title: Blues

text: The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues", by "Baby" Franklin Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews); "Dallas Blues", by Hart Wand; and "The Memphis Blues", by W.C. Handy.


title: Blues

text: Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the "Saint Louis Blues".


title: Blues

text: In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, also reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. These female performers became perhaps the first African American "superstars", and their recording sales demonstrated "a huge appetite for records made by and for black people." The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club and juke joints such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African-American music.


title: Blues

text: As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in the African American community. Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues. The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished city or urban blues.


title: Blues

text: Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with Curley Weaver, Tampa Red, "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style.


title: Blues

text: The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by jug bands such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy, Casey Bill Weldon and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard, fiddle, kazoo or mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement.


title: Blues

text: City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate, as a performer was no longer within their local, immediate community, and had to adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic. Classic female urban and vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them "the big three"—Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Lucille Bogan. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African American to record a blues song in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month. Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room". Smith would "sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed".


title: Blues

text: In 1920 the vaudeville singer Lucille Hegamin became the second black woman to record blues when she recorded "The Jazz Me Blues", and Victoria Spivey, sometimes called Queen Victoria or Za Zu Girl, had a recording career that began in 1926 and spanned forty years. These recordings were typically labeled "race records" to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well. These blueswomen's contributions to the genre included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered the emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz, Broadway musicals, torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s, gospel, rhythm and blues, and eventually rock and roll."


title: Blues

text: Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such as Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. An important label of this era was the Chicago-based Bluebird Records. Before World War II, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 1950s with artists such as Charles Brown and even Nat "King" Cole.


title: Blues

text: Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-Woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand". The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles.


title: Blues

text: Another development in this period was big band blues. The "territory bands" operating out of Kansas City, the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann, and the Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's "One O'Clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and boisterous "blues shouting" by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and "Sent for You Yesterday". A well-known big band blues tune is Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from the boogie woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker, who is often associated with the California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues à la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s.


title: Blues

text: The transition from country blues to urban blues that began in the 1920s was driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms that led many rural blacks to move to urban areas, in a movement known as the Great Migration. The long boom following World War II induced another massive migration of the African-American population, the Second Great Migration, which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The term "race record", initially used by the music industry for African-American music, was replaced by the term "rhythm and blues". This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by "Billboard" magazine's Rhythm & Blues chart. This marketing strategy reinforced trends in urban blues music such as the use of electric instruments and amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the blues shuffle, which became ubiquitous in rhythm and blues (R&B). This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music, which, together with jazz and gospel music, became a component of R&B.


title: Blues

text: After World War II, new styles of electric blues became popular in cities such as Chicago, Memphis, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used electric guitars, double bass (gradually replaced by bass guitar), drums, and harmonica (or "blues harp") played through a microphone and a PA system or an overdriven guitar amplifier. Chicago became a center for electric blues from 1948 on, when Muddy Waters recorded his first success, "I Can't Be Satisfied". Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by Delta blues, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region.


title: Blues

text: Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. The saxophonist J. T. Brown played in bands led by Elmore James and by J. B. Lenoir, but the saxophone was used as a backing instrument for rhythmic support more than as a lead instrument.


title: Blues

text: Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and Sonny Terry are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices.


title: Blues

text: The bassist and prolific songwriter and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records and Checker Records labels. Smaller blues labels of this era included Vee-Jay Records and J.O.B. Records. During the early 1950s, the dominating Chicago labels were challenged by Sam Phillips' Sun Records company in Memphis, which recorded B. B. King and Howlin' Wolf before he moved to Chicago in 1960. After Phillips discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly rock 'n' roll.


title: Blues

text: In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, both recording for Chess, were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and cajun arrangements of blues standards.


title: Blues

text: In England, electric blues took root there during a much acclaimed Muddy Waters tour in 1958. Waters, unsuspecting of his audience's tendency towards skiffle, an acoustic, softer brand of blues, turned up his amp and started to play his Chicago brand of electric blues. Although the audience was largely jolted by the performance, the performance influenced local musicians such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies to emulate this louder style, inspiring the British Invasion of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.


title: Blues

text: In the late 1950s, a new blues style emerged on Chicago's West Side pioneered by Magic Sam, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush on Cobra Records. The "West Side sound" had strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums and as perfected by Guy, Freddie King, Magic Slim and Luther Allison was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar. Expressive guitar solos were a key feature of this music.


title: Blues

text: Other blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit, "Boogie Chillen", reached number 1 on the R&B charts in 1949.


title: Blues

text: By the late 1950s, the swamp blues genre developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain around the producer J. D. "Jay" Miller and the Excello label. Strongly influenced by Jimmy Reed, swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee". Alan Lomax's recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell would eventually bring him wider attention on both the blues and folk circuit, with McDowell's droning style influencing North Mississippi hill country blues musicians.


title: Blues

text: By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles had brought African-American music to new audiences, both within the U.S. and abroad. However, the blues wave that brought artists such as Muddy Waters to the foreground had stopped. Bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and Willie Dixon started looking for new markets in Europe. Dick Waterman and the blues festivals he organized in Europe played a major role in propagating blues music abroad. In the UK, bands emulated U.S. blues legends, and UK blues rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s.


title: Blues

text: Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York–born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album "Endless Boogie". B. B. King's singing and virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". King introduced a sophisticated style of guitar soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists. In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp. Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period, Freddie King and Albert King often played with rock and soul musicians (Eric Clapton and Booker T & the MGs) and had a major influence on those styles of music.


title: Blues

text: The music of the civil rights movement and Free Speech Movement in the U.S. prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music. As well festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs, originally distributed only in Europe, commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His album "Alabama Blues" contained a song with the following lyric:


title: Blues

text: White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band featuring guitarist Michael Bloomfield and singer/songwriter Nick Gravenites, and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in the UK, when musicians such as Cyril Davies, Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, the Rolling Stones, Animals, the Yardbirds, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Chicken Shack, early Jethro Tull, Cream and the Irish musician Rory Gallagher performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions.


title: Blues

text: In 1963, LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, was the first to write a book on the social history of the blues in "Blues People: The Negro Music in White America". The British and blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues rock performers, including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band, Ry Cooder, and the Allman Brothers Band. One blues rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and audio feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music. Later in the 1960s, British singer Jo Ann Kelly started her recording career. In the US, from the 1970s, female singers Bonnie Raitt and Phoebe Snow performed blues.


title: Blues

text: In the early 1970s, the Texas rock-blues style emerged, which used guitars in both solo and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Fabulous Thunderbirds (led by harmonica player and singer-songwriter Kim Wilson), and ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical careers in the 1970s but they did not achieve international success until the next decade.


title: Blues

text: Since the 1980s there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, Mississippi and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern soul", the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's "Down Home Blues" (1982) and Little Milton's "The Blues is Alright" (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work in this style of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease, Peggy Scott-Adams, Mel Waiters, Clarence Carter, Dr. "Feelgood" Potts, O.B. Buchana, Ms. Jody, Shirley Brown, and dozens of others.


title: Blues

text: During the 1980s blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1986 the album "Strong Persuader" announced Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording "Texas Flood" was released in 1983, and the Texas-based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. John Lee Hooker's popularity was revived with the album "The Healer" in 1989. Eric Clapton, known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album "Unplugged", in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar.


title: Blues

text: However, beginning in the 1990s, digital multitrack recording and other technological advances and new marketing strategies including video clip production increased costs, challenging the spontaneity and improvisation that are an important component of blues music. In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as "Living Blues" and "Blues Revue" were launched, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged. Tedeschi Trucks band and Gov't Mule released blues rock albums. Female blues singers such as Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedeschi,Sue Foley and Shannon Curfman recorded blues also.


title: Blues

text: In the 1990s, the largely ignored hill country blues gained minor recognition in both blues and alternative rock music circles with northern Mississippi artists R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W.C. Handy Awards or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. The Billboard Blues Album chart provides an overview of current blues hits. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Severn Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, NorthernBlues Music, Fat Possum Records and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for rediscovering and remastering blues rarities, including Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records), and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).


title: Blues

text: Blues musical styles, forms (12-bar blues), melodies, and the blues scale have influenced many other genres of music, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Prominent jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale is often used in popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", and even in orchestral works such as George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F". Gershwin's second "Prelude" for solo piano is an interesting example of a classical blues, maintaining the form with academic strictness. The blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds used in rock music (for example, in "A Hard Day's Night"). Blues forms are used in the theme to the televised "Batman", teen idol Fabian Forte's hit, "Turn Me Loose", country music star Jimmie Rodgers' music, and guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason".


