D&D 5E Norse World

Yaarel said:

The word ‘Germanic’ is Non-Norse. It feels alien to Scandinavians.

Indeed, the concept of a ‘Germanic people’ is a fiction invented by Romantic Era German scholars. Humorously, the tribe that the Romans referred to as the Germanii is probably an unrelated Celtic tribe.

The Norse share linguistic influences with other ethnic groups, but these influences occurred during prehistoric periods. The transmission of these languages across genetically diverse ethnic groups still requires scientific explanations. To some degree, the influences are Scandinavian radiating outward. In any case, the respective ethnic groups continue to evolve differently. Various cognate terms mean different things in different languages. These are diverse ethnicities, with different genetic modalities, different cultures, different spiritualities, different experiences, and different influential neighbors.

Across the traderoutes of the Viking Period, Danmǫrk shares mutual influences with Saxland (today Germany) and even farther south to Roma. However Noregr and Svíþjóð share mutual influences with the Finnar (today Sámi and Suoma). Additionally, Noregr shares mutual influences with Írland and Skotland, and Svíþjóð shares mutual influences with Garðariki (today Russia and Ukraine).

The Norse themselves largely constitute the aborigines of Europe relating to Cro-Magnon. (Note the yDNA I1.) These prehistoric aborigines appear to be the origin of the unusually light complexion. Via the sustenance of hunting and fishing, the Norse preserved their aboriginal hunter-gatherer ways of life, including their animistic worldview. In the Viking Period, the Norse and the Finnar share similar non-urban worldviews. Both revere shamans as their only spiritual leaders (vǫlva and noaidi, respectively). Even today, there are Scandinavians who have experienced encounters with nature spirits, such as hulder and tusse. Icelanders similarly. In the psyche of the Norse, natural phenomena are mindful presences.

At worst, the use of the term ‘Germanic’ recalls the horror of N*zi German imperialism trying to appropriate Norse cultural symbols. At best, the term is scientifically inaccurate and a misnomer that misrepresents Norse identity.

More usefully, the term Norse relates to the term Norsk, and derives ultimately from the Old Norse term, Norrœnn, and accurately represents the aboriginal ethnic identity.

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Basically all just fancy talk for Norse Exceptionalism and Germanic Norse (obviously excluding the Finn/Sami) not being Germanic despite linguistic, historic, and genetic evidence. As CosmicKid says, you're wading into fringe theories.

Yaarel said:

The archeologists of Norway and Sweden are Norse, and are better able to understand and assess their own culture, and the archeological and linguistic evidence relating to it.

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Academia is a collective international effort and not something we necessarily leave to nations with invested political interests in shaping particular historical narratives about their cultures.

Around year 98, Tacitus in his Germania describes an early example of the interpretatio Germanica (which he calls interpretatio Romana). Being a Roman, he ethnocentrically interprets all sacred traditions in Non-Roman cultures, to be as if Roman ‘gods’.

Tacitus says the most important ‘god’ in Germania is ‘Mercurius’. Archeologists generally assume he means *Wodanaz (later Old High German Wotan), a tradition that vaguely reminds him of his own god, Mercury.

Tacitus also mentions the prominence of three Roman gods − Mercurius, Hercules, and Mars. Archeologists reconstruct these three personas as *Wodanaz, *Þunraz, and *Tiwaz, relating to those tribes that are in the region that the Romans refer to by the exonym, ‘Germania’.

These three reconstructions assume some loose association with the Norse nature spirits, Óðinn, Þórr, and Týr. But perhaps Tacitus was referring to unrelated traditions.

Note, while Týr is peripheral to the Norse, this reconstructed *Tiwaz is central to the Germanic.

Already by the time of Tacitus, the tribal chieftains in Germania were enlisting Germanic warriors to serve in the army of the Roman Empire. These chieftains sought to style themselves as Roman aristocracy, and adopted Roman culture and religion. Eventually the Roman army was virtually all Germanic soldiers.

By the 200s, locations in today Germany worship Roman gods by name, such as ‘Hercules’. Hercules is assumed to be the Roman way to honor *Þunraz. But conversely, the Roman polytheism becomes the Germanic worldview. The tribes in Germany come to perceive their own traditions as if Roman gods.



Perhaps, the tribes in Germany were once more animistic, more like Scandinavia still is during the Viking Period.

But after many centuries of assimilating (Hellenistic) Roman polytheism, and after some centuries of pervasive Christianity, these Germanic tribes obliterated ancestral animism.

