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.
Sources
Behrens, F. 2023. Der Tierstil II im Merowingerreich. Berlin, Boston: De
Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110981247
Behr, C., ‘Die Beizeichen auf den völkerwanderungszeitlichen
Goldbrakteaten.’ Frankfurt a. M. [u.a.] (1991)
Burillo-Cuadrado, Ma & Burillo, Francisco. (2014). The swastika as
representation of the sun of helios and mithras. Mediterranean
Archaeology and Archaeometry. 14. 29-36.
Carus. P., “FYLFOT AND SWASTIKA” in The Open court (1887)
Cheesman. C., THE HERALDS’ SWASTIKA (2019)
Godfrey-Faussett, T.G., ‘The Saxon cemetery at Bifrons’ (Kent
Archaeology 1876)
Haseloff, Eine ‘jütländische Fibelgruppe und ihre Verwandten’ in “Die
germanische Tierornamentik der Völkerwanderungszeit” 1981
Hauck. K., Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkerwanderungszeit (1985)
-Helm. R., ‘Germanischer Schmuck’ (1957)
-MacLeod and Mees 'Runic Amulets and Magic Objects' (2006)
Pennick. N., ‘Woden’s Swastika’ in Journal of Geomancy vol. 3 no. 4,
July 1979
Sansoni, U., ‘Alpine and Scandinavian rock art in the Bronze Age, a
common cultural matrix in a web of continental influences’ In Picturing
Bronze Age ( Swedish Rock Art Series: volume 3 2015)
Renner-Volbach, D., ‘Die durchbrochenen Zierscheiben der
Merowingerzeit’
Dorothee Renner. Rom.-German. Zentralmuseum zu Mainz, (1970)
Toreld. A., Andersson. T., hallristning Field report (2012)
Theune-Grosskopf, B., & Nedoma, R. (2008). Chairs in graves of the
Migration and Merovingian period mirrored by a new find with rune
inscription from Trossingen, Lkr. Tuttlingen. Archaologisches
Korrespondenzblatt. 38. 423-436.
President Donald Trump descends from several Celtic and Germanic tribes from Germany, Britain and Scandinavia. In this video I describe the sources of his ancestry; the Gaels, Vikings Suebi and other warrior peoples who made him a fighter.
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:
Early Scandinavian including the oldest Swedish (Battle Axe Culture) and Danish samples and almost all Norwegians all have R1a.
A later ‘Southern Scandinavian’ cluster restricted to Denmark and the southern tip of Sweden mostly with R1b but some I1.
A second later ‘Eastern Scandinavian’ cluster, spread across Sweden and overlapping with that of the Southern Scandinavia cluster which is dominated by I1.
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.
'The Anglo-Saxon migration and the
formation of the early English gene pool' by Joscha Gretzinger and colleagues (2022) has answered some of the much debated and controversial questions concerning the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England which began in the 5th century AD. The study finds that as much as 75% of the ancestry of skeletons from England in the cemeteries from that time comes from Germanic migrants from Germany and Denmark. In this video I break down and summarise the findings.
Viking and Anglo-Saxon artwork often includes a man with bird shaped horns. This mysterious figure is known as the horned man or the weapon dancer. The motif shows up in various different contexts and over a huge geographic range and timeframe - from early Anglo-Saxon England to Viking age Russia. It is commonly associated with the cult of the Nordic god Odin or the Anglo-Saxon god Woden and with extraordinary shamanic rituals as I shall explain in this video.
Sources:
Mortimer, Paul, 'What Colour a God's Eyes' (2018)
Oehrl, Sigmund, 'Horned ship-guide – an unnoticed picture stone fragment from Stora Valle, Gotland' (2016)
Oehrl, Sigmund, 'DOCUMENTING AND INTERPRETING THE PICTURE STONES OF GOTLAND' (2017)
Artwork
The following paintings of the horned spear dancer are by Hungerstein.
While some modern heathens choose to match ancient Germanic festivals with the Gregorian calendar, others try to stick to the lunar-solar calendar the Germanic people observed.
There are some problems calculating Góa month in either case, due to lack of sources on the festival. The month of Góa is alleged to have been the penultimate month of winter, according to the old, Norse calendar used in Iceland. According to some Icelanders, góiblót took place in late February - but if we follow the lunar-solar model then it would have been on the full moon, because the full moon marks the high festival of each month, and the new moon marks the start of the month, making the start of this year's Góa month either 23rd Jan, or 22nd Feb, ending either 22nd Feb or 23rd March 2020 - with the final month of winter ending in April when the rites of the start of Summer were held - associated with Easter-month in Anglo-Saxon England and all the variant May day celebrations across Europe.