title: Blues

text: Early country bluesmen such as Skip James, Charley Patton, Georgia Tom Dorsey played country and urban blues and had influences from spiritual singing. Dorsey helped to popularize Gospel music. Gospel music developed in the 1930s, with the Golden Gate Quartet. In the 1950s, soul music by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown used gospel and blues music elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues were merged in soul blues music. Funk music of the 1970s was influenced by soul; funk can be seen as an antecedent of hip-hop and contemporary R&B.


title: Blues

text: R&B music can be traced back to spirituals and blues. Musically, spirituals were a descendant of New England choral traditions, and in particular of Isaac Watts's hymns, mixed with African rhythms and call-and-response forms. Spirituals or religious chants in the African-American community are much better documented than the "low-down" blues. Spiritual singing developed because African-American communities could gather for mass or worship gatherings, which were called camp meetings.


title: Blues

text: Edward P. Comentale has noted how the blues was often used as a medium for art or self-expression, stating: "As heard from Delta shacks to Chicago tenements to Harlem cabarets, the blues proved—despite its pained origins—a remarkably flexible medium and a new arena for the shaping of identity and community."


title: Blues

text: Before World War II, the boundaries between blues and jazz were less clear. Usually, jazz had harmonic structures stemming from brass bands, whereas blues had blues forms such as the 12-bar blues. However, the jump blues of the 1940s mixed both styles. After WWII, blues had a substantial influence on jazz. Bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time", used the blues form with the pentatonic scale and blue notes.


title: Blues

text: Bebop marked a major shift in the role of jazz, from a popular style of music for dancing to a "high-art", less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music". The audience for both blues and jazz split, and the border between blues and jazz became more defined.


title: Blues

text: The blues' 12-bar structure and the blues scale was a major influence on rock and roll music. Rock and roll has been called "blues with a backbeat"; Carl Perkins called rockabilly "blues with a country beat". Rockabillies were also said to be 12-bar blues played with a bluegrass beat. "Hound Dog", with its unmodified 12-bar structure (in both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on flatted third of the tonic (and flatted seventh of the subdominant), is a blues song transformed into a rock and roll song. Jerry Lee Lewis's style of rock and roll was heavily influenced by the blues and its derivative boogie-woogie. His style of music was not exactly rockabilly but it has been often called real rock and roll (this is a label he shares with several African American rock and roll performers).


title: Blues

text: Many early rock and roll songs are based on blues: "That's All Right Mama", "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the sexual themes and innuendos of blues music: "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" ("Tutti Frutti", Little Richard) or "See the girl with the red dress on, She can do the Birdland all night long" ("What'd I Say", Ray Charles). The 12-bar blues structure can be found even in novelty pop songs, such as Bob Dylan's "Obviously Five Believers" and Esther and Abi Ofarim's "Cinderella Rockefella".


title: Blues

text: Early country music was infused with the blues. Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams have all described themselves as blues singers and their music has a blues feel that is different, at first glance at least, from the later country-pop of artists like Eddy Arnold. Yet, if one looks back further, Arnold also started out singing bluesy songs like 'I'll Hold You in My Heart'. A lot of the 1970s-era "outlaw" country music by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings also borrowed from the blues. When Jerry Lee Lewis returned to country music after the decline of 1950s style rock and roll, he sang with a blues feel and often included blues standards on his albums.


title: Blues

text: Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal music, hip hop music, reggae, country music, Latin music, funk, and pop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s. In the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy was the first to popularize blues-influenced music among non-black Americans.


title: Blues

text: During the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s, acoustic blues artist Taj Mahal and Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins wrote and performed music that figured prominently in the critically acclaimed film "Sounder" (1972). The film earned Mahal a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a BAFTA nomination. Almost 30 years later, Mahal wrote blues for, and performed a banjo composition, claw-hammer style, in the 2001 movie release "Songcatcher", which focused on the story of the preservation of the roots music of Appalachia.


title: Blues

text: Perhaps the most visible example of the blues style of music in the late 20th century came in 1980, when Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi released the film "The Blues Brothers". The film drew many of the biggest living influencers of the rhythm and blues genre together, such as Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee Hooker. The band formed also began a successful tour under the Blues Brothers marquee. 1998 brought a sequel, "Blues Brothers 2000" that, while not holding as great a critical and financial success, featured a much larger number of blues artists, such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Musselwhite, Blues Traveler, Jimmie Vaughan, and Jeff Baxter.


title: Blues

text: In 2003, Martin Scorsese made significant efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of documentary films for PBS called "The Blues". He also participated in the rendition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high-quality CDs. Blues guitarist and vocalist Keb' Mo' performed his blues rendition of "America, the Beautiful" in 2006 to close out the final season of the television series "The West Wing".


title: Blues

text: The blues was highlighted in season 2012, episode 1 of "In Performance at the White House", entitled "Red, White and Blues". Hosted by Barack and Michelle Obama, the show featured performances by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Gary Clark Jr., Jeff Beck, Derek Trucks, Keb Mo, and others.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and early medieval Germanic languages and are thus equated at least approximately with Germanic-speaking peoples, although different academic disciplines have their own definitions of what makes someone or something "Germanic". The Romans named the area belonging to North-Central Europe in which Germanic peoples lived "Germania", stretching East to West between the Vistula and Rhine rivers and north to south from Southern Scandinavia to the upper Danube. In discussions of the Roman period, the Germanic peoples are sometimes referred to as Germani or ancient Germans, although many scholars consider the second term problematic since it suggests identity with present-day Germans. The very concept of "Germanic peoples" has become the subject of controversy among contemporary scholars. Some scholars call for its total abandonment as a modern construct since lumping "Germanic peoples" together implies a common group identity for which there is little evidence. Other scholars have defended the term's continued use and argue that a common Germanic language allows one to speak of "Germanic peoples", regardless of whether these ancient and medieval peoples saw themselves as having a common identity.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Scholars generally agree that it is possible to speak of Germanic peoples after 500 BCE. Archaeologists usually connect the early Germanic peoples with the Jastorf culture of the Pre-Roman Iron Age, which is found in Denmark (southern Scandinavia) and northern Germany from the 6th to 1st centuries BCE, around the same time that the first Germanic consonant shift is theorized to have occurred; this sound change lead to recognizably Germanic languages. From northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, the Germanic peoples expanded south, east, and west, coming into contact with the Celtic, Iranic, Baltic, and Slavic peoples. Roman authors first described Germanic peoples near the Rhine in the 1st century BCE, while the Roman Empire was establishing its dominance in that region. Under Emperor Augustus (63 BCE–14CE), the Romans attempted to conquer a large area of Germania, but they withdrew after a major Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE. The Romans continued to control the Germanic frontier closely by meddling in its politics, and they constructed a long fortified border, the Limes Germanicus. From 166 to 180 CE, Rome was embroiled in a conflict against the Germanic Marcomanni, Quadi, and many other peoples known as the Marcomannic Wars. The wars reordered the Germanic frontier, and afterwards, new Germanic peoples appear for the first time in the historical record, such as the Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni. During the Migration Period (375–568), various Germanic peoples entered the Roman Empire and eventually took control of parts of it and established their own independent kingdoms after the collapse of Western Roman rule. The most powerful of them were the Franks, who conquered many of the others. Eventually, the Frankish king Charlemagne claimed the title of Holy Roman Emperor for himself in 800.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Archaeological finds suggest that Roman-era sources portrayed the Germanic way of life as more primitive than it actually was. Instead, archaeologists have unveiled evidence of a complex society and economy throughout Germania. Germanic-speaking peoples originally shared similar religious practices. Denoted by the term Germanic paganism, they varied throughout the territory occupied by Germanic-speaking peoples. Over the course of Late Antiquity, most continental Germanic peoples and the Anglo-Saxons of Britain converted to Christianity, but the Saxons and Scandinavians converted only much later. The Germanic peoples shared a native script from around the first century or before, the runes, which was gradually replaced with the Latin script, although runes continued to be used for specialized purposes thereafter.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Traditionally, the Germanic peoples have been seen as possessing a law dominated by the concepts of feuding and blood compensation. The precise details, nature and origin of what is still normally called "Germanic law" are now controversial. Roman sources state that the Germanic peoples made decisions in a popular assembly (the thing) but that they also had kings and war leaders. The ancient Germanic-speaking peoples probably shared a common poetic tradition, alliterative verse, and later Germanic peoples also shared legends originating in the Migration Period.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The publishing of Tacitus's "Germania" by humanist scholars in the 1400s greatly influenced the emerging idea of "Germanic peoples". Later scholars of the Romantic period, such as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, developed several theories about the nature of the Germanic peoples that were highly influenced by romantic nationalism. For those scholars, the "Germanic" and modern "German" were identical. Ideas about the early Germans were also highly influential among and were influenced and co-opted by the nationalist and racist völkisch movement and later by the Nazis, which led in the second half of the 20th century to a backlash against many aspects of earlier scholarship.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The etymology of the Latin word , from which Latin and English Germanic are derived, is unknown, although several different proposals have been made for the origin of the name. Even the language from which it derives is a subject of dispute, with proposals of Germanic, Celtic, and Latin, and Illyrian origins. Herwig Wolfram, for example, thinks must be Gaulish. The historian Wolfgang Pfeifer more or less concurs with Wolfram and surmises that the name is likely of Celtic etymology and is related to the Old Irish word ('neighbours') or could be tied to the Celtic word for their war cries, , which simplifies into 'the neighbours' or 'the screamers'. Regardless of its language of origin, the name was transmitted to the Romans via Celtic speakers.