For example, by the 1000s, the Germanic tribes speaking Old High German perceive the alp as either ‘a god’ or ‘a demon’ that haunts the spooky aspects of the wilderness, being grotesque and malevolent, and known for mental attacks against victims, including a nightmare (alptraum). Glosses in the margins of Pan-European literature identify the alp with the satyr (Latin satyrus, Greek saturos). The alp is either a Roman god or a Christian demon.

The Germanic concept of alp is distinct from both the Norse concept of alfr and the British concept of ælf.

Altho these terms, alfr, ælf, and alp, are cognates, their meanings according their respective cultures differ irreconcilably.

The Germanic evolved in a way that is unlike the Norse.

One of the big problems with your argument is that you are treating animism and polytheism as mutually exclusive positions. The pre-Christianized Norse were likely both polytheistic and animistic. The idea that these Norse were not polytheistic or conceptually connected to comparable continental Germanic deities is laughable and again reeks of Norse exceptionalism, one of the biggest fallacies of cultural studies. I do not doubt that cultural differences exist between the West Germanic peoples and the North Germanic peoples, and I doubt any serious scholar would claim otherwise. Some of your claims, however, swing far too hard in the other direction, and I suspect that it stems from your own aversion to polytheism in D&D and how you may find animism an easier pill to swallow.

This also reminds me of a study from about half a decade ago from two Norwegian scholars who made the claim that English was not a West Germanic language but a North Germanic language. They pointed to some superficial similarities, such as comparable syntax and vocabulary. It only picked up brief traction on the internet on fringe news sites and the usual Norse/Viking fanboy whose boners flared at the prospect of English being a closer kin to their culture of affection. Other linguists and historians laughed off the study almost as one would tabloid clickbait and then moved on with their studies. And you can find many of the scholarly reviews of that study throughout the internet, and they really were quite damning.

Aldarc said:

One of the big problems with your argument is that you are treating animism and polytheism as mutually exclusive positions. The pre-Christianized Norse were likely both polytheistic and animistic. The idea that these Norse were not polytheistic or conceptually connected to comparable continental Germanic deities is laughable and again reeks of Norse exceptionalism, one of the biggest fallacies of cultural studies. I do not doubt that cultural differences exist between the West Germanic peoples and the North Germanic peoples, and I doubt any serious scholar would claim otherwise. Some of your claims, however, swing far too hard in the other direction, and I suspect that it stems from your own aversion to polytheism in D&D and how you may find animism an easier pill to swallow.

This also reminds me of a study from about half a decade ago from two Norwegian scholars who made the claim that English was not a West Germanic language but a North Germanic language. They pointed to some superficial similarities, such as comparable syntax and vocabulary. It only picked up brief traction on the internet on fringe news sites and the usual Norse/Viking fanboy whose boners flared at the prospect of English being a closer kin to their culture of affection. Other linguists and historians laughed off the study almost as one would tabloid clickbait and then moved on with their studies. And you can find many of the scholarly reviews of that study throughout the internet, and they really were quite damning.

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Animism and Polytheism are same thing? Please explain. If you mean similar that's different.
From where did you read that English was a product of Northern Germanic Language? A source or citation would be helpful. I think we are getting too far away from the core of fantasy gaming and perhaps mythology.

MPA2000 said:

Animism and Polytheism are same thing? Please explain. If you mean similar that's different.

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No, I mean that a culture can be simultaneously polytheist and animist. A culture having animist practices and beliefs does not somehow erase the presence of polytheism within that same culture.

From where did you read that English was a product of Northern Germanic Language? A source or citation would be helpful.

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Joseph Embley Emonds and Jan Terje Faarlund, English: The Language of the Vikings. Olomouc Modern Language Monographs, vol. 3, 2014.

I think we are getting too far away from the core of fantasy gaming and perhaps mythology.

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Of course, but here I would advise caution much as [MENTION=6683613]TheCosmicKid[/MENTION] did before about how Yaarel is presenting this historical reconstruction of Norse belief.

The Nordic countries value their own Nordic sacred traditions. This is appropriate and healthy. Even today, they maintain literacy in their sacred texts, often immersion. Relatedly, Nordic countries continue to experience reverence for nature.

