Proto-Germanic folklore is the
folklore of the speakers of
Proto-Germanic and includes topics such as the
Germanic mythology,
legendry, and
folk belief
In folkloristics, folk belief or folk-belief is a broad genre of folklore that is often expressed in narratives, customs, rituals, foodways, proverbs, and rhymes. It also includes a wide variety of behaviors, expressions, and beliefs. Examples of ...
s of
early Germanic culture
Early Germanic culture refers to the culture of the early Germanic peoples. Largely derived from a synthesis of Proto-Indo-European and indigenous Northern European elements, the Germanic culture started to exist in the Jastorf culture that de ...
. By way of the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
,
Germanic philologists, a variety of
historical linguist
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
, have proposed reconstructions of entities, locations, and concepts with various levels of security in early Germanic folklore (reconstructions are
indicated by the presence of an asterisk). The present article includes both reconstructed forms and proposed
motifs from the early Germanic period.
Linguistic reconstructions can be obtained via comparison between the various Germanic languages, comparison with related words in other
Indo-European languages, especially
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foo ...
and
Baltic
Baltic may refer to:
Peoples and languages
*Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian
*Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...
, comparison with borrowings into neighbouring language families such as
Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
, or via a combination of those methods. This allows linguists to project some terms back to the Proto-Germanic period despite their attestation in only one Germanic language; for instance, ''*saidaz'' ('magic') is only attested in Old Norse ''seiðr'', but has parallels in Proto-Celtic ''*soytos'' and Lithuanian ''saitas''.
Deities
Entities
Locations
Other
See also
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Anthropomorphic wooden cult figurines of Central and Northern Europe
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Sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology
*
Proto-Celtic folklore
Notes
References
* Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989). ''Íslensk orðsifjabók''. Orðabók Háskólans.
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{{Germanic peoples
European folklore