title: Germanic peoples

text: It is unclear that any people group ever referred to themselves as "Germani". By late antiquity, only peoples near the Rhine, especially the Franks and sometimes the Alemanni, were called "Germani" by Latin or Greek writers. "Germani" subsequently ceased to be used as a name for any group of people and was revived as such only by the humanists in the 16th century. Previously, scholars during the Carolingian period (8th–11th centuries) had already begun using "Germania" and "Germanicus" in a territorial sense to refer to East Francia.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In modern English, the adjective "Germanic" is distinct from "German", which is generally used when referring to modern Germans only. "Germanic" relates to the ancient "Germani" or the broader Germanic group. In modern German, the ancient "Germani" are referred to as and "Germania" as , as distinct from modern Germans () and modern Germany (). The direct equivalents in English are, however, "Germans" for "Germani" and "Germany" for "Germania" although the Latin is also used. To avoid ambiguity, the "Germani" may instead be called "ancient Germans" or "Germani" by using the Latin term in English.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The modern definition of Germanic peoples developed in the 19th century, when the term "Germanic" was linked to the newly identified Germanic language family. Linguistics provided a new way of defining the Germanic peoples, which came to be used in historiography and archaeology. While Roman authors did not consistently exclude Celtic-speaking people or have a term corresponding to Germanic-speaking peoples, this new definition—which used the Germanic language as the main criterion—presented the "Germani" as a people or nation () with a stable group identity linked to language. As a result, some scholars treat the (Latin) or (Greek) of Roman-era sources as non-Germanic if they seemingly spoke non-Germanic languages. For clarity, Germanic peoples, when defined as "speakers of a Germanic language", are sometimes referred to as "Germanic-speaking peoples". Today, the term "Germanic" is widely applied to "phenomena including identities, social, cultural or political groups, to material cultural artefacts, languages and texts, and even specific chemical sequences found in human DNA".


title: Germanic peoples

text: Apart from the designation of a language family (i.e., "Germanic languages"), the application of the term "Germanic" has become controversial in scholarship since 1990, especially among archaeologists and historians. Scholars have increasingly questioned the notion of ethnically defined people groups () as stable basic actors of history. The connection of archaeological assemblages to ethnicity has also been increasingly questioned. This has resulted in different disciplines developing different definitions of "Germanic". Beginning with the work of the "Toronto School" around Walter Goffart, various scholars have denied that anything such as a common Germanic ethnic identity ever existed. Such scholars argue that most ideas about Germanic culture are taken from far later epochs and projected backwards to antiquity. Historians of the Vienna School, such as Walter Pohl, have also called for the term to be avoided or used with careful explanation, and argued that there is little evidence for a common Germanic identity. The Anglo-Saxonist Leonard Neidorf writes that historians of the continental-European Germanic peoples of the 5th and 6th centuries are "in agreement" that there was no pan-Germanic identity or solidarity. Whether a scholar favors the existence of a common Germanic identity or not is often related to their position on the nature of the end of the Roman Empire.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Defenders of continued use of the term "Germanic" argue that the speakers of Germanic languages can be identified as Germanic people by language regardless of how they saw themselves. Linguists and philologists have generally reacted skeptically to claims that there was no Germanic identity or cultural unity, and they may view "Germanic" simply as a long-established and convenient term. Some archaeologists have also argued in favor of retaining the term "Germanic" due to its broad recognizability. Archaeologist Heiko Steuer defines his own work on the "Germani" in geographical terms (covering "Germania"), rather than in ethnic terms. He nevertheless argues for some sense of shared identity between the "Germani", noting the use of a common language, a common runic script, various common objects of material culture such as bracteates and gullgubber (small gold objects) and the confrontation with Rome as things that could cause a sense of shared "Germanic" culture. Despite being cautious of the use of "Germanic" to refer to peoples, Sebastian Brather, Wilhelm Heizmann and Steffen Patzold nevertheless refer to further commonalities such as the widely attested worship of deities such as Odin, Thor and Frigg, and a shared legendary tradition.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The first author to describe the "Germani" as a large category of peoples distinct from the Gauls and Scythians was Julius Caesar, writing around 55 BCE during his governorship of Gaul. In Caesar's account, the clearest defining characteristic of the "Germani" people was that they lived east of the Rhine, opposite Gaul on the west side. Caesar sought to explain both why his legions stopped at the Rhine and also why the "Germani" were more dangerous than the Gauls and a constant threat to the empire. He also classified the Cimbri and Teutons, peoples who had previously invaded Italy, as "Germani", and examples of this threat to Rome. Although Caesar described the Rhine as the border between "Germani" and Celts, he also describes a group of people he identifies as "Germani" who live on the west bank of the Rhine in the northeast of Gall, the Germani cisrhenani. It is unclear if these "Germani" spoke a Germanic language. According to the Roman historian Tacitus in his "Germania" (c. 98 CE), it was among this group, specifically the Tungri, that the name "Germani" first arose, and was spread to further groups. Tacitus continues to mention Germanic tribes on the west bank of the Rhine in the period of the early Empire. Caesar's division of the "Germani" from the Celts was not taken up by most writers in Greek.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Caesar and authors following him regarded Germania as stretching east of the Rhine for an indeterminate distance, bounded by the Baltic Sea and the Hercynian Forest. Pliny the Elder and Tacitus placed the eastern border at the Vistula. The Upper Danube served as a southern border. Between there and the Vistula Tacitus sketched an unclear boundary, describing Germania as separated in the south and east from the Dacians and the Sarmatians by mutual fear or mountains. This undefined eastern border is related to a lack of stable frontiers in this area such as were maintained by Roman armies along the Rhine and Danube. The geographer Ptolemy (2nd century CE) applied the name Germania magna ("Greater Germania", ) to this area, contrasting it with the Roman provinces of Germania Prima and Germania Secunda (on the west bank of the Rhine). In modern scholarship, Germania magna is sometimes also called ("free Germania"), a name that became popular among German nationalists in the 19th century.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Caesar and, following him, Tacitus, depicted the "Germani" as sharing elements of a common culture. A small number of passages by Tacitus and other Roman authors (Caesar, Suetonius) mention Germanic tribes or individuals speaking a language distinct from Gaulish. For Tacitus ("Germania" 43, 45, 46), language was a characteristic, but not defining feature of the Germanic peoples. Many of the ascribed ethnic characteristics of the "Germani" represented them as typically "barbarian", including the possession of stereotypical vices such as "wildness" and of virtues such as chastity. Tacitus was at times unsure whether a people were Germanic or not, expressing his uncertainty about the Bastarnae, who he says looked like Sarmatians but spoke like the "Germani", about the Osi and the Cotini, and about the Aesti, who were like Suebi but spoke a different language. When defining the "Germani" ancient authors did not differentiate consistently between a territorial definition ("those living in "Germania"") and an ethnic definition ("having Germanic ethnic characteristics"), although the two definitions did not always align.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Romans did not regard the eastern Germanic speakers such as Goths, Gepids, and Vandals as "Germani", but rather connected them with other non-Germanic-speaking peoples such as the Huns, Sarmatians, and Alans. Romans described these peoples, including those who did not speak a Germanic language, as "Gothic people" () and most often classified them as "Scythians". The writer Procopius, describing the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Alans, and Gepids, derived the Gothic peoples from the ancient Getae and described them as sharing similar customs, beliefs, and a common language.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Several ancient sources list subdivisions of the Germanic tribes. Writing in the first century CE, Pliny the Elder lists five Germanic subgroups: the Vandili, the Inguaeones, the Istuaeones (living near the Rhine), the Hermiones (in the Germanic interior), and the Peucini Basternae (living on the lower Danube near the Dacians). In chapter 2 of the "Germania", written about a half-century later, Tacitus lists only three subgroups: the Ingvaeones (near the sea), the Hermiones (in the interior of Germania), and the Istvaeones (the remainder of the tribes); Tacitus says these groups each claimed descent from the god Mannus, son of Tuisto. Tacitus also mentions a second tradition that there were four sons of either Mannus or Tuisto from whom the groups of the Marsi, Gambrivi, Suebi, and Vandili claim descent. The Hermiones are also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, but otherwise, these divisions do not appear in other ancient works on the "Germani".


