen

    Reprinted from RUNESTONE #9 & 10

    The chieftain towered over his seated warriors in the smokey hall. Clatter and chatter faded and all eyes turned to this mustachioed, muscular figure who was their leader.

    Raising the mead-filled horn high over the throng, he toasted the High God, the one who carries the spear and has ravens hovering about his shoulders. All shouted their approval, and another warrior rose to his feet, lofted his horn, and praised the name of the Thunderer. The others echoed him, and in the warmth of their cameraderie, they might have well been in the great hall where warriors go when they die, served by the maidens of battle from the meat of the ever-reborn swine.

    A scene from viking history? An evening in a typical Germanic mead hall? No - the word picture painted here is of a feast among their cousins, the Celts.

    Like most of us, it wasn't news to me that the two main tribal groupings of ancient Europe had a lot in common. Both are part of the greater Indo-European family. Their mythology shares a common structure, the material aspects of their culture are much alike, and the general heroic worldview unites both Celt and German. But this, as it turns out, is only the beginning!

    The distinction we make today between these two branches of our kin arise, in no small measure, from the observations of Julius Caesar. Essentially, he declared the tribes on one side of the Rhine to be Germans, and those on the other to be Celts. In actuality, it was not that simple. Scholars now think that some groups we once labeled German, were really Celtic. Other tribes might have belonged to either classification, because we don't know what language they spoke! The clear implication is that the physical artifacts they left behind were indistinguishable, and that language is the only definite marker between the two.

    Physical appearance is no clue, because the Roman commentators describe the Germanic peoples and the Celts in exactly the same terms. Both were tall, tending toward the blond, and light skinned. The word "Teuton", by the way, is cognate with the Gaelic "tuath", meaning people or tribe, which certainly points to a fundamental kinship!

    For me, the clincher came when I read Hilda Davidson's Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe (Syracuse University Press, 1988). Significantly, it's subtitled "Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions". Page after page and chapter after chapter, she documents the similarities between the mythology, folklore, and ritual of the Germanic and Celtic peoples. I began making a list as I read, and it wasn't long before I had a couple of sheets covered with scribbled notes. I won't get bogged down in the minutia of these, but some comparisons beg to be made. To make the bulk of this material more easily accessible, I've lumped my comments into some broad categories:



    GODS and GODDESSES...

    The Celtic Lugh and our own Odin are much the same. Odin is father of the Gods, keeps two ravens, carries a magic spear, and has one eye. Lugh is first in the Celtic family of Gods, is linked with ravens, carries the Spear of Victory, and closes one eye when he performs fantastic deeds on the battlefield.

    The Nordic Thor, whose name means "Thunderer", prizes his mighty hammer. He rides about the heavens, laughing in his red beard, in a wagon pulled by supernatural goats. Taranis of the Celts, whose name also means "Thunderer", drives a chariot behind sacred bulls. He wields the thunderbolt, whose name in the old Gaelic tongue derives from the same Indo-European root as the name of Thor's hammer, Mjolnir. Taranis, too, is pictured as having a flowing red mane.

    Tyr, as our tales tell, lost his hand binding Fenris the wolf. He used to be the Sky God, scholars say, until Odin took his place. The Celtic Nuada lost his arm in battle against the Fomorians, and so Lugh - the Celtic equivalent of Odin - became leader of the Gods.

    In the domain of fertility and plenty, our own Frey rules supreme among Asafolk. One of his favorite beasts is the horse, which just happens to also be sacred to Dagda, "the good God", who is Frey's Celtic equivalent.

    Other divine beings...

    Giants? The Celts have them just as Asafolk do; they're called the Fomorians, and the Celtic Gods battle mightily against them. Moreover, the role they play is pretty much the same - representing the forces of inertia and entropy in the cosmos.

