Definition of Celtic / Celticity

[brennus dux gallorum]

Celtic maps:






...
Modern genetic relatedness:

3 and 4 maps are wrong

There was zero celtic presence in most of Netherlands and half of Germany, meanwhile picts were almost equally celtic, and of course Provence was inhabited mainly by celts, in contrast to what these 2 maps show

[Neon Knight]

What do you say are the minimum qualifications for being a Celt? Speaking a Celtic language and having a certain amount of ancestry (how much and from how far back?) or just one of those?

Any opinions on this? Does the Irish speaking Gaelic as a second language make them Celts? And are they are then not also Anglo-Saxons because they speak English? If a Russian learns to speak Welsh (Brythonic) very well does he then become a Celt or a Celto-Slav?

[Creoda]

It's nothing but history for nearly everybody, except for pockets of NW Europe. Unless you speak a Celtic language it's all larping.

[Faklon]

Celticism, Celtitude, and Celticity: the consumption of the past in the age of globalization.

A few of these organizations,such as the Druid Order and the Ancient Order of Druids , have histories dating back to the firstRomantic revival of druidism in the 18 th century.However, the vast majority are of quite recentorigin – some dating to the 1960s and most to thepast couple of decades. Moreover, whereas theearlier neo-druids operated within the frameworkof what is called “Celtic Christianity” and weremarkedly patriarchal, most of the newer branchesthat have arisen during the past couple of decadesconsider themselves to be part of the neo-Paganor New Age movements (Adler 1986; Bowman1993; 1996; Hardman 1996; Hutton 1996). Hence,they tend to be polytheistic, strongly feminist,and largely “green” in orientation. Indeed, manyof the founders of recent druid organizationswere former practitioners of the other dominantneo-Pagan religion, Wicca (see Shallcrass 1996).And in many branches there is a good dealof mutual borrowing of ritual and symbolismbetween Druids and Wiccans (not to mention bor-rowing from Native American, Hindu, and other religions). There are even groves of Zen Druids inOlympia (Washington), and Hassidic Druids in St.Louis who mix Yiddish and Celtic traditions (Adler 1986, 324-325). Clearly such neo-druids have con-structed a very different sense of what it means tobe “Celtic” than, for example, the Breton Movement,Scottish nationalists, or the “Celtomaniac” Frenchnationalist historians of the 19th century invoking“our ancestors the Gauls” (Chapman 1992; Dietler 1994; McDonald 1989).

For example, one of the limited bits of reliable observation we do have from ancient texts about druids is that they maintained a strongly oral culture, insisting that vast amounts of information be committed to memory and strongly resisting the use of writing.

Among other ironic features isthe fact that neo-druids, who are overwhelminglyin sympathy with ecological and animal rights movements, should have found inspiration in an ancient religion for which the few rituals actually known include, prominently, human and animal sacrifices.

“The Druids had some unpleasant customs which I have no intention of perpetuating… It isi mportant to know where you are coming from if you are going to claim you are connected to certain ancestors or traditions. If you say you area ‘Druid’ you ought to know what kind of peoplethey were and what kinds of thoughts they had.Then you can pick and choose what parts make sense in modern America” (Adler 1986, 326).

A taste for Celtic music is no longer confined simply toregional folk music enthusiasts or nostalgic ethnicdiasporas; it has now become ubiquitous in NewAge contexts, Hollywood film soundtracks (rang-ing from Braveheart to Titanic ), Broadway-stylemusical shows (such as Riverdance and CelticTiger ), and a host of other venues. A recent pro-gram on American PBS television called “CelticWoman” featured singers from Ireland performing an eclectic range of pop music that was linkedmostly by the New Age “Celtic” style in which it was rendered.