The Norse are the aborigines of Scandinavia, evidencing distinctive Nordic material cultures since the Stone Age. Since that time, the consensus of archeologists from all nations, agree. Since the Stone Age, there has never been a significant migration from today Germany into Scandinavia. Likewise, there has never been a significant migration from Scandinavia into Germany. These are separate cultures. Any shared points of contact result from cultural diffusion. In other words, these are separate ethnic groups who gradually, mutually, influence each other.

Moreover, the Norse language and the Scandinavian languages today appear to evolve internally since the Stone Age, within the Nordic Stone Age culture, then Nordic Bronze Age culture, then Nordic Iron Age culture, eventuating in the Norse of the Viking Period.

Currently, the prevailing archeological view believes that, during the Stone Age, contact with Corded Ware material culture introduced a ‘Pre-Germanic’ Indo-European language. This particular branch of the culture comes out of today Russia, Belarus, the Baltics, and Poland, and probably from the Baltics, enters Sweden where it evolves differently becoming the distinctive Nordic Battle-Axe material culture that buries their dead individually and ceremonially with a distinctive stone battle-axe status symbol. A number of Stone Age petroglyphs refer to this battle-axe in their iconography. This Battle-Axe culture integrated peacefully, and it is the aboriginal Nordic hunter-gatherers who developed its distinctive features, in continuity from earlier stoneworking culture. They welcomed the cattle-herding techniques that Battle-Axe culture brought with it. Archeologists associate Battle-Axe culture with both the Indo-European language and the immigration of the East European genepool (yDNA R1a-1a and R1a-1), making R1a one of the four modal haplogroups of Nordic aborigines.

And thats it. That was the Stone Age. Since the Stone Age, Nordic ethnicity just evolved differently.

There is such thing as a material culture that can be characterized as ‘Proto-Germanic’, namely the Iron Age Jastorf culture. But it is a relatively small ethnic group, surrounded by other ethnic groups.

Jastorf is assumed to be speaking a Proto-Germanic language − but even this is necessarily a speculation. German linguists often characterize everything before the 700s as ‘prehistoric’ because of the painful lack of written records in the necessary archeological contexts. Linguistic assumptions must extrapolate from indirect evidence.

Below is a rough map of northern Europe during the Iron Age, in the first century BCE, around ‘year zero’ sotospeak. This is the map that Tacitius and other Roman and Greek writers are dimly aware of.





Everything to the east of the Rhine River and to the north of Danube River, is what the Romans call ‘Germania’. Germania is mostly Celtic, but also Nordwest, Slavic, and what we might call ‘Germanic’.

Note, when Tacitus uses the term ‘Germania’, he mainly has the Nordwest tribes in mind. The language that the Nordwest are speaking is thought to be neither Germanic nor Celtic.

Of concern here, there are five separate cultures. In the north, in blue, is the Nordic material culture corresponding to Nordic ethnicity and language with continuous integrity since the Stone Age. In the south in orange is La Tène material culture corresponding to Celtic ethnicity and language. In the east in green, is Przeworsk material culture corresponding to Proto-Slavic material culture and language, especially relating to Poland. In the west in yellow, is Harpstedt material culture corresponding to the easternmost section of the Nordwest ethnicity, that is thought to extend westward along the coast, past the Rhine River into Belgium and perhaps beyond. Linguists have shown the Nordwest cultures are speaking a language that is neither Germanic nor Celtic, but what that language is remains unresolved. Archeologists suspect the Nordwest tribes to west of the Rhine River eventually adopt Celtic language, while those east of it eventually adopt Germanic language, but when this happens is highly uncertain. Some archeologists suspect the emergence of Harpstedt culture, specifically, on the border with Jastorf, represents a partial adoption of a Proto-Germanic language. Other archeologists suspect the tribes that Tacitus calls Germanic are in fact speaking a language that is Non-Germanic. The tribe called Germanii with its odd etymology might also be Nordwest speakers, despite being surrounded by Celtic speakers.

The languages of various tribes have always been a primary interest of archeologists. Because of lack of evidence, simplistic but erroneous theories prevailed. Today, archeologists are faced with difficult, sometimes surprising, evidence thus now debate what it implies.

Some things are clear enough. Jastorf culture has continuity with cultures before and after it, eventuating as the north east corner of today Germany. At least in some sense, it can be called ‘Proto-Germanic’. The northern border of Jastorf culture is influenced by the Nordic culture, while the southern border is influenced by the Celtic culture. Meanwhile Proto-Slavic and Nordwest influence it, east and west, respectively.

