WHO ARE THE GERMANIC PEOPLES

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WHO ARE THE GERMANIC PEOPLES?
The Germanic peoples are the great ethnic group of ancient Europe, a basic stock in the composition of the modern peoples of England, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, North and central France, North and Lowland Scotland. 
The term German literally translates into: "Spear man" ( Gar = Spear, + Man) as the spear was the most common of weapons in ancient Germanic society and every free man had at least one.
The name German was once only belonging to one single tribe and latter became applied to the entirety of the peoples of the same ethnic stock residing in northern Europe. 
In ancient times, many barbarian tribes were given the broad label of Germanic (Latin: Germanicus) by the Romans. Although these tribes fully recognized themselves as sharing a common ethnic origin, spoke mutually intelligible dialects and shared a common religion, they were not unified or connected in any political sense.
ORIGINS
GERMANIC CULTURE: 
The native tribal religion of the Germanic peoples was born in the fog shrouded forests on the North and Baltic Sea shores of Europe. The Germanic peoples are descended from explorers who settled in extreme Northern Europe, and spoke a language that was a fusion of an Indo-European tongue, and the language of the Northern Megalithic culture (a culture related to the builders of Stonehenge). These two cultures, the Indo-European, and Northern Megalithic met and fused in Northern Europe sometime around 1600 BCE. Linguists, working backwards from historically-known Germanic languages, know that this group spoke proto-Germanic a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The tribes that resulted from this fusion remained in a core area that is modern Denmark, Southern Norway, Southern Sweden, and Northern Germany until about 200 BCE when they started expanding into areas formerly held by the Celts, and Illyrians. Rock carvings in the core area dating from 4000 BCE to 500 BCE portray many sacred symbols of Asatru. Ships, Sun wheels, Fylfots, Wagons and other pictures all show the continuality of religious belief. Archaeological finds dating from 3500 BCE to 500 BCE such as the Sun Chariot from Trundholm also confirm this.
The earliest Germanic culture that archaeologists can identify as such is the so-called Jastorf culture, a cultural province of northern Europe in the early Iron Age (c.800 BCE), covering present-day Holstein, Jutland, northeast Saxony, and western Mecklenburg. From the linguistic point of view, however, the Germanic people constitute an archaic branch of the Indo-European family. At the time they entered into history, their closest neighbors were the Celts in Gaul, as Germanic tribes had spread south toward the Rhine and the wooded hills of southern Germany. To the east their neighbors were the Balts and the Scythians and Sarmatians, Iranian tribes that roamed the plains of Russia. To the north they were in contact with Lapps and with Finns. Most of the information we have about them from early times comes from classical authors such as Caesar and Tacitus. Although they were primarily pastoralists, they also practiced agriculture. Their cattle were relatively small and could not entirely be depended upon for a livelihood; hunting provided an additional supply of meat. Their social organization was originally geared toward egalitarian communalism, but as contact with the Roman empire changed economic conditions, a more diversified society developed in which wealth and rank tended to prevail, although nominally power still rested in the hands of the Þing (Thing), the popular democratic assembly of all free men able to carry arms.
The first mention of a Germanic tribe is circa 230 BCE when the Basternae tribe migrated to the Black Sea, and came to the attention of Greek chroniclers. From then on, the Germanic tribes would come in increasing conflict with the Celts, Illyrians, and Romans, eventually swallowing up most of the Celtic and Illyrian territories in Central Europe. This was the beginnings of the Migration Era which lasted from about 350 BCE to 650 CE (although the Viking expeditions of colonization from 780 CE to 1100CE should be counted as a part of this as well), an era when nearly every Germanic tribe was actively on the move. Over population and a need for new farm lands sent the Germanic tribes in search of new lands. This expansion of Germanic peoples into virtually every corner of Europe dramatically indicates the energy and dynamism of our so-called barbarian ancestors.
German historians in the 19th century used the term Völkerwanderung (pronounced: 'fœl ker 'van der ung), or the "wandering of the peoples" to describe the great Germanic tribal migrations starting in the mid 4th century. We can see that these migrations had a large contributory factor leading to the break-up of the Roman Empire. These groups all developed separate dialects, the basis for the differences among Germanic languages down to the present day.
