Customer Reviews

Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic Sagas

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In general there is not much information about the various ways of Germanic warfare. Most historians in the past have made use of the contemporary literature, which is limited to only a few of the classical writers (e.g. Tacitus, Pliny, etc.). The field of Archaeology is barely used by historians (except for the usual picture of a rusty sword), whereass archaelogists themself more emphasize on the bigger picture of settlements, agriculture and burial rites. Art historians have always focussed on stylistic changes and interpretations.

Speidel presents here a good book about the subject with a well ballanced multidisciplinair approach. Nexto the commonly known Imperial Roman sources he presents also the various small pieces of information offered by the early Roman church and the Byzantine empire. Further he discusses the various Roman drawings and sculptures showing off Barbarians (e.g. column of Trajan) and uses the human depictions and scenes on decorated Germanic armament. Second he takes with him the archaological finds of the last decades, ranging from 'rusty swords' to Alamannic rowgraves.

In the written part of the book he uses a lot of footnotes which are explained in the back of the book. Personally I'm more a favourite of using footnotes and putting the explanations below the same page, but the information and sources he refers to are good. Unlike some scholars who like to speculate while leaving the remaining questions unmentioned, Speidel is not afraid to ask questions, they are well lead in but can simply not be solved at the moment for lack of proper material.

A minor remark: It is not written for those who have no basic understanding of the Roman empire and its relations with the surrounding 'barbarian' populations or of the various levels of society and hierarchy within the Germanic world, f.i. after a few pages Speidel uses the word 'Aetheling' in a explanation, the term 'aetheling' is not explained.

All in all Speidel has written a good readable and very informative book. It covers the warfare methods of Germanic warriors from the moment they enter history, till the moment the last of the Germanic peoples are christianized (Iceland).

This book is simply fantastic. It is one of those few inspiring books Germanophile history-freaks cannot put down once opened.

I marvel the proud warrior traditions of our ancient Germanic forbears, and it hurts to know that these traditions vanished forever with the forced Christian domination of Europe. Michael Speidels 10 year study is probably only a scratch at the surface of all the ancient and now unknown traditions all the European people had before the Christian age.

Highly recommended.