title: Germanic peoples

text: There are a number of inconsistencies in the listing of Germanic subgroups by Tacitus and Pliny. While both Tacitus and Pliny mention some Scandinavian tribes, they are not integrated into the subdivisions. While Pliny lists the Suebi as part of the Hermiones, Tacitus treats them as a separate group. Additionally, Tacitus's description of a group of tribes as united by the cult of Nerthus ("Germania" 40) as well as the cult of the Alcis controlled by the Nahanarvali ("Germania" 43) and Tacitus's account of the origin myth of the Semnones ("Germania" 39) all suggest different subdivisions than the three mentioned in "Germania" chapter 2.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The subdivisions found in Pliny and Tacitus have been very influential for scholarship on Germanic history and language up until recent times. However, outside of Tacitus and Pliny there are no other textual indications that these groups were important. The subgroups mentioned by Tacitus are not used by him elsewhere in his work, contradict other parts of his work, and cannot be reconciled with Pliny, who is equally inconsistent. Additionally, there is no linguistic or archaeological evidence for these subgroups. New archaeological finds have tended to show that the boundaries between Germanic peoples were very permeable, and scholars now assume that migration and the collapse and formation of cultural units were constant occurrences within Germania. Nevertheless, various aspects such as the alliteration of many of the tribal names in Tacitus's account and the name of Mannus himself suggest that the descent from Mannus was an authentic Germanic tradition.


title: Germanic peoples

text: All Germanic languages derive from the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), which is generally thought to have been spoken between 4500 and 2500 BCE. The ancestor of Germanic languages is referred to as Proto- or Common Germanic, and likely represented a group of mutually intelligible dialects. They share distinctive characteristics which set them apart from other Indo-European sub-families of languages, such as Grimm's and Verner's law, the conservation of the PIE ablaut system in the Germanic verb system (notably in strong verbs), or the merger of the vowels "a" and "o" qualities ("ə", "a", "o" > "a;" "ā", "ō" > "ō"). During the Pre-Germanic linguistic period (2500–500 BCE), the proto-language has almost certainly been influenced by an unknown non-Indo-European language, still noticeable in the Germanic phonology and lexicon.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Although Proto-Germanic is reconstructed without dialects via the comparative method, it is almost certain that it never was a uniform proto-language. The late Jastorf culture occupied so much territory that it is unlikely that Germanic populations spoke a single dialect, and traces of early linguistic varieties have been highlighted by scholars. Sister dialects of Proto-Germanic itself certainly existed, as evidenced by the absence of the First Germanic Sound Shift (Grimm's law) in some "Para-Germanic" recorded proper names, and the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language was only one among several dialects spoken at that time by peoples identified as "Germanic" by Roman sources or archeological data. Although Roman sources name various Germanic tribes such as Suevi, Alemanni, Bauivari, etc., it is unlikely that the members of these tribes all spoke the same dialect.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Definite and comprehensive evidence of Germanic lexical units only occurred after Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the 1st century BCE, after which contacts with Proto-Germanic speakers began to intensify. The "Alcis", a pair of brother gods worshipped by the Nahanarvali, are given by Tacitus as a Latinized form of (a kind of 'stag'), and the word ('hair dye') is certainly borrowed from Proto-Germanic (English "soap)", as evidenced by the parallel Finnish loanword "." The name of the "framea", described by Tacitus as a short spear carried by Germanic warriors, most likely derives from the compound ('forward-going one'), as suggested by comparable semantical structures found in early runes (e.g., "raun-ij-az" 'tester', on a lancehead) and linguistic cognates attested in the later Old Norse, Old Saxon and Old High German languages: "," and all mean 'to carry out'.


title: Germanic peoples

text: By the time Germanic speakers entered written history, their linguistic territory had stretched farther south, since a Germanic dialect continuum (where neighbouring language varieties diverged only slightly between each other, but remote dialects were not necessarily mutually intelligible due to accumulated differences over the distance) covered a region roughly located between the Rhine, the Vistula, the Danube, and southern Scandinavia during the first two centuries of the Common Era. East Germanic speakers dwelled on the Baltic sea coasts and islands, while speakers of the Northwestern dialects occupied territories in present-day Denmark and bordering parts of Germany at the earliest date when they can be identified.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, migrations of East Germanic "gentes" from the Baltic Sea coast southeastwards into the hinterland led to their separation from the dialect continuum. By the late 3rd century CE, linguistic divergences like the West Germanic loss of the final consonant "-z" had already occurred within the "residual" Northwest dialect continuum. The latter definitely ended after the 5th- and 6th-century migrations of Angles, Jutes and part of the Saxon tribes towards modern-day England.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Germanic languages are traditionally divided between East, North and West Germanic branches. The modern prevailing view is that North and West Germanic were also encompassed in a larger subgroup called Northwest Germanic.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Further internal classifications are still debated among scholars, as it is unclear whether the internal features shared by several branches are due to early common innovations or to the later diffusion of local dialectal innovations.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Germanic-speaking peoples speak an Indo-European language. The leading theory for the origin of Germanic languages, suggested by archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence, postulates a diffusion of Indo-European languages from the Pontic–Caspian steppe towards Northern Europe during the third millennium BCE, via linguistic contacts and migrations from the Corded Ware culture towards modern-day Denmark, resulting in cultural mixing with the earlier Funnelbeaker culture. The subsequent culture of the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 2000/1750-c. 500 BCE) shows definite cultural and population continuities with later Germanic peoples, and is often supposed to have been the culture in which the Germanic Parent Language, the predecessor of the Proto-Germanic language, developed. However, it is unclear whether these earlier peoples possessed any ethnic continuity with the later Germanic peoples.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Generally, scholars agree that it is possible to speak of Germanic-speaking peoples after 500 BCE, although the first attestation of the name "Germani" is not until much later. Between around 500 BCE and the beginning of the Common Era, archeological and linguistic evidence suggest that the "Urheimat" ('original homeland') of the Proto-Germanic language, the ancestral idiom of all attested Germanic dialects, was primarily situated in the southern Jutland peninsula, from which Proto-Germanic speakers migrated towards bordering parts of Germany and along the sea-shores of the Baltic and the North Sea, an area corresponding to the extent of the late Jastorf culture. If the Jastorf Culture is the origin of the Germanic peoples, then the Scandinavian peninsula would have become Germanic either via migration or assimilation over the course of the same period. Alternatively, has stressed that two other archaeological groups must have belonged to the "Germani", one on either side of the Lower Rhine and reaching to the Weser, and another in Jutland and southern Scandinavia. These groups would thus show a "polycentric origin" for the Germanic peoples. The neighboring Przeworsk culture in modern Poland is thought to possibly reflect a Germanic and Slavic component. The identification of the Jastorf culture with the "Germani" has been criticized by Sebastian Brather, who notes that it seems to be missing areas such as southern Scandinavia and the Rhine-Weser area, which linguists argue to have been Germanic, while also not according with the Roman era definition of "Germani", which included Celtic-speaking peoples further south and west.


title: Germanic peoples

text: A category of evidence used to locate the Proto-Germanic homeland is founded on traces of early linguistic contacts with neighbouring languages. Germanic loanwords in the Finnic and Sámi languages have preserved archaic forms (e.g. Finnic "kuningas", from Proto-Germanic 'king'; "rengas", from 'ring'; etc.), with the older loan layers possibly dating back to an earlier period of intense contacts between pre-Germanic and Finno-Permic (i.e. Finno-Samic) speakers. Shared lexical innovations between Celtic and Germanic languages, concentrated in certain semantic domains such as religion and warfare, indicates intensive contacts between the "Germani" and Celtic peoples, usually identified with the archaeological La Tène culture, found in southern Germany and the modern Czech Republic. Early contacts probably occurred during the Pre-Germanic and Pre-Celtic periods, dated to the 2nd millennium BCE, and the Celts appear to have had a large amount of influence on Germanic culture from up until the first century CE, which led to a high degree of Celtic-Germanic shared material culture and social organization. Some evidence of linguistic convergence between Germanic and Italic languages, whose "Urheimat" is supposed to have been situated north of the Alps before the 1st millennium BCE, have also been highlighted by scholars. Shared changes in their grammars also suggest early contacts between Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages; however, some of these innovations are shared with Baltic only, which may point to linguistic contacts during a relatively late period, at any rate after the initial breakup of Balto-Slavic into Baltic and Slavic languages, with the similarities to Slavic being seen as remnants of Indo-European archaisms or the result of secondary contacts.


