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How did the Northwest Germanic language split into North and West Germanic languages? How did these language families remain mutually intelligible? What were the differences between them? What foreign cultures influenced the language and culture of the Germanic folk? These are the sorts of answers I sought in this Jive Talk with the talented young philologist, Konrad Rosenberg.
A free preview episode of Radio North Sea International is now available on Survive the Jive podcast. There is no more potent, holy and enduring symbol of Western man, than the barrow! It links the Iliad, Beowulf, the sagas, the Celts, Germans, Scythians and slavs! 6000 years of excellence!
Anglo-German relations were good in the 19th century up until the Boer war, and have been tense ever since. In this talk, historian, Tom Rowsell , explains the deep roots the two nations share in common; the Anglo-Saxons, the Celts, the Bell Beaker folk, The Single Grave Culture and the network of Bronze Age cultures in Northern Europe who traded with each other and shared mutual descent from the Corded Ware culture. The talk was delivered to students in Hamburg in February 2026.
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| Ambushed by Angles by Christian Sloan Hall |
This film, a sequel to Roots of the Saxons, explores the ancient homeland of the Angles and their beliefs through artefacts, symbols, stone circles and bogs. I discuss the meaning behind these objects and how they connect to old traditions and gods, inviting viewers to uncover timeless wisdom from the past. Filmed in Germany and Denmark, it reveals why wetlands were so important to the Germanic Angles who later invaded Britain and became the English people.
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| Hand painted by Dom Sefton |
I have collected tons of archaeological to support my theory of what the fylfot really means. I hope you will agree with my conclusion and that you will find these artefacts and charming and intriguing as I do.
The swastika was used by ancient Germanic peoples such as the Goths, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. But what did it mean? Some say it was a symbol of the sun, some think it was borrowed from the Romans. In this video I explain how the swastika aka fylfot was actually connected to the cult of the god Wotan aka Odin.
‘Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages’ by McColl et al 2024 uses a novel method looking at IBD sharing to identify a previously unknown sub-population within Scandinavia’s Corded Ware culture which it calls “East Scandinavian”.
This population is alleged to have formed around 2000 BC which is 800 years after Corded Ware folk first entered Scandinavia. It is distinct from earlier Corded Ware populations in the region, and contemporary Corded Ware people in Denmark and Norway, because instead of just WHG admixture it has additional EHG admixture from a source their model predicts to come from Latvia/Lithuania.
The authors suggest a possible migration across the Baltic sea to explain this East Scandi group despite there being no evidence for this in the archaeological record. They point out that the “timing coincides with the introduction of a new, Late Neolithic sheep breed to Scandinavia. It also coincides with the spread of a new burial rite of gallery graves in south Sweden, the Danish islands and Norway, a new house type, the first durative bronze networks, as well as with the end of an east-west divide in Scandinavia between 4050 and 3650 BP. (2050 BC- 1650 BC)” Yet none of these new arrivals they list necessarily came from across the Baltic sea.
The feasibility of a mass migration of a people across the Baltic at this period in history is questionable. Sea crossings from the South are far more plausible or even land routes via the Arctic North. Figure 4.A shows the geographical distribution of individual samples belonging to the 3 Scandinavian Clusters they identified existing prior to 800 BC, after which they merged. They say there is a strong correspondence between the clusters and specific haplogroups as follows:
The third map of this so-called “Eastern Scandi” group shows mainly samples from the South though, and the I1 haplogroup distribution is not demonstrated to have come from the “East”, in fact it appears from this data to have come from the south. We already have an I1 sample from North Germany dating to 3300 BC, older than these samples, so by tying this newly identified group to the I1 haplogroup, they have brought into question their own claim that it has a Baltic origin. This will only be settled with the discovery of an I1 sample in a Corded ware context dating to around 2700 BC.
They admit that it is now necessary to confirm “the proposed Bronze Age source of the East Scandinavians along the Baltic coast.” My own view is that the elevated EHG ancestry in this East Scandi group may incorrectly have been identified as Latvian in origin due merely to a sampling bias, and lack of SHG samples. The elevated EHG in Sweden seems more plausible to be local and the I1 is most likely to have entered Scandinavia from the South, not across the Baltic. The reliability of their IBD method depends on the reference samples used.