So February seems to match up well enough for the dating, although I am unsure where the claim it is the penultimate month of winter originates. I know of two sources that mention Góa month and góiblót.
“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
Some say this Goi blot was a celebration of the return of vegetative forces - but this source makes no mention of that, and this would vary across Germanic Europe anyway according to latitude. Tonight is the full moon of February and the primroses and daffodils are already up here in West England, but perhaps this is not the case in Uppsala. Transferring a Norse calendar to the wider Germanic world may result in conflicts and anachronisms of this sort.
The second source is a fornaldarsögur which tells a different story. It says the Jotun King Fornjót, father of Ægir, the sea god, and who ruled Gotland, Kænland and Finnland, also had a daughter called Gói. There was a pious sacrificer called Thorri, who made a midwinter sacrifice called Thorra blót and one winter Gói disappeared at this blót - so they later had a sacrifice to find her and this was named góiblót but she did not appear. This seems to scream for a naturalistic interpretation; an obvious one, that Gói represents some green vegetation of a kind absent in midwinter, which people hope to see in Feb/March but don't if they live too far North!
In any case, tonight's Super moon is a holy night as is next month's and one of them is góiblót. Unfortunately we can't say precisely how góiblót should be performed. Obviously you must offer a sacrifice and pray for both peace, and victory for your leader in whatever battles your people are fighting at present. But to whom are the sacrifices and prayers offered? Gói? Perhaps a more familiar deity like Frigg? Some claim Góa month was known as women's month, and if so, then it seems proper to invoke a goddess on this festival.
Dr. Andreas Nordberg, an expert on the pagan lunar-solar calendar, believes that the Goa moon of Snorri's time was not the Goa moon of Heathen times which was in April. Nordberg writes:
"As well as Yule, the time of the disablot in Uppsala has also been the subject of much discussion. According to Adam of Bremen this event took place at “about the time of the vernal equinox”, whilst Snorri instead says that the event was held in the month of Gói, which lasted from mid-February to mid-March in the Icelandic calendar during Snorri’s lifetime. However, it is likely that the information given to Snorri did not refer to the Icelandic month, but the Swedish lunar month called Göje or Göja." (Jul, disting och förkyrklig tideräkning Kalendrar och kalendariska riter i det förkristna Norden Uppsala 2006, P.157)
Have I missed any other sources? Please let me know in the comments.
This paper, Schiffels et al (2016), was a revealing study in ancient Anglo-Saxon DNA. It looked at DNA from 10 skeletons from 3 sites in East England: Hinxton, Oakington and Linton dating from before and after the Anglo-Saxon invasions. This study is better at estimating the genetic impact of Anglo-Saxons on England than other studies which only compare modern British people to modern populations on the continent.
"we estimate that on average the contemporary East English population derives 38% of its ancestry from Anglo-Saxon migrations."
They reach the 38% figure by looking at the unique Dutch-like DNA that was not present in early Iron Age samples from Hinton but appears in post AS invasion England. We can say that 38% of the DNA of modern people in East England comes from the invading Anglo-Saxons, but this figure somewhat obscures the reality of what Anglo-Saxons were.
"The middle Anglo-Saxon samples from Hinxton (HS1, HS2 and HS3) share relatively more rare variants with modern Dutch than the Iron Age samples from Hinxton (HI1 and HI2) and Linton (L). The early Anglo-Saxon samples from Oakington are more diverse with O1 and O2 being closer to the middle Anglo-Saxon samples, O4 exhibiting the same pattern as the Iron Age samples, and O3 showing an intermediate level of allele sharing, suggesting mixed ancestry."
In other words, Anglo-Saxons mixed with the Celtic Britons very quickly but there were also subsequent arrivals of more Germanic people from the continent. Geneticists using the term Anglo-Saxon in relation to the 38% figure are specifically referring to the newcomers. But when historians refer to the Anglo-Saxons, they don't just mean the Germanic people who arrived in the Migration era, they are referring to a full 600 years of English history!
If you were to ask the question of how much DNA we have from an average Anglo-Saxon, ranging from the mixed woman labelled O3, who lived in the early AS era around 500 AD, to any Anglo-Saxons living in the 7th, 8th or 9th century, then the % would be MUCH higher than 38%! The fact is that the DNA of Anglo-Saxon England from was for most of the AS period the same as that of modern ethnically English people ie: a mix of continental Germanic and Iron Age British Celtic.
I have long known of the second Merseberg charm, one of two which constitute the only surviving pagan verses in Old High German. As with most Germanic pagan things, we only have it by chance; a cleric at an abbey happened to put it in a liturgical book in the 10th century. We can be sure the charm, a cure for an injured horse, dates to many centuries earlier because it actually invokes sevenpagan gods.