title: Germanic peoples

text: According to some authors the Bastarnae or Peucini were the first "Germani" to be encountered by the Greco-Roman world and thus to be mentioned in historical records. They appear in historical sources going back as far as the 3rd century BCE through the 4th century CE. Another eastern people known from about 200 BCE, and sometimes believed to be Germanic-speaking, are the Sciri (Greek: ), who are recorded threatening the city of Olbia on the Black Sea. Late in the 2nd century BCE, Roman and Greek sources recount the migrations of the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones whom Caesar later classified as Germanic. The movements of these groups through parts of Gaul, Italy and Hispania resulted in the Cimbrian War (113–101 BCE) against the Romans, in which the Teutons and Cimbri were victorious over several Roman armies but were ultimately defeated.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The first century BCE was a time of the expansion of Germanic-speaking peoples at the expense of Celtic-speaking polities in modern southern Germany and the Czech Republic. In 63 BCE, Ariovistus, king of the Suevi and a host of other peoples, led a force across the Rhine into Gaul to aid the Sequani against their enemies the Aedui. The Suevi were victorious at the Battle of Magetobriga, and initially were considered an ally of Rome. The Aedui were Roman allies and Julius Caesar, the governor of the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul in 58 BCE, went to war with them, defeating Ariovistus at the Battle of Vosges. In 55 BCE, Caesar crossed the Rhine into Germania, massacring a large migrating group of Tencteri and Usipetes who had crossed the Rhine from the east.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Throughout the reign of Augustus—from 27 BCE until 14 CE—the Roman empire expanded into Gaul, with the Rhine as a border. Starting in 13 BCE, there were Roman campaigns across the Rhine for a 28-year period. First came the pacification of the Usipetes, Sicambri, and Frisians near the Rhine, then attacks increased further from the Rhine, on the Chauci, Cherusci, Chatti and Suevi (including the Marcomanni). These campaigns eventually reached and even crossed the Elbe, and in 5 CE Tiberius was able to show strength by having a Roman fleet enter the Elbe and meet the legions in the heart of "Germania". Once Tiberius subdued the Germanic people between the Rhine and the Elbe, the region at least up to Weser—and possibly up to the Elbe—was made the Roman province "Germania" and provided soldiers to the Roman army.


title: Germanic peoples

text: However, within this period two Germanic kings formed larger alliances. Both of them had spent some of their youth in Rome; the first of them was Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, who had led his people away from the Roman activities into Bohemia, which was defended by forests and mountains, and had formed alliances with other peoples. In 6 CE, Rome planned an attack against him but the campaign was cut short when forces were needed for the Illyrian revolt in the Balkans.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Just three years later (9 CE), the second of these Germanic figures, Arminius of the Cherusci—initially an ally of Rome—drew a large Roman force into an ambush in northern Germany, and destroyed the three legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Marboduus and Arminius went to war with each other in 17 CE; Arminius was victorious and Marboduus was forced to flee to the Romans.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Following the Roman defeat at the Teutoburg Forest, Rome gave up on the possibility of fully integrating this region into the empire. Rome launched successful campaigns across the Rhine between 14 and 16 CE under Tiberius and Germanicus, but the effort of integrating Germania now seemed to outweigh its benefits. In the reign of Augustus's successor, Tiberius, it became state policy to expand the empire no further than the frontier based roughly upon the Rhine and Danube, recommendations that were specified in the will of Augustus and read aloud by Tiberius himself. Roman intervention in Germania led to a shifting and unstable political situation, in which pro- and anti-Roman parties vied for power. Arminius was murdered in 21 CE by his fellow Germanic tribesmen, due in part to these tensions and for his attempt to claim supreme kingly power for himself.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In the wake of Arminius's death, Roman diplomats sought to keep the Germanic peoples divided and fractious. Rome established relationships with individual Germanic kings that are often discussed as being similar to client states; however, the situation on the border was always unstable, with rebellions by the Frisians in 28 CE, and attacks by the Chauci and Chatti in the 60s CE. The most serious threat to the Roman order was the Revolt of the Batavi in 69 CE, during the civil wars following the death of Nero known as the Year of the Four Emperors. The Batavi had long served as auxiliary troops in the Roman army as well as in the imperial bodyguard as the so-called "Numerus Batavorum", often called the Germanic bodyguard. The uprising was led by Gaius Julius Civilis, a member of the Batavian royal family and Roman military officer, and attracted a large coalition of people both inside and outside of the Roman territory. The revolt ended following several defeats, with Civilis claiming to have only supported the imperial claims of Vespasian, who was victorious in the civil war.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The century after the Batavian Revolt saw mostly peace between the Germanic peoples and Rome. In 83 CE, Emperor Domitian of the Flavian dynasty attacked the Chatti north of Mainz (Mogontiacum). This war would last until 85 CE. Following the end of the war with the Chatti, Domitian reduced the number of Roman soldiers on the upper Rhine and shifted the Roman military to guarding the Danube frontier, beginning the construction of the "limes", the longest fortified border in the empire. The period afterwards was peaceful enough that the emperor Trajan reduced the number of soldiers on the frontier. According to Edward James, the Romans appear to have reserved the right to choose rulers among the barbarians on the frontier.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Following sixty years of quiet on the frontier, 166 CE saw a major incursion of peoples from north of the Danube during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, beginning the Marcomannic Wars. By 168 (during the Antonine plague), barbarian hosts consisting of Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatian Iazyges, attacked and pushed their way to Italy. They advanced as far as Upper Italy, destroyed Opitergium/Oderzo and besieged Aquileia. The Romans had finished the war by 180, through a combination of Roman military victories, the resettling of some peoples on Roman territory, and by making alliances with others. Marcus Aurelius's successor Commodus chose not to permanently occupy any territory conquered north of the Danube, and the following decades saw an increase in the defenses at the "limes". The Romans renewed their right to choose the kings of the Marcomanni and Quadi, and Commodus forbid them to hold assemblies unless a Roman centurion was present.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The period after the Marconmannic Wars saw the emergence of peoples with new names along the Roman frontiers, which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups. These new confederacies or peoples tended to border the Roman imperial frontier. Many ethnic names from earlier periods disappear. The Alamanni emerged along the upper Rhine and are mentioned in Roman sources from the third century onward. The Goths begin to be mentioned along the lower Danube, where they attacked the city of Histria in 238. The Franks are first mentioned occupying territory between the Rhine and Weser. The Lombards seem to have moved their center of power to the central Elbe. Groups such as the Alamanni, Goths, and Franks were not unified polities; they formed multiple, loosely associated groups, who often fought each other and some of whom sought Roman friendship. The Romans also begin to mention seaborne attacks by the Saxons, a term used generically in Latin for Germanic-speaking pirates. A system of defenses on both sides of the English Channel, the Saxon Shore, was established to deal with their raids.