While I question their conclusions about the origin of this East Scandi group, I am more convinced by their suggestion that it was responsible for the spread of the ancestor of what became Palaeo-Germanic language in the period between 1050 BC - 500 BC when it borrowed from Celtic and into Finno-Saamic. They show that after 2000 BC the East Scandi group expanded into Denmark and Norway. The mixing of East Scandi with South Scandi is dated between 1700 BC-1400 BC which spans both Nordic Bronze age 1 and 2 and directly precedes the construction of the famous Kivik tomb in Scania around 1400 BC.
This mixing event formed the Iron Age Scandinavian genetic profile such that by the Iron Age Jutland can be entirely modelled with the admixed Danish Bronze age source, while Iron Age Norway and the Danish Isles also have additional East Scandi admixture on top of the initial Bronze Age mixing, showing further migrations of these intrepid East Scandis. They say this admixed Iron Age Southern Scandinavian group is “central to understanding the Germanic dispersal” and I agree. We can trace the spread of IA South Scandi ancestry into Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. The findings about Germanic expansion in the historical period are very interesting too.
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| Frigg weaves |
“It was the old custom in Svitjod to hold the main sacrifice in the Goi month in Uppsala. There sacrifices should be made for the peace and victories of the king. That's where the people from all over the Svear Empire should come, and at the same time the Thing of the Swedes should take place there.” -
Ólafs saga helga, chap. 77
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| Sites from which samples were extracted EDIT: a subsequent study in 2022 by Gretzinger et al has revealed that Anglo-Saxon DNA is actually as much as 48% in the most populated region of England. Read more. |
Phol ende uuodan uuorun zi holza.
du uuart demo balderes uolon sin uuoz birenkit.
thu biguol en sinthgunt, sunna era suister;
thu biguol en friia, uolla era suister;
thu biguol en uuodan, so he uuola conda:
sose benrenki, sose bluotrenki, sose lidirenki:
ben zi bena, bluot si bluoda,
lid zi geliden, sose gelimida sin!Later I discovered that this charm, written in Christian times, did not merely date to the days of Germanic paganism, but far further back. The evidence is in in Book IV/12 of the Atharva-Veda, compiled in India between 1200 BC - 1000 BC.
Phol and Wodan were riding to the woods,
and the foot of Balder's foal was sprained
So Sinthgunt, Sunna's sister, conjured it;
and Frija, Volla's sister, conjured it;
and Wodan conjured it, as well he could:
Like bone-sprain, so blood-sprain, so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone, blood to blood, joints to joints, so may they be glued
I do not think for a moment that the Germanic charm is derived from the Vedic source. I find it far more likely both derive from a charm belonging to the Yamnaya culture on the Neolithic Eastern European steppes which was originally for horses, as in the case of the Merseberg charm, and that it was adapted in India for human use. It has been established that Yamnaya were late Proto-Indo-European speakers and are responsible for the modern domestic horse, so they were of course the first to develop magic for the aid of horses, and this would have spread with the horses, religion and Indo-European languages.Rohan! art thou, causing to heal (rohanî), the broken bone thou causest to heal (rohanî): cause this here to heal(rohaya), O arundhatî!That bone of thine which, injured and burst, exists in thy person, Dhâtar shall kindly knit together again, joint with joint!Thy marrow shall unite with marrow, and thy joint (unite) with joint; the part of thy flesh that has fallen off, and thy bone shall grow together again!Thy marrow shall be joined together with marrow, thy skin grow together with skin! Thy blood, thy bone shall grow, thy flesh grow together with flesh!Fit together hair with hair, and fit together skin with skin! Thy blood, thy bone shall grow: what is cut join thou together, O plant!Do thou here rise up, go forth, run forth, (as) a chariot with sound wheels, firm feloe, and strong nave; stand upright firmly!If he has been injured by falling into a pit, or if a stone was cast and hurt him, may he (Dhâtar, the fashioner) fit him together, joint to joint, as the wagoner (Ribhu) the parts of a chariot!