Notice this Proto-Germanic material culture extends into the southern part of the Danish Peninsula, which many centuries earlier was within the Nordic Bronze Age material culture. Likely, at least this Danish section of Jastorf culture has speakers who continue some form of the Bronze Age Nordic language, even if the southward areas of Jastorf culture are less linguistically certain.

Likewise note the Anglo-Saxon migrations into today England. The ‘Anglo-’, the Engels (Englar) mainly originate from this southern Danish Peninsula section of what was earlier Jastorf culture.

Yet, the Saxons (Saxar) derive partly from the earlier Harpstedt culture. So, at least by this time, in the 400s, this branch of the Nordwest group adopted a Germanic language via cultural diffusion with its neighbor. Probably all of the Nordwest ethnicity that is east of the Rhine are Germanic speakers by the 400s. The Frankish (Frakkar) will also emerge as Germanic speakers from around here.

During the Holy Roman Empire, Germany will centralize politically. Thereby, many of the diverse ethnicities within the German territory eventually adopt the German language.

Notice, that most of today Germany derives from Celtic populations.

The main point in this thread is, what people today call ‘Germanic’ or ‘German’ is in fact an amalgam of ethnically diverse populations. These groups on the Continent might − or might not − adopt a Germanic language that somehow transmits influence from the Nordic culture in the north. But what is happening on the continent is mostly irrelevant to the Nordic cultures. Because Nordic aborigines have been doing their own thing, in their own way, since the Stone Age.

Much science has happened over the past hundred years.

Scandinavian archeology − the available evidence, the methods, and the conclusions − have improved considerably.

Yaarel said:

It is clear Aldarc is unfamiliar with archeological studies.

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In biblical studies, I primarily deal with archaeology (and archaeologists) as it pertains to the Bronze and Iron Age West Asia, though my own focus is obviously far less historical/archaeological and more literary and ideological. Nevertheless, many of my peers in archaeology have impressed upon me the nature of their work as well as the frustration of how their data says one thing - often something bare minimum - but people run into wild directions with it. Archaeology, genetics, and linguistics does not necessarily say what some people think that it says, particularly when each are used in isolation. Most academic papers in the field of archaeology document basic findings from their digsites rather than make grand sweeping historical and cultural reconstructions. Archaeologists are "strongly encouraged" to keep such speculations to a minimum in their papers: "digsite A used material X commonly found in region Zeta. But often one finds good archaeological evidence that gets historically reconstructed in bizarre ways, often when evidence is haphazardly applied for the sake of an agenda.

In regards to Norse culture, the archaeological, genetic, and linguistic studies paint a far more complex picture than the one would gather from your posts, which comes across as somewhat monolithic and simplistic. There are commonly cited genetic and archaeological studies, for example, that run counter to some of your claims, such as "Ancient DNA Reveals Lack of Continuity between Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers and Contemporary Scandinavians."

It's also difficult not to detect a Pan-Scandinavian political agenda in your posts that attempts to intentionally separate itself from anything that could be labeled as "Germanic." For example, who are these "Norse" who you claim "are the aborigines of Scandinavia, evidencing distinctive Nordic material cultures since the Stone Age"? Presumably you mean "yDNA I1" here, but that does not make the "Norse" the aboriginies of Scandinavia anymore than the English are the aboriginies of Britain due to the intermingled presence of pre-Anglo-Saxon haplogroups. Though saying "distinctive Nordic material cultures" is about like saying "distinctive American material cultures": it does not say much of substance nor does it imply a continuous or singular culture. And it is not like the Norse Scandinavians have no haplogroup links with substantial overlap with what are commonly regarded as "Germanic peoples" either. But you somehow seem to be treating this yDNA I1 haplogroup in itself as a culture when it is just a genetic marker.

The archaeological and genetic evidence suggests numerous genetic migrations into what we would eventually think of as "Norse Scandinavia." And the development of a proto-Germanic is likely linked to the blending and merging of various peoples in these areas, but it is also linked heavily with Scandinavia as well. So I don't think that one should make sweeping statements about some sort of imagined, unbroken line of "Norse" culture and its associated religious/spiritual worldview. I would recommend using the words "Norse" and "Nordic" with as much caution as you exercise with the words "German" and "Germanic." And I also think that it would be helpful not to pretend that Scaninavia is somehow divorced from genetic, cultural, linguistic, and historical links with the proto-Germanic cultures because, again, you come across as engaging in historical revisionism for the sake of a Pan-Scandinavian agenda.