t is clear that these new forms of Celtitude and Celticity have a large and expanding commercialdimension that fuels consumption. Yet, even asglobal identityscapes, they have an ambivalentrelationship to globalization. On the one hand,the construction of both forms of a trans-nationalCeltic imaginary involves a reaction against globalization. In the case of Celtitude, this generally centers around a rural image of the ancestralhomeland that is frozen in time and removed fromthe economic and social realities of, for example,the “Celtic Tiger” of the new Ireland. Similarly,Celticity is in many ways fundamentally constituted by a neo-Romantic reaction against globalcapitalism and the spiritual and environmental destruction it is believed to have wrought. Yet both are enabled and fed by global technologies,global flows of capital, and global mediascapes. In addition to the elements already mentioned, such as the roots tourism industry feeding diaspora pilgrimage to the mystical homeland and the Celtic music industry, there is a wide, and ever increasing,range of products and services that play upon the Celtic theme.

Archaeologists have not been insensitive tothis market of avid consumers, as the proliferationof lavishly (and sometimes luridly) illustrated cof-fee-table books on “The Celts”, “The Celtic World”,“Celtic Gods and Goddesses”, “Celtic Art”, etc. testi-fies. Moreover, even for the specialist academicmarket, the logic of publishers’ marketing pressures(at least in the Anglophone world) demands thatthe word “Celtic” is now virtually mandatory inthe title of almost any book on the European IronAge, even though many professionals have seriousreservations about the scholarly use of the word.

For example, neo-Pagandruids often feel that New Age Celtic enthusiastsare responsible for a commercialization of spirituality (Bowman 1996), and Irish-diaspora Celt sare sometimes annoyed by what they disparageas inauthentic, frivolous claims to Celticity byneo-druids and New Agers alike. A more seriouspolitical concern is that many of the more traditional regionalist Celticism movements view the universalizing discourses of postmodern Celticity with alarm as a new form of cultural imperialism– an attempt to absorb, co-opt, and delegitimizetheir own sense of distinctive local culture andidentity and to impose a new form of hegemonic center-periphery relationship.

[Cristiano viejo]

Celticity = Celtiberianism, nothing else.

[Ford]

A Celt in modern times is someone who either speaks a Celtic language or has a significant connection to one of the living Celtic languages/cultures.

Celt in the historical sense is quite a broad umbrella term that is often misused in modern times.

[Cristiano viejo]

A Celt in modern times is someone who either speaks a Celtic language or has a significant connection to one of the living Celtic languages/cultures.

Celt in the historical sense is quite a broad umbrella term that is often misused in modern times.

Sorry but that is a stupid definition. According it Iberians are not Iberians "because we dont speak any Iberian language"

My city was founded by Celtiberians, and maaaaany Celtiberian traditions still survive nowadays. That is equally important if not more than just language.

[Token]

Sorry but that is a stupid definition. According it Iberians are not Iberians "because we dont speak any Iberian language"

My city was founded by Celtiberians, and maaaaany Celtiberian traditions still survive nowadays. That is equally important if not more than just language.

If the only criteria are a Celtic past and surviving traditions from Celtic times, then pretty much all of Western Europe would be Celtic.

[Ford]

Sorry but that is a stupid definition. According it Iberians are not Iberians "because we dont speak any Iberian language"

My city was founded by Celtiberians, and maaaaany Celtiberian traditions still survive nowadays. That is equally important if not more than just language.

You are Iberian of course, it's just a name given to a peninsula (albeit with a toponym of Celtic origin via Latin, but that is irrelevant). The Celts have also left strong cultural and archaeological prints in the Balkans too, or pretty much anywhere in mainland Europe. Still can't be called anything but maybe Celtic influenced in various degrees. It's a distant memory for most modern Europeans except for the actual Celts.

[Cristiano viejo]

If the only criteria are a Celtic past and surviving traditions from Celtic times, then pretty much all of Western Europe would be Celtic.

I could not care less about the rest of Europe or Western Europe. I am talking about my land, which for sure remains much more traditions, toponyms and archaelogical sites than most of the rest of these countries.