    Valkyries find their reflection in the Morrigan, fierce Goddesses of the battlefield who grant victory, spin the fates of war, and serve the heroes in the afterlife. This twin aspect - fiends of blood and death on the one hand, enticing lovers on the other - is found in both cultures. Similarly, both Celtic and Germanic sagas tell of supernatural women warriors who instruct and initiate the chosen heroes. Brynhild teaches Sigurd hidden magical lore, and the female chieftain Scathach ("Shadow") takes the Irish Cu Chulain under her care and makes him the warrior he is destined to become. It is probably no accident that Sigurdand Cu Chulain are descended from Odin and Lugh, respectively.

    Consider the "lesser" beings, the ones that seldom figure in myth and poetry, but who make the life of the common man and woman more bearable. The land spirits, for example, are alike in both cultures. Elf lore, and the connections of these wights to the ancestors, was recognizably the same to the ancient Teuton and his or her Celtic contemporaries



    RELIGIOUS LORE and PRACTICES...

    I referred to virtually identical warrior paradises in the scene which opened this article, but the overlap between Celtic and Germanic lore goes far beyond this.

    Bogs throughout Northern Europe received sacrifices from Celt and German alike. Weapons and armor captured in battle, food and beakers, miscellaneous items - all were deposited in lakes and marshes in the same way, to the point that we can't even tell which finds are German and which are Celtic.

    When the Druids sacrificed to the Gods, the blood from an animal was sprinkled with a sprig of greenery on the assembled people, so the divine energy inherent in blood could be directly transferred to them. In historical Asatru, our forebears did exactly the same thing in the course of a sacrifice or blot.. (Today, modern practitioners of both religions use mead or other fermented fluid in this role.)

    Across the length and breadth of our European homeland, our ancestors honored the Gods in the open air, because we thought it inappropriate to shut them up into limiting, lessening structures like the Christian churches. Similarly, in the earliest days, our representations of the Gods and Goddesses were simple indeed - often carved from pieces of wood to which Nature had already given the basic shape, awaiting only a few refinements from human hands.

    These customs accurately describe Celts as well as Germans.

    Tribesmen of both groups used intoxicating drink in religious ritual. Often this was mead, but it could be ale as well. And, while we're considering altered states of consciousness, let's remember the fit or frenzy of the Odin-gripped warriors, the berserkers. In old Ireland, essentially the same warrior's madness bore the name of "{\i ferg} ".

    Readers of the Norse stories will remember how Sigurd the Volsung killed the dragon Fafnir and roasted its heart. When he burned his finger, he stuck it in his mouth and found that he could understand the speech of birds. The Irish hero Fergus gained the same gift when he singed his finger while cooking a salmon over a fire.



    MAP OF THE UNIVERSE...

    When we look at the cosmology of the Teutons and that of the Celts, we can't help but see the likeness. Both have the giant tree, the center of the cosmos and indeed the framework in which all the worlds are found: to Asafolk, it's Yggdrasil; the Celts call it Bile .

    The other key component of the universe in ancient Germania was the Well of Wyrd, containing the deeds that make up the past. Drinking from its waters gives wisdom, and Odin gave up one of his eyes for the privilege. As it turns out, the Celts have an almost identical well; hazel nuts fall into it where they are eaten by the Salmon of Wisdom.



    IN CONCLUSION.....

    The only real differences between Germanic and Celtic religion seem to be the names by which the Gods are called. A viking of the tenth century would likely have felt quite comfortable in a Celtic ritual among the Gauls a thousand years earlier. Celtic religion deviates from the "Asatru norm" no more than do, for example, a priestess of Freya in Iceland and a warrior pledged to Wotan in Germany in Herman's time. Indeed, one is inclined to say that there is only "European religion" - and that the Germanic and Celtic beliefs are two expressions of it.

    So what are the implications of all this? Well, it means that the Irishman need not feel out-of-place calling on Gods more often associated with Norway's fjords than the Emerald Îsles hills and valleys. Ultimately all us Northfolk are spiritual as well as genetic kin.

    Also Celtic-Germanic unity flies in the face of the sometimes-herard assertions that since Europeans often boast roots in different countries we're somehow mixed ancestry. How often have you heard someone say "I'm a Heinz 57 blend...part Irish, part Swedish, with some Englis h and German thrown in?" Clearly that's not mixed at all, because the Northern peoples are essentially one, in both their physical aspects and in their ancient relgiions. We musn't let people divided us on the basis of superficialities!

