West Germanic tribes

The expansion of the Germanic tribes 750 BC – AD 1 (after the Penguin Atlas of World History 1988):

   Settlements before 750 BC

   New settlements by 500 BC

   New settlements by 250 BC

   New settlements by AD 1

The West Germanic tribes were Germanic peoples who spoke the branch of Germanic languages known as West Germanic languages.

They appear to be derived from the Jastorf culture, a Pre-Roman Iron Age offshoot of the Nordic Bronze Age culture.

The West Germanic tribes expanded southwards to the Rhine and later down to the Alps and west into Great Britain.

According to Wolfram and Herwig, West Germanic is a linguistic and not an ethnic classification.^[1]

Groups

• Istvaeones
• Saxons
• Jutes
• Angles
• Thuringians
• Alamanni
• Suebi
• Franks
  • Sicambri
  • Salii
  • Chamavi
  • Bructeri
  • Chatti
  • Chattuarii
  • Ampsivarii
  • Tencteri
  • Ubii
  • Batavi
• Frisii
• Cimbri
• Batavi
• Chatti
• Thuringii
• Hermunduri
• Ingaevones

See also

• North Germanic tribes
• East Germanic tribes

References

1. Wolfram, Herwig (1997). p. 27.

Further reading

• 2013, [BOOK], 267 cites, The languages of the world, by Kenneth Katzner.
• 2002, [BOOK], 418 cites, Alphabet to email: How written English evolved and where it's heading, by NS Baron. "Archaeological evidence suggests that when the invading West-Germanic tribes came to England in the mid-fifth century, they wrote in runes..."
• 2000, [PDF], 3 cites, The origin of the Goths, by F Kortlandt. "It is possible that Gothic ethnogenesis actually took place in Lower Austria when East Germanic tribes from the north met with West Germanic tribes from the west and, having been prevented from entering the Roman Empire in large numbers, joined forces..."
• 1998, [CITE], 11 cites, Dwellings, settlements and settlement patterns in Merovingian south-west Germany and adjacent areas, by F Damminger.
• 1992, [CHAPTER], 59 cites, English as a pluricentric language, by G Leitner, in Pluricentric languages. "four major phases need be distinguished: (1) The settlement period of West Germanic tribes in England up to Early Modern English (middle of fifth to late fifteenth centuries); (2) The Elizabethan and Jacobean periods..."
• 1987, [PDF], 2 cites, Creatures of the Long Night, by JK Hord, in Comparative Civilizations Review. "But from about 200 AD on, various West Germanic tribes began uniting into confederations...."
• 1981, [BOOK], 36 cites, Frisian, by TL Markey. "The Frisii were supposedly one of a number of West Germanic tribes including the..."
• 1981, [PAPER], 7 cites, Compound diction and the style of Beowulf, by JD Niles, in English Studies (Taylor & Francis). "...the sole verse form.... Its use was cultivated in common among the various North Germanic and West Germanic tribes...."
• 1971, [PAPER], 29 cites, The shaping of the early medieval kingdom, by H Wolfram. "...there is strong evidence that the thiudans disappeared as a ruling type among the West-Germanic tribes."
• 1970, [BOOK], 118 cites, The cult of kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: the transition from paganism to Christianity, by WA Chaney. "Kings Italicus and Chariomerus of the Cherusci (Tacitus, Annales, XI, c. 16; Dio Cassius, LXVII, c. 5) are among the six known references to kings among the West Germanic tribes...."
• 1950, [PAPER], 14 cites, The Germanic Development of Indo-European ē, by WH Bennett, in Language (JSTOR). "If we consider only the first known migrations of the 'East' and 'West' Germanic tribes, the change..."
• 1904, [BOOK], 'zero' cites for this specific translation of the work from the 1200s, The Nibelungenlied: Translated Into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original, by GH Needler. "...the evidences point to the Rhine Franks, a West Germanic tribe settled in the fifth century..."