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! 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
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.
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!
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.
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.
That this is of West-Germanic origin, like the Merseberg charm, and was brought to Scotland by Anglo-Saxons.
That this is a North Germanic cognate brought to Scotland by Vikings.
This is a Scots-Celtic cognate charm from the same Indo-European root as the Germanic and Vedic ones.
The woman invoked "Our Lord God" which is not only a common epithet of the Christian God, but also a name for Odin. I am not aware of a Celtic god who is invoked by this name. There are at least 10 more examples of charms in recorded Irish folklore which follow the same formula.
There is also an example from Sweden written down in 1860 which may be a Northern cognate if it is not derived from the West Germanic one.
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...
Now begins Eastermonth! This is an entire month which the Anglo-Saxons devoted to the goddess Ēastre. Her name is not, as some erroneously claim, related to the Semitic goddess Ishtar, nor to the hormone estrogen, but is in fact Germanic. Ēastre, or as she is known in modern English, "Easter" was equivalent to the continental German goddess Ostara and both names are derived from that of the ancient Indo-European goddess of dawn *H₂ewsṓs (→ *Ausṓs), from whom the Vedic goddess of dawn, Ushas, is also derived. One of the holy names of Ushas was Bṛhatī (बृहती) "high" which is cognate with Proto-Celtic *Brigantī meaning "The High One", and the name of a British goddess Brigantia (Brigid). The Greek goddess Ēōs, Baltic goddess Aušrinė and Roman goddess Aurora are all etymologically derived from the same IE word and likely from the same PIE goddess.
The month is attested by Anglo-Saxon monk Bede, who said feasts of the goddess were celebrated in April, but when we can only guess. There is no reason to believe it was on the exact day Christians now celebrate Easter. Some aspects of Christian Easter resemble paganism because the symbolism of eternal life and rebirth are important for both. The Roman pagans had a flower festival called Floralia on 27th April which may well have had equivalents in Britain, but surely the largest celebration for the dawn goddess was at the end of the Easter month on the eve of May day which heralds the dawn of summer. I consider May day, or specifically the night before it, to be the climax of Eastermonth and a holy celebration to this sacred goddess. I have covered the diverse celebration of May day around the world in a video already (see link below). The photo above is shows the May queen in Devon in 1955, a young girl who symbolises the dawn goddess Easter who heralds the start of Summer, and the May pole which is a phallic fertility symbol.
I would also speculate that since, in Celtic and Germanic countries, the folk culture around May eve has focused heavily on sexuality, even in recent times, usually of an unbridled sort normally prohibited by Christian morality, and since the cult of Aurora was often invoked in sexual poetry, we might well assume that the cult of Easter had a heavy emphasis on the sexuality and fertility of young people, especially women. The Greek Eos was cursed by Aphrodite with unsatisfiable sexual desire causing her to abduct handsome young men - a promiscuity very reminiscent of an account of May eve among the English in the early modern era by a puritan who wrote that on that night "Scarcely a third of maidens going to the woods returned home undefiled", similar account are recorded in Ireland.
The fecundity of the earth is tied explicitly to that of the wombs of nubile girls of the community. For this reason a sort of transgressive sexuality becomes temporarily permissible due to the divine associations of sex on this night.
An account of residual pagan practice in Sweden from 1877!
(Västergötlands Fornminnesförenings Tidskrift, Part 3. 1877. Page 60-61.)
A magazine by Västergötlands Fornminnesförening tells the interesting story of a wooden figure called "the Corn God", which used to be kept in the local church of Vånga. The journalist wrote:
"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.”
Even though these people regarded themselves as Christians, they were still aware that this was something the priest didn't want them to do. They even called the figure a god. Not a very Christian thing to do! The figure itself is from late 13th century and depicts an unidentified apostle. The persona of the Corn God, reminiscent of Freyr, was imposed on it by the parishioners, but why? Montelius claimed it was not an apostle but Saint Olaf:
‘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.
This tradition is an obvious continuation of a Germanic tradition of parading an idol around the land to bestow it with fertility. The earliest source we have on this is Tacitus' Germania (98AD) in which he describes how the Germanic peoples worshipped a goddess called Nerthus whose idol toured the country in a ceremonial wagon drawn by Oxen. Similarly, the 5th century Palestinian historian Sozomenos wrote that the Goths under Athanaric had led about a wooden idol placed on a covered wagon. They passed by a tent of Goths who had converted to Christianity and demanded they pay respect to the idol and make offerings to it. He wrote that those who refused to honour the idol were burned alive in their tents. Finally, in the 8th century Einhard wrote that Childeric III, the last of the long-haired Merovingian kings (long haired rulers being a residual pagan custom) was a degenerate king who was purveyed about the country on a wagon drawn by oxen in an annual celebration, which we can infer was of pagan origin, and originally involved the ruler filling a similar role the idol of Nerthus had 700 years earlier.
