Irminones
The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones (
The term Irminonic therefore is also used as a term for Elbe Germanic, which is one of the proposed (but unattested) dialect groups ancestral to the West Germanic language family, especially the High German languages, which include modern Standard German.[1]
History of use
Classical
The name Irminones or Hermiones comes from Tacitus's Germania (AD 98), where he categorized them as one of the tribes that some people say were descended from Mannus, and noted that they lived in the interior of Germania. Other Germanic groups of tribes were the Ingvaeones, living on the coast, and Istvaeones, who accounted for the rest.[2] Tacitus also mentioned the Suebi as a large grouping who included the Semnones, the Quadi, and the Marcomanni, but he did not say precisely to which (if any) of the three nations they belonged.
Pliny's Natural History (4.100) claimed that the Irminones included the Suebi, Hermunduri, Chatti, and Cherusci.
Medieval
In the so-called Frankish Table of Nations (c. 520), probably a Byzantine creation, the son of Mannus, who was the ancestor of the Irminones, is named Erminus (or Armen, Ermenius, Ermenus, Armenon, Ermeno, as it appears in various manuscripts). He is said to have fathered the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids, and Saxons. In a variation on the table that appears in the Historia Brittonum, the Vandals and Saxons have been replaced by the Burgundians and Langobards.[4]
They may have differentiated into the tribes
The term Suebi is usually applied to all the groups who moved into this area, although later in history (around 200 AD) the term Alamanni (meaning "all-men") became more commonly applied to the group.
's allusions, at the beginning of the Prose Edda, to Odin's cult having appeared first in Germany before spreading up into the Ingvaeonic North.
Notes
- ^ Friedrich Maurer (1942), Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.
- ^ Alfred John Church; William Jackson Brodribb (eds.). "Cornelius Tacitus, Germany and its Tribes, chapter 2". perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 16 April 2018.
- hdl:2027/mdp.39015042048507. Comments: Christensen 2002, p. 256. Latin text: https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pomponius3.html
- S2CID 201734002.
References
- ISBN 9788772897103.
- Grimm, Jacob (1835). Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology); From English released version Grimm's Teutonic Mythology (1888); Available online by Northvegr © 2004-2007:Chapter 15, page 2-; 3. File retrieved 09-26-2007.
- Friedrich Maurer (1942) Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.
- Tacitus, Germania (1st century AD). (in Latin)