Customer Reviews

Language and History in the Early Germanic World

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The purpose of this book is to use our knowledge of the early Germanic languages to fill in gaps in our knowledge of the history and culture of the peoples who spoke them. The book provides a great deal of information, organized by divisions of
culture, such as warfare and religion. I have two main criticisms. First, the author presupposes a bit more knowledge of the Germanic languages and of Latin than most readers are likely to have. This will from time to time make a point difficult to follow. Second, I found the book a bit plodding. There just didn't seem to be any interesting insights, unexpected discoveries, or unusually clever inferences.

This book is for the serious philologist and/or linguist. Less of an explanation of early German life and language than a lecture-made-into-a-book on the evolution of a handful of words.The book assumes much more familiarity with ancient texts and dialects than the casual armchair historian will have. Lack of preexisting in-depth knowledge makes this book too ponderous and obtuse.

After struggling for some time to find some sort of connecting sources of information to build an idea of Early Germanic life. After having read this, I was able to determine ranks and the language forms that came with it in establishing a societal form for many Early German tribes. Although primarily concerned with Germanic language, it helps clear the mist from many confusing theories. Kudos!

In this book DH Green uses the changes in and development of Germanic languages to provide evidence of Germanic cultural and societal changes, and to discuss how interactions between different cultures impacted these changes, during the late Roman and Early Medieval periods.

The book is divided into three main sections. In the first Green tracks the evolution of Germanic culture and uses language evidence to show how culture changed over time. In the second section Green, largely through the use of loanwords, shows how different population groups such as Goths, Alamanni, Romans, etc., impacted Germanic culture. In the third section he follows the Christianization of Germanics and shows how this occurred, both in terms of geographical spread as well as the methods used in conversion.

I think there are two ways to read this book. One is as a linguist or philologist, examining how Germanic languages evolved through cultural changes. The other way is as a work where cultural or societal changes are traced through the evolution of language, and as a study of what language can tell us about these changes. I used this second method myself - considering language as another piece of evidence to add to textual and archaeological evidence which I'm more familiar with.

I've read some reviews which state that knowledge of Germanic languages or Latin would be valuable before reading this book. As someone with almost no knowledge of Germanic and only a passing familiarity with Latin, I don't agree with this. While some knowledge might make it a bit easier to read, I don't believe it's required. I don't need to know whether Clovis was converted to Christianity in 496 or 507 to understand the implications of this for Merovingian Gaul. Similarly, I don't need to memorize "truhtin" or "kuning" to follow the discussion involving how the uses of these words indicate a movement from where the leader was a temporary head of a war-band to one where the leader was a hereditary king. Nor do I need to know the word "frauja" to follow its discussion and how it implied a depiction of God as pacifist in early attempts at conversion and to contrast it with later acceptance of God as a military figure helping lead Christians to success in war.

Rather than having some knowledge of the study of language, I'd recommend that you only read this if you're fairly familiar with the development of Germanic society from the 4th through the 7th centuries. This will allow you to take Green's linguistic evidence, which is considerable, and use it to enhance your knowledge. He does not provide any sort of narrative history and dives right into discussing specific concepts. If you're reading this as one of your first books on Late Antiquity or Germanic society, I think it would be very easy to become lost.

This was an interesting book. I was familiar with most of the Germanic cultural changes Green discusses, however the use of language provides an interesting perspective and the detailed way in which word usage is discussed helped provide some additional specifics into how culturasl change happened. As an example, the language Ulfila used in his early translation of the Bible into Gothic provides a very interesting window into how early Christianity stressed God as a peaceful deity and how important this was in the 4th century, while this point of emphasis was largely gone by the 6th when the concept of God bringing success in warfare was noted as a reason for Clovis and others to convert.

Not being a linguist, I'm unable to comment on the accuracy of Green's evidence and his use of it. However I will say that he provides very sound reasoning and he uses a great deal of detail to illustrate exactly what language changes revealed about changes in society. The arguments are detailed and must be followed with care. This is not a book I could just casually read (perhaps it would be for a philologist) and at times it became very dense. There are some specific aspects, such as feudalism and some migration patterns, where I question stated assumptions. In addition, the footnoting is sparser than I'm used to and many of Green's sources are quite old.

Nevertheless, it's worthwhile for the new perspective it provides, particularly when it comes to using language as evidence. I always knew language was used in this way, however this book gave me a much fuller understanding of how.

I agree with the other reviewers that this book is NOT for the general reader: it is indeed very dense, and does assume some background in Germanic linguistics and/or early medieval history. That said, with some effort, even a lay person should be able to get a wealth of information out of this book, and for people with a little bit of background, it is an invaluable guide to the early history of the Germanic languages, and a very useful work of reference. Readers should be warned, though, that Green is often less critical than he should be regarding historical 'facts' such as the migration of the Goths from Scandinavia.