Many details of early movement and change within this group remain obscure, but by the late 2nd century, B.C.E., Roman authors recount, Gaul, Italy and Spain were invaded by migrating Germanic tribes, culminating in military conflict with the armies of republican Rome. Julius Caesar, six decades later, invoked the threat of such attacks as one justification for his annexation of Gaul to Rome. By the 1st century of the Common Era, the writings of Caesar, Tacitus and other Roman and Mediterranean writers indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into tribal groupings centered on the lower Rhine river, the river Elbe, the river Vistula (Poland), Jutland, Scania and the Danish islands.
As Rome advanced her borders to the Rhine and Danube, incorporating many Celtic societies into the Empire, the Germanic tribal homelands to the north and east emerged collectively in the records as Germania, whose peoples were sometimes at war with the Empire but who also engaged in complex and long-term trade relations, military alliances and cultural exchanges with their neighbors to the south.
THE MIGRATIONS
The Germanic migrations can be divided into three main phases:
The first phase of migrations are of the Indo-Europeans. Indo-European is the general name given to the people thought to be originated from the steppes of central Asia. Around 5000-4000 BC., these people started to emigrate to the warmer places in the south or west. Most scholars think of this as the beginning of the distinction between Indo-European tribes. Tribes who emigrated to the west became the ancestors of Germans, Slavs, Greeks, Latins, and Celts. People who chose the south as their destination came to be known as Indo-Iranians. There are also a rather small group of people who most likely chose not to participate in this great migration. These later entered the pages of history as Scythians and Sarmatians, although they are also believed to be nomadic Indo-Iranians since their language and customes are closely tide to the Ancient Persians.
The second phase, between 300 to 675 AD, set in motion the Germanic migration age and resulted in putting Germanic peoples in control of the societies of the former Western Roman Empire.
The third phase, between 780 to 1100, saw Scandinavian Germans on the move in multiple waves of migration, conquest, and plunder. Settling large areas of northern Europe where their descendants remain today: Russia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, Iceland, the Shetland and Orkney islands.
The GERMANIC TRIBES in the MIGRATION AGE
During the third and fourth centuries, there were large migrations of land-hungry Germans southward and westward onto the Rhine-Danube Frontier. The basic Germanic political structure was the tribe, headed by a chief who was elected for his ability as a war leader. It was these tribes that resulted in Rome's losing control of the great frontier. The Roman and Germanic cultures greatlyclashed. The Germanic religion was polytheistic, their society was a warrior aristocracy, and finally their societal structure was a mobile one. By 370 A.D., the tribe had become nations led by warrior kings. It was at this time that the Huns swept out of central Asia westward until they encountered two Germanic nations of Visigoths and Ostrogoths. This was the spark of many years of invasions and warfare that provoked the downfall of the Roman-controlled frontier. The following information describes some of the Germanic tribes during this period between 406 and 572 which saw the Germanic barbarians complete their migrations into the West. It is undoubtedly one of history's most hectic and confusing periods of time. As the Roman world collapsed, many tribes reached a peak of brief glory, others were destroyed in a series of little-known wars. To the Germanic people, this was considered to be the “heroic age” which was a time of adventure and great displays of power.
During the 5th century, as the Roman Empire drew toward its end, numerous Germanic tribes began migrating en masse (Völkerwanderung) in far and diverse directions, taking them to England and northern Scandinavia at the northern tip of Europe and as far south through present day Continental Europe to the Mediterranean and Africa. Over time, the wandering meant intrusions into other tribal territories and the ensuing wars for land claims escalated with the dwindling amount of unoccupied territory. Nomadic tribes then began the staking out of permanent homes as a means of protection. Much of this resulted in fixed settlements from which many, under a powerful leader, expanded outwards. A defeat meant either scattering or merging with the dominant tribe and this continued to be how nations were formed. In England, for example, we now most often refer to the Anglo-Saxons rather than the two separate tribes.
