Describe the culture of the germanic tribes?

Question

Describe the culture of the germanic tribes?

Answer 1

The nordic people were people who inhabaitants  of northren Europe (esc.Switzerland).They are fishermen and  huntsmen. Not to mention to you are sailors(i.e.Vikings).You  are savage and fierce. You are  excellent swordsmen and bowyers. You are nomadic and you worship the Norse gods.You beleive in strong family values and pratice palagmy (maybe?)as a way of life.

Answer 2

The Germanic peoples are a historical group of Indo-European-speaking peoples, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age. The ancestors of these peoples became the eponymous ethnic groups of North Western Europe, such as the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch, and English.

Migrating Germanic peoples spread throughout Europe in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Germanic languages became dominant along the Roman borders (Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and England), but in the rest of the (western) Roman provinces, the Germanic immigrants adopted Latin (Romance) dialects. Furthermore, all Germanic peoples were eventually Christianized to varying extents. The Germanic people played a large role in transforming the Roman empire into Medieval Europe, and they contributed in developing a common identity, history, and culture which transcended linguistic borders.

Ethnonym=

Various etymologies for Latin Germani are possible. As an adjective, germani is simply the plural of the adjective germanus (from germen, "seed" or "offshoot"), which has the sense of "related" or "kindred"[1] or "authentic". According to Strabo, the Romans introduced the name Germani, because the Germanic tribes were the authentic Celts (γνησίους Γαλάτας; gnisíous Galátas).[2] Alternatively, it may refer from this use based on Roman experience of the Germanic tribes as allies of the Celts.

The ethnonym seems to be attested in the Fasti Capitolini inscription for the year 222, DE GALLEIS INSVBRIBVS ET GERM(aneis), where it may simply refer to "related" peoples, namely related to the Gauls. Furthermore, since the inscriptions were erected only in 17 to 18 BCE, the word may be a later addition to the text. Another early mentioning of the name, this time by Poseidonios (writing around 80 BCE), is also dubious, as it only survives in a quotation by Athenaios (writing around 190 CE); the mention of Germani in this context was more likely inserted by Athenaios rather than by Poseidonios himself.[3] The writer who apparently introduced the name "Germani" into the corpus of classical literature is Julius Caesar. He uses Germani in two slightly differing ways: one to describe any non-gaulic peoples of Germania, and one to denote the Germani Cisrhenani, a somewhat diffuse group of peoples in north-eastern Gaul, who cannot clearly be identified as either Celtic or Germanic.

In this sense, Germani may be a loan from a Celtic exonym applied to the Germanic tribes, based on a word for "neighbour". A third suggestion derives it directly from the name of the Hermunduri. Tacitus suggests that it might be from a tribe which changed its name after the Romans adapted it, but there is no evidence for this.

The suggestion deriving the name from Gaulish term for "neighbour" invokes Old Irish gair, Welsh ger, "near",[4] Irish gearr, "cut, short" (a short distance), from a Proto-Celtic root *gerso-s, further related to ancient Greek chereion, "inferior" and English gash.[5] The Proto-Indo-European root could be of the form *khar-, *kher-, *ghar-, *gher-, "cut", from which also Hittite kar-, "cut", whence also Greek character.

Apparently, the Germanic tribes did not have a self-designation ("endonym") that included all Germanic-speaking people but excluded all non-Germanic people. Non-Germanic peoples (primarily Celtic, Roman, Greek, the citizens of the Roman Empire), on the other hand, were called *walha- (this word lives forth in names such as Wales, Welsh, Cornwall, Walloons, Vlachs etc.). Yet, the name of the Suebi — which designated a larger group of tribes and was used almost indiscriminately with Germani in Caesar — was possibly a Germanic equivalent of the Latin name (*swē-ba- "authentic").[6]

The generic *þiuda- "people" (occurring in many personal names such as Thiud-reks and also in the ethnonym of the Swedes from a cognate of Old English Sweo-ðēod) is not a self-designation. However, the adjective derived from this noun, *þiudiskaz, "popular", was later used with reference to the language of the people in contrast to the Latin language (earliest recorded example 786 CE). The word is continued in German Deutsch (meaning German), English "Dutch", Dutch Duits and Diets (the latter referring to Dutch, the former meaning German). Danish tysk (meaning German). Trying to identify a contemporary vernacular term and the associated nation with a classical name, Latin writers from the 10th century onwards used the learnèd adjective teutonicus (originally derived from the Teutones) to refer to East Francia ("Regnum Teutonicum") and its inhabitants. This usage is still partly present in modern English; hence the English use of "Teutons" in reference to the Germanic peoples in general besides the specific tribe of the Teutons defeated at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BCE.

Classification

By the 1st century A.D., the writings of Caesar, Tacitus and other Roman era writers indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into tribal groupings centred on:

the rivers Oder and Vistula/Weichsel (East Germanic tribes),

the lower Rhine river (Istvaeones),

the river Elbe (Irminones),

Jutland and the Danish islands (Ingvaeones).

The Sons of Mannus Istvaeones, Irminones, and Ingvaeones are collectively called West Germanic tribes. In addition, those Germanic people who remained in Scandinavia are referred to as North Germanic. These groups all developed separate dialects, the basis for the differences among Germanic languages down to the present day.

The division of peoples into West Germanic, East Germanic, and North Germanic is a modern linguistic classification. Many Greek scholars only classified Celts and Scythians in the Northwest and Northeast of the Mediterranean and this classification was widely maintained in Greek literature until Late Antiquity. Latin-Greek ethnographers (Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, and Strabo) mentioned in the first two centuries CE the names of peoples they classified as Germanic along the Elbe, the Rhine, and the Danube, the Vistula and on the Baltic Sea. Tacitus mentioned 40, Ptolemy 69 peoples. Classical ethnography applied the name Suebi to many tribes in the first century. It appeared that this native name had all but replaced the foreign name Germanic. After the Marcomannic wars the Gothic name steadily gained importance. Some of the ethnic names mentioned by the ethnographers of the first two centuries CE on the shores of the Oder and the Vistula (Gutones, Vandali) reappear from the 3rd century on in the area of the lower Danube and north of the Carpathian Mountains. For the end of the 5th century the Gothic name can be used - according to the historical sources - for such different peoples like the Goths in Gaul, Iberia and Italy, the Vandals in Africa, the Gepids along the Tisza and the Danube, the Rugians, Sciri and Burgundians, even the Iranian Alans. These peoples were classified as Scyths and often deducted from the ancient Getae (most important: Cassiodor/Jordanes, Getica around 550

better look at this site which is more detailed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_tr...

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