title: Germanic peoples

text: From 250 onward, the Gothic peoples formed the "single most potent threat to the northern frontier of Rome". In 250 CE a Gothic king Cniva led Goths with Bastarnae, Carpi, Vandals, and Taifali into the empire, laying siege to Philippopolis. He followed his victory there with another on the marshy terrain at Abrittus, a battle which cost the life of Roman emperor Decius. In 253/254, further attacks occurred reaching Thessalonica and possibly Thrace. In 267/268 there were large raids led by the Herules in 267/268, and a mixed group of Goths and Herules in 269/270. Gothic attacks were abruptly ended in the years after 270, after a Roman victory in which the Gothic king Cannabaudes was killed.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Roman "limes" largely collapsed in 259/260, during the Crisis of the Third Century (235–284), and Germanic raids penetrated as far as northern Italy. The "limes" on the Rhine and upper Danube was brought under control again in 270s, and by 300 the Romans had reestablished control over areas they had abandoned during the crisis. From the later third century onward, the Roman army relied increasingly on troops of Barbarian origin, often recruited from Germanic peoples, with some functioning as senior commanders in the Roman army. In the 4th century, warfare along the Rhine frontier between the Romans and Franks and Alemanni seems to have mostly consisted of campaigns of plunder, during which major battles were avoided. The Romans generally followed a policy of trying to prevent strong leaders from emerging among the barbarians, using treachery, kidnapping, and assassination, paying off rival tribes to attack them, or by supporting internal rivals.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Migration Period is traditionally cited by historians as beginning in 375 CE, under the assumption that the appearance of the Huns prompted the Visigoths to seek shelter within the Roman Empire in 376. The end of the migration period is usually set at 586 when the Lombards invaded Italy. During this time period, numerous barbarian groups invaded the Roman Empire and established new kingdoms within its boundaries. These Germanic migrations traditionally mark the transition between antiquity and the beginning of the early Middle Ages. The reasons for the migrations of the period are unclear, but scholars have proposed overpopulation, climate change, bad harvests, famines, and adventurousness as possible reasons. Migrations were probably carried out by relatively small groups rather than entire peoples.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Greuthungi, a Gothic group in modern Ukraine under the rule of Ermanaric, were among the first peoples attacked by the Huns, apparently facing Hunnic pressure for some years. Following Ermanaric's death, the Greuthungi's resistance broke and they moved toward the Dniester river. A second Gothic group, the Tervingi under King Athanaric, constructed a defensive earthwork against the Huns near the Dniester. However, these measures did not stop the Huns and the majority of the Tervingi abandoned Athanaric; they subsequently fled—accompanied by a contingent of Greuthungi—to the Danube in 376, seeking asylum in the Roman Empire. The emperor Valens chose only to admit the Tervingi, who were settled in the Roman provinces of Thrace and Moesia.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Due to mistreatment by the Romans, the Tervingi revolted in 377, starting the Gothic War, joined by the Greuthungi. The Goths and their allies defeated the Romans first at Marcianople, then defeated and killed emperor Valens in the Battle of Adrianople in 378, destroying two-thirds of Valens' army. Following further fighting, peace was negotiated in 382, granting the Goths considerable autonomy within the Roman Empire. However, these Goths—who would be known as the Visigoths—revolted several more times, finally coming to be ruled by Alaric. In 397, the disunited eastern Empire submitted to some of his demands, possibly giving him control over Epirus. In the aftermath of the large-scale Gothic entries into the empire, the Franks and Alemanni became more secure in their positions in 395, when Stilicho, the barbarian generalissimo who held power in the western Empire, made agreements with them.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In 401, Alaric invaded Italy, coming to an understanding with Stilicho in 404/5. This agreement allowed Stilicho to fight against the force of Radagaisus, who had crossed the Middle Danube in 405/6 and invaded Italy, only to be defeated outside Florence. That same year, a large force of Vandals, Suevi, Alans, and Burgundians crossed the Rhine, fighting the Franks but facing no Roman resistance. In 409, the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans crossing the Pyrenees into Spain, where they took possession of the northern part of the peninsula. The Burgundians seized the land around modern Speyer, Worms, and Strasbourg, territory that was recognized by the Roman Emperor Honorius. When Stilicho fell from power in 408, Alaric invaded Italy again and eventually sacked Rome in 410; Alaric died shortly thereafter. The Visigoths withdrew into Gaul where they faced a power struggle until the succession of Wallia in 415 and his son Theodoric I in 417/18. Following successful campaigns against them by the Roman emperor Flavius Constantius, the Visigoths were settled as Roman allies in Gaul between modern Toulouse and Bourdeaux.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Other Goths, including those of Athanaric, continued to live outside the empire, with three groups crossing into the Roman territory after the Tervingi. The Huns gradually conquered Gothic groups north of the Danube, of which at least six are known, from 376 to 400. Those in Crimea may never have been conquered. The Gepids also formed an important Germanic people under Hunnic rule; the Huns had largely conquered them by 406. One Gothic group under Hunnic domination was ruled by the Amal dynasty, who would form the core of the Ostrogoths. The situation outside the Roman empire in 410s and 420s is poorly attested, but it is clear that the Huns continued to spread their influence onto the middle Danube.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In 428, the Vandal leader Geiseric moved his forces across the strait of Gibraltar into north Africa. Within two years, they had conquered most of north Africa. By 434, following a renewed political crisis in Rome, the Rhine frontier had collapsed, and in order to restore it, the Roman Flavius Aetius engineered the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom in 435/436, possibly with Hunnic mercenaries, and launched several successful campaigns against the Visigoths. In 439, the Vandals conquered Carthage, which served as an excellent base for further raids throughout the Mediterranean and became the basis for the Vandal Kingdom. The loss of Carthage forced Aetius to make peace with the Visigoths in 442, effectively recognizing their independence within the boundaries of the empire. During the resulting peace, Aetius resettled the Burgundians in Sapaudia in southern Gaul. In the 430s, Aetius negotiated peace with the Suevi in Spain, leading to a practical loss of Roman control in the province. Despite the peace, the Suevi expanded their territory by conquering Mérida in 439 and Seville in 441.


title: Germanic peoples

text: By 440, Attila and the Huns had come to rule a multi-ethnic empire north of the Danube; two of the most important peoples within this empire were the Gepids and the Goths. The Gepid king Ardaric came to power around 440 and participated in various Hunnic campaigns. In 450, the Huns interfered in a Frankish succession dispute, leading in 451 to an invasion of Gaul. Aetius, by uniting a coalition of Visigoths, part of the Franks, and others, was able to defeat the Hunnic army at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. In 453, Attila died unexpectedly, and an alliance led by Ardaric's Gepids rebelled against the rule of his sons, defeating them in the Battle of Nedao. Either before or after Attila's death, Valamer, a Gothic ruler of the Amal dynasty, seems to have consolidated power over a large part of the Goths in the Hunnic domain. For the next 20 years, the former subject peoples of the Huns would fight among each other for preeminence.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The arrival of the Saxons in Britain is traditionally dated to 449, however, archaeology indicates they had begun arriving in Britain earlier. Latin sources used "Saxon" generically for seaborne raiders, meaning that not all of the invaders belonged to the continental Saxons. According to the British monk Gildas (c. 500 – c. 570), this group had been recruited to protect the Romano-British from the Picts, but had revolted. They quickly established themselves as rulers on the eastern part of the island.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In 455, in the aftermath of the death of Aetius in 453 and the murder of emperor Valentinian III in 455, the Vandals invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 455. In 456, the Romans persuaded the Visigoths to fight the Suevi, who had broken their treaty with Rome. The Visigoths and a force of Burgundians and Franks defeated the Suevi at the Battle of Campus Paramus, reducing Suevi control to northwestern Spain. The Visigoths went on to conquer all of the Iberian Peninsula by 484 except a small part that remained under Suevian control.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Ostrogoths, led by Valamer's brother Thiudimer, invaded the Balkans in 473. Thiudimer's son Theodoric succeeded him in 476. In that same year, a barbarian commander in the Roman Italian army, Odoacer, mutinied and removed the final western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus. Odoacer ruled Italy for himself, largely continuing the policies of Roman imperial rule. He destroyed the Kingdom of the Rugians, in modern Austria, in 487/488. Theodoric, meanwhile, successfully extorted the Eastern Empire through a series of campaigns in the Balkans. The eastern emperor Zeno agreed to send Theodoric to Italy in 487/8. After a successful invasion, Theodoric killed and replaced Odoacer in 493, founding a new Ostrogothic kingdom. Theodoric died in 526, amid increasing tensions with the eastern empire.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Toward the end of the migration period, in the early 500s, Roman sources portray a completely changed ethnic landscape outside of the empire: the Marcomanni and Quadi disappeared, as had the Vandals. Instead, the Thuringians, Rugians, Sciri, Herules, Goths, and Gepids are mentioned as occupying the Danube frontier. From the mid-5th century onward, the Alamanni had greatly expanded their territory in all directions and launched numerous raids into Gaul. The territory under the Frankish influence had grown to encompass northern Gaul and Germania to the Elbe. The Frankish king Clovis I united the various Frankish groups in 490s, and conquered the Alamanni by 506. From the 490s onward, Clovis waged wars against the Visigoths, defeating them in 507 and taking control of most of Gaul. Clovis's heirs conquered the Thuringians by 530 and the Burgundians by 532. The continental Saxons, composed of many subgroups, were made tributary to the Franks, as were the Frisians, who faced an attack by the Danes under Hygelac in 533.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms were destroyed in 534 and 555 respectively by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire under Justinian. Around 500, a new ethnic identity appears in modern southern Germany, the Baiuvarii (Bavarians), under the patronage of Theodoric's Ostrogothic kingdom and then of the Franks. The Lombards, moving out of Bohemia, destroyed the kingdom of the Heruli in Pannonia in 510. In 568, after destroying the Gepid kingdom, the last Germanic kingdom in the Carpathian basin, the Lombards under Alboin invaded northern Italy, eventually conquering most of it. This invasion has traditionally been regarded as the end of the migration period. The eastern part of Germania, formerly inhabited by the Goths, Gepids, Vandals, and Rugians, was gradually Slavicized, a process enabled by the invasion of the nomadic Avars.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Merovingian Frankia became divided into three subkingdoms: Austrasia in the east around the Rhine and Meuse, Neustria in the west around Paris, and Burgundy in the southeast around Chalon-sur-Saône. The Franks ruled a multilingual and multi-ethnic kingdom, divided between a mostly Romance-speaking West and a mostly Germanic-speaking east, that integrated former Roman elites but remained centered on a Frankish ethnic identity. In 687, the Pippinids came to control the Merovingian rulers as mayors of the palace in Neustria. Under their direction, the subkingdoms of Frankia were reunited. Following the mayoralty of Charles Martel, the Pippinids replaced the Merovingians as kings in 751, when Charles's son Pepin the Short became king and founded the Carolingian dynasty. His son, Charlemagne, would go on to conquer the Lombards, Saxons, and Bavarians. Charlemagne was crowned Roman emperor in 800 and regarded his residence of Aachen as the new Rome.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Following their invasion in 568, the Lombards quickly conquered larger parts of the Italian peninsula. From 574 to 584, a period without a single Lombard ruler, the Lombards nearly collapsed, until a more centralized Lombard polity emerged under King Agilulf in 590. The invading Lombards only ever made up a very small percentage of the Italian population, however Lombard ethnic identity expanded to include people of both Roman and barbarian descent. Lombard power reached its peak during the reign of King Liutprand (712–744). After Liutprand's death, the Frankish King Pippin the Short invaded in 755, greatly weakening the kingdom. The Lombard kingdom was finally annexed by Charlemagne in 773.