The touring of idols is also common in other Indo-European religions such as Hinduism.
Montelius provides more on the enduring cult of Thor in modern Sweden:
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).
While Germanic language is widely agreed to have emerged around 3000 years ago in Northern Denmark, amongst a people who were genetically like modern Danes, and then to have spread from 750BC as neighbouring peoples adopted the language for some reason, it is harder to pin point who the first Celtic speakers were or explain how their languages got to Britain.
As I have said in videos, the modern British genetic profile emerged 4500 years ago with the arrival of the beaker folk from Holland, but these people did NOT speak a Celtic language, as linguists agree Proto-Celtic isn't that old (maybe 3000 or 3500 years old). This means that either:
a) The peoples of the British Isles adopted a Celtic language due to trade with continental Celts b) A small Celtic elite took over Britain and Ireland and somehow changed the culture and language but not the genetics c) A continental population of Celts took over Britain and Ireland and did change the genetics, but this change is only very slight because they were already closely related to the people of the British Isles.
Archeologically, the Hallstatt culture of the 8th to 6th centuries BC, is seen as the first proper Celtic material culture. The two black stars on the PCA chart above, made by Eurogenes, represent two skeletons from the Hallstatt culture, and it can clearly be seen that one plots among the Dutch and one among the Northern French, but neither among modern "Celtic" areas. However, the purple Iron Age Celts on the chart are between the older Bronze age British samples and the Halstatt samples indicating there WAS an invasion of continental Celts to Britain who were related to these Halstatt samples and that they changed the DNA of Britain and Ireland.
Modern English people plot between these purple Iron Age Celts and the red Anglo-Saxon samples, but there is always the possibility that other 5th century Anglo-Saxon invaders from Frisia, Holland etc would have plotted like modern Dutch people just as the much older Halstatt sample does - thus making the job of distinguishing "Celtic and Germanic DNA" very complicated! Especially when you also see that the Anglo-Saxon samples are closer to the Bronze Age Britons than the Halstatt Celts are.
EDIT: Eurogenes actually said there may have been as much as 10% admixture from a Celtic source in the iron age.
Leading geneticist David Reich's recent interview with Atlantic reveals so much about how the field is simultaneously challenging left wing narratives of history and science, and also being used to shape them.
Since WWII, historians and archaeologists have disputed long held beliefs about ancient population replacements. Epochal events like the Anglo-Saxon migration, the spread of the Indo-Europeans and the Northern origin (Corded Ware) of the Aryans of India were all either "re-examined" or dismissed entirely as the product of "old" Nationalistic ideas. Genetic science is now vindicating many of the early 20th century theories, causing a great deal of kvetching in the ivory towers.
"Reich: So after the Second World War, there was a very strong reaction in the European archaeological community—not just the Germans, but the broad continental European archaeological community—to the fact that their discipline had been used for these terrible political ends. And there was a retreat from the ideas of Kossinna. Zhang: You actually had German collaborators drop out of a study because of these exact concerns, right? One of them wrote, “We must(!) avoid ... being compared with the so-called ‘siedlungsarchäologie Method’ from Gustaf Kossinna!” Reich: Yeah, that’s right. I think one of the things the ancient DNA is showing is actually the Corded Ware culture does correspond coherently to a group of people. [Editor’s note: The Corded Ware made pottery with cord-like ornamentation and according to ancient DNA studies, they descended from steppe ancestry.] I think that was a very sensitive issue to some of our coauthors, and one of the coauthors resigned because he felt we were returning to that idea of migration in archaeology that pots are the same as people. There have been a fair number of other coauthors from different parts of continental Europe who shared this anxiety."
Although population geneticists like Reich are regarded as a threat to the comfy hug-box that modern historians and archeologists have created, with Reich comparing his team to "barbarians at the gates", he is still just as much a part of the zeitgeist as the archeologists. He says, "You have to be more open to immigration. You have to be more open to the mixing of different peoples. That’s your own history."
Slavs, Germanics, Celts, the Romans, the Iranics and the Aryans etc are all directly descended from the Corded Ware peoples of Northern and Eastern Europe and these people were like modern Nordic/Baltic/Slavic people. This fact makes the establishment nervous so it needs to be sanitised by calling them "immigrants" saying they "came from the East" etc - They want to equate a conquering, ruling people with modern economic migrants, so that instead of being ignited with pride by the achievements of your ancestors, you instead shame them by destroying their legacy. Don't dismiss modern science as "left-wing lies", instead pick out the real facts from within the narrative-friendly media statements.