THE GERMANIC TRIBES AND THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE:
Some of the Germanic tribes are frequently blamed in popular conceptions for the "Fall" of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century. Professional historians and archaeologists have since the 1950s shifted their interpretations in such a way that the Germanic peoples are no longer seen as invading a decaying empire but as being co-opted into helping defend territory the central government could no longer adequately administer. Individuals and small groups from Germanic tribes had long been recruited from the limes (i.e. the border regions) of the Roman world, and had risen high in the command structure of the army - Odoacer, who deposed Romulus Augustulus, is an example. Later the government of the Empire began to recruit whole tribal groups under their native leaders as officers. Assisting with defence eventually shifted into administration, and then outright rule, as Roman traditions of government passed into the hands of Germanic tribal leaders. 
The presence of successor states controlled by a nobility from one of the Germanic tribes is evident in the 6th century - even in Italy, the former hearth of the Empire, where Odoacer was followed by Theodoric the Great, leader of the Ostrogoths, who was regarded by Roman citizens and Gothic settlers alike as a legitimate successor to the rule of Rome and Italy.
The ANGLES:
Angles (German: Angeln, Old English: Englas, Latin: Angli ) were one of the Germanic peoples who migrated from continental Germany to Britain in the 5th century, along with the Saxons and Jutes. That land was later called Engla-lond (in Old English - "Land of the Angles"), thus England. They founded (according to sources such as the Venerable Bede) Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. Thanks to the major influence of the Angles, the people of England are also known as Anglo-Saxons, and, of course English. A region of the United Kingdom is known by the name East Anglia.
The Angle homeland, a small peninsular form in the southern portion of the modern German bundesland of Schleswig-Holstein, itself on the Jutland Peninsula is still called Angeln today, and is formed as a triangle drawn roughly from modern Flensburg on the Flensburger Fjord to Kiel and then to Maasholm on the Schlei inlet.
In any case, this geographic localization of the original Angle tribal group has lead to one of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion's enduring mysteries; namely how it is possible that the Angles were so frequently mentioned as colonizers of ancient Britain while evidence of the also powerful influence of the neighboring Frisians concurrent colonizing activities Britain has been strongly limited to that discoveries in archeological science and more often by un-evidenced though logical deductions and inferences alone. Of course, ethnic Frisians are known to have inhabited the land directly in the path of any invasion route from Angeln to Great Britain and infact, also inhabited lands between the ancient Saxon domaine and Britain, yet they are rarely mentioned as having taken part in the vast migration.
The invasion of Great Britain by the Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Frisians, and other Germanic tribes were amongst the last of the Great Migration. In the fifth century, an exodus of tribes took place to Great Britain. The Angles invaded Britain from the area of Schleswig-Holstein, and are mentioned by Tacitus in his writing Germania. The Jutes appear to have come from Jutland and the area near the mouth of the river Rhine. The Saxons, by this time had covered a wide area, but invaded Britain from what is now primarily Northern Germany. The Saxons were not just one tribe, but a confederation of several smaller tribes, and are not even mentioned by the Roman chroniclers until the second century when Ptolemy placed them in the area of the Elbe River (an area once held by the Cimbri). What tribes composed the confederation is truly not known, though the Cimbri that remained in the North may have been among them as well as the Cherusci (other tribes that have been suggested as forming the confederation are the Avioni, Nuithoni, Reudigni, Suarini, and some of the Suebi). The Frisians came from what is now the Netherlands, and the Frisian coast of Germany. Other tribes such as the Varni, neighbors of the Angles, and the Geats of Sweden invaded Britain in smaller numbers. 