title: Germanic peoples

text: After a period of weak central authority, the Visigothic kingdom came under the rule of Liuvigild, who conquered the Kingdom of the Suebi in 585. A Visigothic identity that was distinct from the Romance-speaking population they ruled had disappeared by 700, with the removal of all legal differences between the two groups. In 711, a Muslim army landed at Grenada; the entire Visigothic kingdom would be conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate by 725.


title: Germanic peoples

text: In what would become England, the Anglo-Saxons were divided into several competing kingdoms, the most important of which were Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. In the 7th century, Northumbria established overlordship over the other Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, until Mercia revolted under Wulfhere in 658. Subsequently, Mercia would establish dominance until 825 with the death of King Cenwulf. Few written sources report on Vendel period Scandinavia from 400 to 700, however this period saw profound societal changes and the formation of early states with connections to the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kingdoms. In 793, the first recorded Viking raid occurred at Lindisfarne, ushering in the Viking Age.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Germanic paganism refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic-speaking peoples. It did not form a uniform religious system across Germanic-speaking Europe, but varied from place to place, people to people, and time to time. In many contact areas (e.g. Rhineland and eastern and northern Scandinavia), it was similar to neighboring religions such as those of the Slavs, Celts, and Finnic peoples. The term is sometimes applied as early as the Stone Age, Bronze Age, or the earlier Iron Age, but it is more generally restricted to the time period after the Germanic languages had become distinct from other Indo-European languages. From the first reports in Roman sources to the final conversion to Christianity, Germanic paganism thus covers a period of around one thousand years. Scholars are divided as to the degree of continuity between the religious practices of the earlier Germanic peoples and those attested in later Norse paganism and elsewhere: while some scholars argue that Tacitus, early medieval sources, and the Norse sources indicate religious continuity, other scholars are highly skeptical of such arguments.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Like their neighbors and other historically related peoples, the ancient Germanic peoples venerated numerous indigenous deities. These deities are attested throughout literature authored by or written about Germanic-speaking peoples, including runic inscriptions, contemporary written accounts, and in folklore after Christianization. As an example, the second of the two Merseburg charms (two Old High German examples of alliterative verse from a manuscript dated to the ninth century) mentions six deities: Woden, Balder, Sinthgunt, Sunna, Frija, and Volla.


title: Germanic peoples

text: With the exception of "Sinthgunt", proposed cognates to these deities occur in other Germanic languages, such as Old English and Old Norse. By way of the comparative method, philologists are then able to reconstruct and propose early Germanic forms of these names from early Germanic mythology. Compare the following table:


title: Germanic peoples

text: The structure of the magic formula in this charm has a long history prior to this attestation: it is first known to have occurred in Vedic India, where it occurs in the Atharvaveda, dated to around 500 BCE. Numerous other beings common to various groups of ancient Germanic peoples receive mention throughout the ancient Germanic record. One such type of entity, a variety of supernatural women, is also mentioned in the first of the two Merseburg Charms:


title: Germanic peoples

text: Other widely attested entities from the North and West Germanic folklore include elves, dwarfs, and the mare. (For more discussion on these entities, see Proto-Germanic folklore.)


title: Germanic peoples

text: The great majority of material describing Germanic mythology stems from the North Germanic record. The body of myths among the North Germanic-speaking peoples is known today as Norse mythology and is attested in numerous works, the most expansive of which are the "Poetic Edda" and the "Prose Edda". While these texts were composed in the 13th century, they frequently quote genres of traditional alliterative verse known today as "eddic poetry" and "skaldic poetry" dating to the pre-Christian period.


title: Germanic peoples

text: West Germanic mythology (that of speakers of, e.g., Old English and Old High German) is comparatively poorly attested. Notable texts include the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow and the Old English Nine Herbs Charm. While most extant references are simply to deity names, some narratives do survive into the present, such as the Lombard origin myth, which details a tradition among the Lombards that features the deities Frea (cognate with Old Norse ) and Godan (cognate with Old Norse ). Attested in the 7th-century "Origo Gentis Langobardorum" and the 8th-century "Historia Langobardorum" from the Italian Peninsula, the narrative strongly corresponds in numerous ways with the prose introduction to the eddic poem "Grímnismál", recorded in 13th-century Iceland.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Very few texts make up the corpus of Gothic and other East Germanic languages, and East Germanic paganism and its associated mythic body is especially poorly attested. Notable topics that provide insight into the matter of East Germanic paganism include the Ring of Pietroassa, which appears to be a cult object (see also Gothic runic inscriptions), and the mention of the Gothic (cognate with Old Norse "Æsir" '(pagan) gods') by Jordanes.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Practices associated with the religion of the ancient Germanic peoples see fewer attestations. However, elements of religious practices are discernable throughout the textual record associated with the ancient Germanic peoples, including a focus on sacred groves and trees, the presence of seeresses, and numerous vocabulary items. The archaeological record has yielded a variety of depictions of deities, a number of them associated with depictions of the ancient Germanic peoples (see Anthropomorphic wooden cult figurines of Central and Northern Europe). Notable from the Roman period are the Matres and Matronae, some having Germanic names, to whom devotional altars were set up in regions of Germania, Eastern Gaul, and Northern Italy (with a small distribution elsewhere) that were occupied by the Roman army from the first to the fifth century.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Germanic mythology and religious practice is of particular interest to Indo-Europeanists, scholars who seek to identify aspects of ancient Germanic culture—both in terms of linguistic correspondence and by way of motifs—stemming from Proto-Indo-European culture, including Proto-Indo-European mythology. The primordial being Ymir, attested solely in Old Norse sources, makes for a commonly cited example. In Old Norse texts, the death of this entity results in creation of the cosmos, a complex of motifs that finds strong correspondence elsewhere in the Indo-European sphere, notably in Vedic mythology.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Germanic peoples began entering the Roman Empire in large numbers at the same time that Christianity was spreading there, and this connection was a major factor encouraging conversion. The East Germanic peoples, the Langobards, and the Suevi in Spain converted to Arian Christianity, a form of Christianity that rejected the divinity of Christ. The first Germanic people to convert to Arianism were the Visigoths, at the latest in 376 when they entered the Roman Empire. This followed a longer period of missionary work by both Orthodox Christians and Arians, such as the Arian Wulfila, who was made missionary bishop of the Goths in 341 and translated the Bible into Gothic. The Arian Germanic peoples all eventually converted to Nicene Christianity, which had become the dominant form of Christianity within the Roman Empire; the last to convert were the Visigoths in Spain under their king Reccared in 587.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The areas of the Roman Empire conquered by the Franks, Alemanni, and Baiuvarii were mostly Christian already, but it appeared Christianity declined there. In 496, the Frankish king Clovis I converted to Nicene Christianity. This began a period of missionizing within Frankish territory. The Anglo-Saxons gradually converted following a mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 595. In the 7th century, Frankish-supported missionary activity spread out of Gaul, led by figures of the Anglo-Saxon mission such as Saint Boniface. The Saxons initially rejected Christianization, but were eventually forcibly converted by Charlemagne as a result of their conquest in the Saxon Wars in 776/777.