There was an old woman named Layng that lived near this school and she had cure of the sprain. These are the words of the charm. "Our Lord God went a hunting through moors and through mountains. His foals foot wrested, he sat down and blessed it, saying from bone to bone, from flesh to flesh every sinew in its own place." She used rub the sprain very much while saying these words and she would say the Lords Prayer." She was a protestand. She left the charm to some men around this place. Some of the old people had charms for stopping blood, toothache, rash, St. Anthony's fire, choking and one very old man heard a charm for making rats come out of their holes and cut their necks with a razor.Now, the fact she was a Protestant, and that as far as I am aware Layng is a name of Scottish origin, brought to Ireland by Scottish immigrants, makes me hesitant to ascribe this to an ancient Irish tradition. I consider three possible explanations.
Dåve red över vattubro,
Så kom han in i Tive skog;
Hästen snava mot en rot
och vrickade sin ena fot.
Gångande kom Oden:
- Jag skall bota dig för vred,
kött i kött, ben i ben,
jag skall sätta led mot led,
och din fot skall aldrig sveda eller värka mer
Dåve rode over Vattubro, then he came into Tive woods; the horse tripped on a root and sprained one of his feet. Odin came walking: I will cure you for sprain, meat to meat, bone to bone, I will put joint to joint, and your foot shall never sting or hurt again.
And another from 19th century Sweden which invokes the goddesses:
Fylla red utför berget, hästen vred sin vänstra fot, så mötte hon Freja. – Jag skall bota din häst. Ur vred, ur skred, i led! Jag skall bota dig för stockvred, stenvred, gångvred, ont ur kött, gott i kött, ont ur ben, gott i ben, gott för ont, led för led, aldri mer skall du få vred! Fylla rode down the hill, the horse sprained its left foot, then she met Freja. I will cure your horse. Out sprain, out fall, in joint! I will heal you from log sprain, stone sprain, walk sprain bad out of flesh, good into flesh bad out of bone, good into bone good for bad, joint for joint, never again shall you have sprain!In 2013 I read one of my poems in a cafe in London. As you can hear, it was very much influenced by this magic charm...
"Several years ago, Skara Museum was visited by an old man and his wife from Vånga. When he saw the figure he cried, ”Mother, here stands the corn god.” This prompted me to ask him what he knew about the sculpture. He then told me that folk in Vånga called it the Corn God, and that the farmers at spring time would smuggle him out from the church and at sunrise carry him around on the fields to attain good harvest that year. When, despite this, the crops still failed in 1826, one farmer knocked the nose off the figure on a Sunday. Shortly thereafter, the old man added, the sculpture went missing, but no one dared ask where it might have gone to.”
‘The fact that the worship of Saint Olaf [the Norwegian king killed in 1030 AD] was not, like that of the Swedish Saint Erik, limited principally to his own country, shows that there must have been some special reason for the prominent position he occupied within the northern Church … If the Christian Scandinavians looked upon him in the same way as their heathen ancestors had looked upon Thor, we can easily understand why it was so. Just as people in old days believed that Thor could grant good harvests, so even in the nineteenth century they have supposed Olaf to be in possession of the same power. Stories from the south of Sweden and from Denmark tell how the peasants were wont to drag the image of Saint Olaf round the fields after the sowing. The image of Saint Olaf in Vånga church in Vestergötland was carried round in that way, in spite of vigorous protests from the clergy. The peasants had given it the name of the “corn god”’
Montelius, O.A. 1910. The Sun God’s Axe and Thor’s Hammer. Folk-Lore 21(1910): 60-78.
Writing about Wärend, that old part of Småland where so much of the belief and customs of former ages still remains, Mr. Hyltén-Cavallius says, - ‘They still look upon the thunder as a person whom they call alternately “Thor” or “Thore-Gud,” “Gofar,” and “Gobonden” [The Good Farmer]. He is an old redbearded man. In 1629 a peasant from Warend was summoned for blasphemy against God. He had said about the rain,— “If I had the old man down here I would pull him by the hair on account of this continual raining.” Thus it is Thor that gives the summer rain, which therefore in Wärend is called “Gofar-rain,” “Gobonda-rain” [The Good Farmer rain] or “As-rain.” The rumbling of the thunder is produced by Thor’s driving in his chariot through the clouds. It is therefore called Thordön after him. People also say that “Gofar is driving,” “Gobonden is driving,” “The Thunder is driving.” Thor drives not only in the air but also on earth. Then they say that “he is earth-driving.” … The most noticeable trace of our country’s older worship of Thor is that “Thor’s day” (Thursday) was still in the nineteenth century considered as a sacred day, almost as a Sunday’ (Montelius 1910:76-77).