The Anglo-Saxon invasion began about 449 CE when Hengest and Horsa landed in what is now Kent. Hired as mercenaries by the Celtic leader Vortigan, they came to take land promised them in return for defending the Celts from the Picts. Thus began the invasion of Great Britain by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The Jutes came first with Hengest and Horsa, then the Saxons followed, and finally the Angles. Other tribes such as the Frisians would also invade in smaller numbers. By 519 the Saxons had established Wessex, Kent was established not long after the arrival of Hengest and Horse by the Jutes. Other kingdoms would be established later. For over 50 years, the Germanic tribes in what is now England went unmolested by Christianity. They kept to the religion of their ancestors, and practiced rites as they had for eons. Then in 593 CE, Pope Gregory dispatched Augustine as a missionary to the Germanic tribes in England. He arrived in 597 CE on the Isle of Thanet, and started preaching to the Heathens. By 601 CE he convinced Ethelbert to destroy the Heathen temples and idols and repress Heathen worship. Missionaries were sent to the West Saxons. Kings would convert their kingdoms to Christianity, then their successors covert the kingdoms back to Heathenry, and folks would lapse back to the old religion when the Church was not looking. But this was the beginning of the end for Anglo-Saxon Heathenry. By 633 CE, the last great stand of Anglo-Saxon Heathenry was to begin. King Penda, Heathen king of Mercia sought to conquer the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Over the next 22 years Penda, the last great Heathen king in England killed the Christian kings Edwin, Oswald, Oswin, Ecgric, and Sigebert before he himself died at the battle of Winwæd in 655CE. In 685 CE, Cadwalla took the throne of Wessex to become the last Heathen king. In 686, the Isle of Wight, the last truly Heathen stronghold was converted to Christianity, and King Cadwalla of Wessex converted to Christianity in 688 CE, baptized by the Pope in Rome. Thus was the end of ancient Anglo-Saxon Heathenry in England amongst the kings. 
While the kings and ealdormen of the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity, for the common folk merely the names of the Gods changed. They continued to practice Heathenry in their homes, and throughout their lives. A long period of mixed faith continued long after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Perhaps until as late as the time of Cromwell, Heathen tradition, although not worship survived in many areas. Plows which had been blessed in the fields in Heathen times were brought into the Churches to be blessed in the spring. Christian festivals were celebrated with Heathen customs such as Maypole dancing, and the dead honored in funeral feasts as they had prior to the conversion. Even the Heathen gods were still being invoked in charms for healing as late as the 10th century. As late as the reign of King Canute in the 11th century, laws had to be enacted against Heathen practices.
The SAXONS
The Saxons were a large and powerful Germanic people located in what is now England, northwestern Germany and the eastern Netherlands. They are first mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy as a people of southern Jutland and present-day Schleswig-Holstein, whence they appear subsequently to have expanded to the south and west.
A large contingent of Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians invaded and colonized Britain in the early Middle Ages, giving their names to the kingdoms of Essex, Sussex and Wessex (the lands respectively of the East, South and West Saxons), which with the shorter-lived Middlesex, eventually became part of the kingdom of England.
The Saxon language lead as well to the Old English language as to the modern Low Saxon language.
A majority of the Saxons remained in continental Europe, forming from the 8th century the Duchy of Saxony. They long avoided becoming Christians and being incorporated into the orbit of the Frankish kingdom, but were decisively and brutally conquered by Charlemagne in a long series of annual campaigns (772-804). With defeat came the forced baptism and conversion of the Saxon leaders and their people to Christianity.
Under Carolingian rule, the Saxons were reduced to a tributary status. There is evidence that the Saxons, as well as Slavic tributaries like the Abodrites and the Wends, often provided troops to their Carolingian overlords. The dukes of Saxony became kings of Germany during the 10th century, but the duchy was divided up in 1180.
The VIKING AGE:
The Viking Age is the name of the latter part of the Iron Age in Scandinavia. The origin of the word "Viking" is highly disputed. Some experts say it means "pirate", while others believe it refers to people coming from the region of the Viken (the old Norse name for Norway's Oslo Fjord). The name Viking is often misused as an ethnic term, the Vikings belonged to the upper class of the Germanic tribes in Scandinavia. They were the sea warriors, and explorers of their society. However, not everyone was a Viking, for them, the normal life was to stay home and be a farmer. 
Today, the word "Viking" is generally used to refer to the Germanic people who lived in Scandinavia—Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—from around A.D. 750 to 1100.