title: Germanic peoples

text: While attempts to convert the Scandinavian peoples began in 831, they were mostly unsuccessful until the 10th and 11th centuries. The last Germanic people to convert were the Swedes, although the Geats had converted earlier. The pagan Temple at Uppsala seems to have continued to exist into the early 1100s.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Germanic speakers developed a native script, the runes (or the "fuþark"), and the earliest known form of which consists of 24 characters. The runes are generally held to have been used exclusively by Germanic-speaking populations. All known early runic inscriptions are found in Germanic contexts with the potential exception of one inscription, which may indicate cultural transfer between the Germanic speakers to Slavic speakers (and may potentially be the earliest known writing among Slavic speakers).


title: Germanic peoples

text: Like other indigenous scripts of Europe, the runes ultimately developed from the Phoenician alphabet, but unlike similar scripts, the runes were not replaced by the Latin alphabet by the first century BCE. Runes remained in use among the Germanic peoples throughout their history despite the significant influence of Rome.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The precise date that Germanic speakers developed the runic alphabet is unknown, with estimates varying from 100 BCE to 100 CE. Generally accepted inscriptions in the oldest attested form of the script, called the Elder Futhark, date from 200 to 700 CE. The word "rune" is widely attested among Germanic languages, where it developed from Proto-Germanic and held a primary meaning of 'secret', but also other meanings such as 'whisper', 'mystery', 'closed deliberation', and 'council'. In most cases, runes appear not to have been used for everyday communication and knowledge of them may have generally been limited to a small group, for whom the term "erilaR" is attested from the sixth century onward.


title: Germanic peoples

text: The letters of the Elder Futhark are arranged in an order called the "futhark", so named after its first six characters. The alphabet is supposed to have been extremely phonetic, and each letter could also represent a word or concept, so that, for instance, the f-rune also stood for ('cattle, property'). Such examples are known as "Begriffsrunen" ('concept runes'). Runic inscriptions are found on organic materials such as wood, bone, horn, ivory, and animal hides, as well as on stone and metal. Inscriptions tend to be short, and are difficult to interpret as profane or magical. They include names, inscriptions by the maker of an object, memorials to the dead, as well as inscriptions that religious or magical in nature.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Germanic personal names are commonly dithematic, consisting of two components that may be combined freely (such as the Old Norse female personal name "Sigríðr", consisting of 'victory' + 'beloved'). As summarized by Per Vikstrand, "The old Germanic personal names are, from a social and ideological point of view, characterized by three main features: religion, heroism, and family bonds. The religious aspect [of Germanic names] seems to be an inherited, Indo-European trace, which the Germanic languages share with Greek and other Indo-European languages."


title: Germanic peoples

text: One point of debate surrounding Germanic name-giving practice is whether name elements were considered semantically meaningful when combined. Whatever the case, an element of a name could be inherited by a male or female's offspring, leading to an alliterative lineage (related, see alliterative verse). The runestone D359 in Istaby, Sweden provides one such example, where three generations of men are connected by way of the element , meaning 'wolf' (the alliterative "Haþuwulfaz", *"Heruwulfaz", and "Hariwulfaz"). Sacral components to Germanic personal names are also attested, including elements such as *"hailaga"- and *"wīha"- (both usually translated as 'holy, sacred', see for example Vé), and deity names (theonyms). Deity names as first components of personal names are attested primarily in Old Norse names, where they commonly reference in particular the god Thor (Old Norse ).


title: Germanic peoples

text: The ancient Germanic-speaking peoples were a largely oral culture. Written literature in Germanic languages is not recorded until the 6th century (Gothic Bible) or the 8th century in modern England and Germany. The philologist Andreas Heusler proposed the existence of various genres of literature in the "Old Germanic" period, which were largely based on genres found in high medieval Old Norse poetry. These include ritual poetry, epigrammatic poetry (), memorial verses (), lyric, narrative poetry, and praise poetry. Heinrich Beck suggests that, on the basis of Latin mentions in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the following genres can be adduced: origo gentis (the origin of a people or their rulers), the fall of heroes (), praise poetry, and laments for the dead.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Some stylistic aspects of later Germanic poetry appear to have origins in the Indo-European period, as shown by comparison with ancient Greek and Sanskrit poetry. Originally, the Germanic-speaking peoples shared a metrical and poetic form, alliterative verse, which is attested in very similar forms in Old Saxon, Old High German and Old English, and in a modified form in Old Norse. Alliterative verse is not attested in the small extant Gothic corpus. The poetic forms diverge among the different languages from the 9th century onward.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Later Germanic peoples shared a common legendary tradition. These heroic legends mostly involve historical personages who lived during the migration period (4th–6th centuries AD), placing them in highly ahistorical and mythologized settings; they originate and develop as part of an oral tradition. Some early Gothic heroic legends are already found in Jordanes' "Getica" (c. 551). The close link between Germanic heroic legend and Germanic language and possibly poetic devices is shown by the fact that the Germanic speakers in Francia who adopted a Romance language, do not preserve Germanic legends but rather developed their own heroic folklore—excepting the figure of Walter of Aquitaine.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Until the middle of the 20th century, the majority of scholars assumed the existence of a distinct Germanic legal culture and law. Early ideas about Germanic law have come under intense scholarly scrutiny since the 1950s, and specific aspects of it such as the legal importance of "sibb", retinues, and loyalty, and the concept of outlawry can no longer be justified. Besides the assumption of a common Germanic legal tradition and the use of sources of different types from different places and time periods, there are no native sources for early Germanic law. The earliest written legal sources, the "Leges Barbarorum", were all written under Roman and Christian influence and often with the help of Roman jurists, and contain large amounts of "Vulgar Latin Law", an unofficial legal system that functioned in the Roman provinces.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Although Germanic law never appears to have been a competing system to Roman law, it is possible that Germanic "modes of thought" () still existed, with important elements being an emphasis on orality, gesture, formulaic language, legal symbolism, and ritual. Some items in the "Leges", such as the use of vernacular words, may reveal aspects of originally Germanic, or at least non-Roman, law. Legal historian Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand writes that this vernacular, often in the form of Latinized words, belongs to "the oldest layers of a Germanic legal language" and shows some similarities to Gothic.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Warfare seems to have been a constant in Germanic society, including conflicts among and within Germanic peoples. There is no common Germanic word for "war", and it was not necessarily differentiated from other forms of violence. Historical information on Germanic warfare almost entirely depends on Greco-Roman sources, however their accuracy has been questioned. The core of the army was formed by the comitatus (retinue), a group of warriors following a chief. As retinues grew larger, their names could become associated with entire peoples. Many retinues functioned as auxilia (mercenary units in the Roman army).


title: Germanic peoples

text: Roman sources stress, perhaps partially as a literary topos, that the Germanic peoples fought without discipline. Germanic warriors fought mostly on foot, in tight formations in close combat. Tacitus mentions a single formation as used by the "Germani", the wedge (). Cavalry was rare: in the Roman period, it mostly consisted of chiefs and their immediate retinues, who may have dismounted to fight. However, East Germanic peoples such as the Goths developed cavalry forces armed with lances due to contact with various nomadic peoples. Archaeological finds, mostly in the form of grave goods, indicate that most warriors were armed with spear, shield, and often with swords. Higher status individuals were often buried with spurs for riding. The only archaeological evidence for helmets and chain mail shows them to be of Roman manufacture.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Unlike agriculture in the Roman provinces, which was organized around the large farms known as villae rusticae, Germanic agriculture was organized around villages. When Germanic peoples expanded into Northern Gaul in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, they brought this village-based agriculture with them, which increased the agricultural productivity of the land; Heiko Steuer suggests this means that Germania was more agriculturally productive than is generally assumed. Villages were not distant from each other but often within sight, revealing a fairly high population density, and contrary to the assertions of Roman sources, only about 30% of Germania was covered in forest, about the same percentage as today.


title: Germanic peoples

text: Based on pollen samples and the finds of seeds and plant remains, the chief grains cultivated in Germania were barley, oats, and wheat (both Einkorn and emmer), while the most common vegetables were beans and peas. Flax was also grown. Agriculture in Germania relied heavily on animal husbandry, primarily the raising of cattle, which were smaller than their Roman counterparts Both cultivation and animal husbandry methods improved with time, with examples being the introduction of rye, which grew better in Germania, and the introduction of the three-field system.