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hearthstoneI will confess that while I have a long-standing relationship with heathen gods, and a sometimes working relationship with Celtic gods, there is a special place in my heart for the gods of that bit of Europe where the boundaries between the two were particularly unclear.
Tribes are tribes, Celtic and Germanic, but there was at a certain time a lot of back and forth. Similarities in style of worship. Similarities that sometimes reach the point of sameness--all those statues of the Matronae, sometimes clearly identified as Celtic, sometimes certainly Germanic, sometimes of uncertain origin.
Interpretatio Romana helped this along but cannot account for it all, and surely not for the sheer scale of it.
There's also the dearth of information--much of what we do know is from the archaeological record. Some is linguistic, some is extrapolated from cultures with a greater (or any) mythological tradition.
But what it comes down to, for me at least, is that the line is finer than we sometimes think between what is Celtic and what is Germanic.
Which, for me, works out pretty well. I can see where the mileage on this would vary.
Tribes are tribes, Celtic and Germanic, but there was at a certain time a lot of back and forth. Similarities in style of worship. Similarities that sometimes reach the point of sameness--all those statues of the Matronae, sometimes clearly identified as Celtic, sometimes certainly Germanic, sometimes of uncertain origin.
Interpretatio Romana helped this along but cannot account for it all, and surely not for the sheer scale of it.
There's also the dearth of information--much of what we do know is from the archaeological record. Some is linguistic, some is extrapolated from cultures with a greater (or any) mythological tradition.
But what it comes down to, for me at least, is that the line is finer than we sometimes think between what is Celtic and what is Germanic.
Which, for me, works out pretty well. I can see where the mileage on this would vary.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-29 10:52 pm (UTC)Similarly, being Irish and having English relatives on my mother's side, knowing that certain tribes in Celtic times were spread over what is now Ireland, Wales, and parts of England, helps me overcome the knee-jerk somewhat-anti-British nationalism of my youth.