The Vikings were merchants and traders (and of course, pirates) from Scandinavia and Northern Europe. The Vikings were Germanic people, like the Goths, Vandals, and the Saxon. Norsemen is the name of the people of the areas which today are Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland and northern Germany. Other names include Danes, Northmen, Norsemen, Germanians and Normans. In Russia and the Byzantine Empire, the Vikings were known as Varangians (Væringjar, meaning "sworn men"), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.
The first report of a Viking raid dates from 787 when the monastery at Portland in Dorset on the South coast of England was pillaged by Norse Germanic raiders. For the next 200 years, European history is filled with tales of Vikings and their plundering. Vikings settled and exerted influence throughout the coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland, and conquered large parts of England. They traveled up the rivers of France and Spain, and gained control of areas in Russia and along the Baltic coast. Stories tell of raids in the Mediterranean and as far east as the Caspian Sea.
The Vikings quickly developed a fierce reputation. In letters to their bishops, Christian priests in Britain and France chronicled the violent deeds of the Vikings, which included attacking wealthy monasteries and killing priests (Many churchmen believed the Viking raids were God's punishment on the Anglo-Saxons for their sins.) 
Exaggerating Atrocities 
"Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. … Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert, spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples." 
So wrote St. Alcuin of York.
But it was also in the interest of the churchmen to exaggerate the atrocities of the Viking raiders in their reports. Many of the Christian rulers at the time behaved equally unpleasantly or worse, without being condemned on religious grounds. 
Many scholars are now coming to believe that the Viking Age of conquest and plunder was a desperate and furious form of pre-emptive self-defense against further Christian encroachment of their ancestral tribal lands and over 300 years of religious wars and genocide at the hands of ruthless Christian kings. This Guerrilla War by heathen freedom-fighters against the encroaching tyranny of Catholic France, was merely a Sea-based continuation and broadening of the Frisian & Saxon wars of 690-804.
Many Catholic monasteries were often intentionally built on top of pre-existing Heathen holy sites. Therefore, sacking and burning them to the ground was retribution, not wanton destruction. Catholic monasteries, backed by the powers of the state, pillaged the countryside through tithes and taxes that bled to the people dry. It was from those very taxes and tithes that the Christians funded all the mercenaries in Charlemagne's crusading army. The Vikings "plundering" those monasteries were merely "stealing back" what had been taken. As an act of self preservation, the Vikings had to steal that gold from the monasteries - lest that gold pay mercenaries to raid, rape and pillage more of their home lands!
Never the less, the Vikings are best known for their sea voyages. Along the coasts of Western Europe, they traveled to the Mediterranean and North Africa. By way of the Russian rivers, they reached Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and beyond to Baghdad in Asia. 
They founded nations such as Russia and cities such as Jorvik (York), Kiev and all the main cities of Ireland such as Dublin, Cork, Wexford and Limerick. 
The Danes sailed south, to Friesland, France and the southern parts of England. In the years 1013-1016, Canute the Great succeeded to the English throne. 
The Swedes sailed to east into Russia, where Rurik founded the first Russian state, and on the rivers south to the Black Sea, Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. 
The Norwegians traveled to the north-west and west, to the Faroes, Shetland, Orkney, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland and the majority of England. Except in Britain and Ireland, Norwegians mostly found largely uninhabited land and established settlements. 
In the year 985 C.E. North America was discovered by Bjarni Herjólfsson and settlement attempted by Leif Ericsson and Thorfinnur Karlsefni from Greenland who called it Vinland. But it wasn’t until 1005 that a smallsettlement was placed on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, near L'Anse aux Meadows, but previous inhabitants and a cold climate brought it to an end within a few years. The archaeological remains are now a UN World Heritage Site. It has now been scientifically established that at the height of the Viking expansion, the northern hemisphere entered into a period of unusual and long lasting cold which continued for several hundred years. This mini-iceage decimated the Greenland colonies, stopped the Viking westward expansion and hampered the Viking homelands.