    Thirdly, the catalog of our similarities measn we can use the one to fill gaps in our knowldge of the other.l As we reconstitute the tapestry of our ancient Asatru beliefs, there will be holes where the moths of time and persecution have done their work. But if we know the common pattern and how it's woven in the Celtic material, we can patch the holes with greater confidence.

    Enough! All this scholarship makes thirsty work! I'm going to pour a fine bottle of Guiness into my mead horn, and toast all things Celtic/Nordic...Skoal, and Slainte, to you!

    Source

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    This article makes me think of the Belgae tribe.

    Origins of the Belgae

    Julius Caesar describes Gaul at the time of his conquests (58 - 51 BC) as divided into three parts, inhabited by the Aquitani, Galli (who in their own language were called Celtae) and Belgae, all of whom had their own customs, laws and language. He noted that the Belgae, being furthest from the developed civilization of Rome and closest to the Germanic people, were the bravest of the three groups, because "merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind".

    Caesar's sources informed him "that the greater part of the Belgae were sprung from the Germanic peoples, and that, having crossed the Rhine at an early period, they had settled there, on account of the fertility of the country". He also says that the Germanic people who lived to the west of the Rhine were allied to the Belgae, and describes four of the tribes who made up the Belgic alliance, the Eburones, Condrusi, Caerosi and Paemani, as Germanic. The later historian Tacitus records that the Nervii and Treveri were also eager to claim Germanic rather than Gaulish origin. On the other hand, most of the Belgic tribal and personal names recorded are identifiably Gaulish, including that of Ambiorix, a leader of the Eburones, one of the tribes named as Germanic. Surviving inscriptions also indicate that Gaulish was spoken in Belgic territory. It seems that, despite their Germanic ancestry, the Belgic tribes had adopted a variety of the Gaulish language by Caesar's time.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sveyn View Post
    This article makes me think of the Belgae tribe.
    The same is apparently true of the Cimbri as well:

    Quote Originally Posted by Wiki
    A major problem in determining whether the Cimbri were speaking a Celtic or a Germanic language is that at this time the Greeks and Romans tended to refer to all groups to the north of their sphere of influence as Gauls, Celts, or Germani rather indiscriminately. Caesar seems to be one of the first authors to distinguish the two groups, and he has a political motive for doing so (it is an argument in favour of the Rhine border). Yet, one cannot always trust Caesar and Tacitus when they ascribe individuals and tribes to one or the other category. Most ancient sources categorize the Cimbri as a Germanic tribe, but some ancient authors include the Cimbri among the Celts.

    There are few direct testimonies to the language of the Cimbri: Referring to the Northern Ocean (the Baltic or the North Sea), Pliny the Elder states: "Philemon says that it is called Morimarusa, i.e. the Dead Sea, by the Cimbri, until the promontory of Rubea, and after that Cronium." The words for "sea" and "dead" are muir and marbh in Irish and mor and marw in Welsh. The same word for "sea" is also known from Germanic, but with an a (*mari-), whereas a cognate of marbh is unknown in all dialects of Germanic. Yet, given that Pliny had not had the word directly from a Cimbric informant, it cannot be ruled out that the word is in fact Gaulish instead.

    Similarly, the kings of the Cimbri and Teutones carry what look like Celtic names, viz. Boiorix and Teutobodus, but the origin of a name need not say anything about the ethnicity or language of the individual carrying the name. On the other hand, there is no positive evidence of Germanic words or names in connection with the Cimbri. The etymology given above (PIE *tḱim-ro-) would work just as well in a Celtic context (and the Latin form with c rather than h would be easier to explain). Other evidence to the language of the Cimbri is circumstantial: thus, we are told that the Romans enlisted Gaulish Celts to act as spies in the Cimbri camp prior to the final showdown with the Roman army in 101 BC. This is evidence in support of "the Celtic rather than the German theory".