The technical achievements of the Viking Age Germans were quite exceptional. For instance they crafted the most advanced sailing ships of their time and made distance tables for sea voyages that were so exact that they only differ 2-4% from modern satellite measurements, even on long distances such as across the Atlantic Ocean. Besides allowing the Vikings to travel far distances, their longships gave them tactical advantages in battles. They could perform very efficient hit-and-run attacks, in which they attacked fast and unexpectedly and left quickly before a counter-offensive could be launched. Longships could also sail in shallow water, allowing the Vikings to get far inland along rivers.
Many scholars agree that the Viking raids were about survival, not conquest, which was primarily prompted by the genocidal wars to the south against their heathen tribesmen by intolerant Christians. In most cases individual Viking chieftains gathered followers and set off on raids. Wherever they went, the Vikings lived off the land, often driving the locals out and taking whatever valuables they could get their hands on. But the Vikings were also driven by a pioneering spirit. Their most spectacular trek took them across the Atlantic Ocean to Iceland, Greenland, and eventually North America. Around A.D. 1000, hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, the Vikings landed in Newfoundland, Canada, a land they reportedly named Vinland. 
The Vikings reconnected humanity and made the world a smaller place by easily traveling vast distances. We look back to the Vikings as the origin of this kind of human endeavor to find new horizons, use new technology, meet new people, and think new thoughts.
Once popularized as murdering barbarians, it is archaeology, not medieval texts, is now beginning to set the record straight about the true Viking history and achievements. The only written monuments from the ancient Germans themselves are runic inscriptions. There are many thousands of such inscriptions found within the various Germanic countries, and in Sweden alone there are some 3,500 inscriptions, mostly written on stone. Unfortunately they are often brief and laconic, and not very informative.
Instead, archaeological excavations have made the most important contribution to the understanding of the Viking world. Funeral sites are usually fragmentary—the Vikings followed the heathen practice of burning the dead—but some large, unburned ship burials have provided archaeologists with invaluable insight into the lives of the Vikings. Reconstructed Viking villages have become popular tourist attractions. In Birka, Sweden's first trading town, located near present-day Stockholm, large-scale models recreate a Viking harbor, life in craftsmen's quarters, and the splendor of the king's power. Birka has Scandinavia's largest Viking-age cemetery, with 3,000 graves.
The Viking propensity for trade is easily seen in market ports such as Hedeby; close to the border with the Franks it was effectively a crossroads between the cultures, until its eventual destruction by the Norwegians in an internecine dispute in C.1050. A tour of the Viking exhibition at the History Museum in Stockholm underlines the importance of trade to the Vikings.
Germanic art found its expression in everyday objects—in furniture, swords, belts, horse harnesses. The Germanic artists and craftsmen used indigenous spiritual motifs from their ancestral religion and passed it on to the Celts in what is popularly referred to "Celtic Art" but is more accurately called "Hiberno-Saxon" art.
The Scandinavian Germans also had a highly developed legal system, which was the most democratic in the ancient world. Decisions were reached by voting at open meetings where all free men had the right to speak. Ancient Germanic Women living in Scandinavia also had substantial powers and rights. They could own land, inherit, and initiate divorce. Keys are often found in graves of women, showing the tradition that it was the women who controlled the household, farms and property. There are even several legends that tell of women warriors. They had a high respect of Women and the elderly, and many females had high positions and were very influential. They were interested in good education.
The heathen Germanic religion and culture is rich in mythology. The Germanic Gods and Goddesses, all with human characteristics, directed and dominated everyday life. The supreme god is Odin, but many Gods & Goddesses are worshiped widely. Norse Germanic mythology and Old Norse literature tell us about their religion with heroic and mythological heroes; however, the transmission of this information was primarily oral and we are reliant upon the writings of (later) Christian scholars such as Snorri Sturlusson and Sæmundur Fróði "the Wise" Sigfússon for much of this.
The end of the Viking age corresponded with the arrival of Christianity in Scandinavia. But scholars say Christianity was not soley responsable for the end of the Viking Age. At the time, many Vikings had become citizens of Europe. After decades of plundering, resistance in other parts of Europe became more effective and Christianity was forced onto Scandinavia, which led to milder tendencies. In addition the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark and Sweden evolved and it is to be believed that their kings wanted more peaceful circumstances.
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