    Jean Markale wrote that the Cimbri were associated with the Helvetii, and more especially with the indisputably Celtic Tigurini. As will be seen later, these associations may link to a common ancestry, recalled from two hundred years previous. Also, all the known Cimbri chiefs had Celtic names, including Boiorix (King of the Boii), Gaesorix (King of the Gaesatae, who were Alpine Celtic mercenaries), and Lugius (after the Celtic god Lugh). Henri Hubert states "All these names are Celtic, and they cannot be anything else". Some authors take a different perspective. For example, Peter S. Wells states that the Cimbri "are certainly not Celts", without providing argumentation.

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    Taranis of the Celts, whose name also means "Thunderer", drives a chariot behind sacred bulls. He wields the thunderbolt, whose name in the old Gaelic tongue derives from the same Indo-European root as the name of Thor's hammer, Mjolnir.
    Does anyone know what the old Gaelic word is?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ulf View Post
    Does anyone know what the old Gaelic word is?
    This guy perhaps...

    Quote Originally Posted by Wiki
    In Irish mythology, Tuireann or Tuirill Biccreo was the father of Creidhne, Luchtaine and Giobhniu by Brigid.

    His other sons, by his daughter Danand, included Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba, who killed Lugh's father Cian. After Lugh had taken his elaborate revenge, Tuireann died of grief over their graves.

    He is stated in various portions of Lebor Gabála Érenn to be the same person as Delbáeth Mac Ogma, who is also credited as the father of Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba. He is likely related to the Gaulish deity Taranis and thence to Thor of the Scandinavians.

    His name points to a Proto-Indo-European root which gives us words for thunder or related concepts even today, for instance "Thor's Day" (Thursday), as well as dedication to the god and tórnach, the Irish word for thunder.

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    I am glad to see this thread! I have known for some time the similarities between the Celts and Norse traditions, and I freely use both - albeit separately.

    I am, for the most part, a solitary Norse Heathen who attends seasonal Blots and occasionally will hold my own. I also belong to a group called The Inner Realm of Ynis Witrin - Isle of Avalon. Our group keeps the Celtic traditions alive by conducting rituals mainly of a Shamanic nature.

    It bothers me to think (as has already been suggested to me by a Norse Heathen) that I must uphold one tradition over another in order to call myself a Heathen. I beg to differ, and here are my reasons why:

    * I live my life honourably
    * I bear in mind that how I conduct myself reflects on both my ancestors and future descendents
    * I hold myself accountable for my actions
    * I honour all of my ancestors - and always have done. However, I have learned most from my Celtic and Norse forebears
    * I don't practise anything eclectic based on Neo-Paganism - sometimes though, I do attend and participate in other rites (I have friends who are eclectic as well as Wiccan), but I don't conduct them or practise them

    As far as I'm concerned, to ignore my Celtic roots and be exclusively Norse - or vice versa - would liken me to having only one arm.

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    Well even though there are similarities, which is to be expected between neighbours, I would still never claim affinity to Celtic culture.. After all I am from a place where not long ago an outsider was a person who lived only on the other side of the tree-line...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vargtand View Post
    Well even though there are similarities, which is to be expected between neighbours, I would still never claim affinity to Celtic culture.. After all I am from a place where not long ago an outsider was a person who lived only on the other side of the tree-line...
    That makes perfect sense for someone like you. However, many of us whose roots lie either in continental Europe or in the British Isles have just as much Celtic ancestry as we do Germanic.

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    Ehh, the key problem with that article is it doesn't take into account regional variances in Celtic religious worship, which was HUGE, consisting of many, many gods, most of whom we don't have any proof of to this day. The same case is true to a lesser degree with Germanics as well. Their similarity was closer, naturally, when they were closer to one another. But a far east Germanic and Celt-Iberian were not likely to have much in common in way of religious practices..

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    Quote Originally Posted by Psychonaut View Post
    That makes perfect sense for someone like you. However, many of us whose roots lie either in continental Europe or in the British Isles have just as much Celtic ancestry as we do Germanic.
    True enough, it was a personal stance; I don't go around preaching how other people should do, my ideals hold true only for me I might give advice when I think it is fitting but here it is not.

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