North Germanic peoples, Nordic peoples and in a medieval context Norsemen, were a Germanic linguistic group originating from the Scandinavian Peninsula. They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North Germanic languages of today.
The North Germanic peoples are thought to have emerged as a distinct people in what is now southern Sweden in the early centuries AD. Several North Germanic tribes are mentioned by classical writers in antiquity, in particular the Swedes, Danes, Geats, Gutes and Rugii. During the subsequent Viking Age, seafaring North Germanic adventurers, commonly referred to as Vikings, raided and settled territories throughout Europe and beyond, founding several important political entities and exploring the North Atlantic as far as North America. Groups that arose from this expansion include the Normans, the Norse–Gaels and the Rus' people. The North Germanic peoples of the Viking Age went by various names among the cultures they encountered, but are generally referred to as Norsemen.
With the end of the Viking Age in the 11th century, the North Germanic peoples were converted from their native Norse paganism to Christianity, while their previously tribal societies were centralized into the modern kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Modern linguistic groups that descended from the North Germanic peoples are the Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, Swedes, and Faroese. "[T]he pages of history have been filled with accounts of various Germanic peoples that made excursions in search of better homes; the Goths went into the Danube valley and thence into Italy and southern France; and thence into Italy and southern France; the Franks seized what was later called France; the Vandals went down into Spain, and via Africa they "vandalized" Rome; the Angles, part of the Saxons, and the Jutes moved over into England; and the Burgundians and the Lombards worked south into France and Italy. Probably very early during these centuries of migration the three outstanding groups of the Germanic peoples — the North Germanic people of Scandinavia, the East Germanic branch, comprising the Goths chiefly, and the West Germanic group, comprising the remaining Germanic tribes — developed their notable group traits. Then, while the East Germanic tribes (that is, the Goths) passed gradually out of the pages of history and disappeared completely, the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, or Norse, peoples, as they are variously called, became a distinctive people, more and more unlike the West Germanic folk who inhabited Germany itself and, ultimately, Holland and Belgium and England. While that great migration of nations which the Germans have named the Volkerwanderung was going on, the Scandinavian division of the Germanic peoples had kept their habitation well to the north of the others and had been splitting up into the four subdivisions now known as the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Icelanders. Long after the West Germanic and East Germanic peoples had made history farther south in Europe, the North Germanic tribes of Scandinavia began a series of expeditions which, during the eighth and ninth centuries, in the so-called Viking Age especially, led them to settle Iceland, to overrun England and even annex it to Denmark temporarily, and, most important of all, to settle in northern France and merge with the French to such an extent that Northmen became Normans, and later these Normans became the conquerors of England." These groups are often collectively referred to as Scandinavians, although Icelanders and the Faroese are sometimes excluded from that definition.
Names
Ethnonyms Although the early North Germanic peoples definitely had a common identity, it is uncertain if they had a common ethnonym. "The same can be said of Viking Age Scandinavians who did not have a common ethnonym but expressed their common identity through the geographical and linguistic terms... There is absolutely no doubt about a common Northern identity during the Viking Age and afterwards... it even survives today. Their common identity was rather expressed through the geographical and linguistic Old Norse terms Norðrlǫnd 'northern lands' and dǫnsk tunga 'Danish tongue'. Most early Scandinavians would however primarily identify themselves with their region of origin. However, the Old Norse term Nordmenn, usually applied for Norwegians, was sometimes applied to all Old Norse speakers. "Nor were the Viking raiders as a whole referred to by that name by their contemporaries. The Anglo-Saxons called them all ‘Danes’, whichever land they came from; the Franks called them Normanni, ‘Northmen’; the Germans called them ‘Ashmen’, perhaps in allusion to their ships, though these were in fact made of oak; the Irish called them either Gaill, ‘Foreigners’, or Loch- lannaighy ‘Northerners’, though they also sometimes distinguished between Danes and Norwegians as ‘Black Northerners’ and ‘White Northerners’; Spanish Arabs called them Majus, ‘Heathens’; in the east, the Slavs, Arabs and Byzantine Greeks called them Rus or Ros9 which probably was originally a Finnish name for the Swedes. As for the Scandinavians themselves, they usually thought of themselves as inhabitants of a particular region—‘Men of Vestfold’, ‘Men of Hordaland’, ‘Men of the Uplands’, and so forth—but as the sense of national identity grew so too did the use of national names. They also used the term Nordmenn, sometimes in the limited sense ‘Norwegians’ but more often in the general sense ‘Scandinavians’; the latter usage has given rise to the general terms ‘Northmen’, ‘Norsemen’ and ‘Norse’ in modem English."
Exonyms In the early medieval period, as today, Vikings was a common term for North Germanic raiders, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering in continental Europe and the British Isles. In modern times, the term is often applied to all North Germanic peoples of the Middle Ages, including raiders and non-raiders, although such use is controversial. From the Old Norse language, the term norrœnir menn (northern men), has given rise to the English name Norsemen, which is sometimes used for the pre-Christian North Germanic peoples. In scholarship, however, the term Norsemen generally refers only to early Norwegians.
The North Germanic peoples were known by many names by those they encountered. They were known as Ascomanni (Ashmen) by the Germans, and Dene (Danes) or heathens by the Anglo-Saxons. "The peoples these Scandinavians encountered gave them a variety of names: the Franks normally called them Northmen or Danes, while for the English they were generally Danes or heathens. The Irish described the early raiders as pagans or gentiles, but by the middle of the ninth century they began to call them foreigners, the Norwegians and Danes being distinguished as 'white' and 'black' foreigners, Finngalland DubgalL In eastern Europe the Slavs called the Scandinavian invaders Rus, a word derived trom the Finnish name for the Svear, which itself came from a word meaning 'rowers' or 'crew of oarsmen'. It was 'Rus', variants of which were used in Arabic and Byzantine Greek texts, which eventually gave Russia its name. In the ninth century it was only the English who, occasionally, called the invaders Vikings, a Scandinavian word that now has a wider meaning, and is used to describe many aspects of Scandinavian society in what is commonly called the Age of the Vikings." "The people these Scandinavians encountered described them in various ways. In western Europe they were often identified as Danes or Northmen, and were sometimes called heathens or gentiles." The Old Frankish word Nortmann 'Northman' was Latinised as Normanni and then entered Old French as Normands, whence the name of the Normans and of Normandy, which was conquered from the Franks by Vikings in the 10th century. The Old Irish terms Finngall 'white foreigner' and Dubgall 'black foreigner' were used by the Irish for Norwegian and Danish Vikings, respectively. Dubliners called them Ostmen (East-people), and the name Oxmanstown (an area in central Dublin; the name is still current) comes from one of their settlements; they were also known as Lochlannaig 'lake-people'.
The Slavs, Finns, Muslims, Byzantines and other peoples of the east knew them as the Rus' or Rhōs, probably derived from various uses of rōþs-, i.e. "related to rowing", or from the area of Roslagen in east-central Sweden, where most of the Vikings who visited the Slavic lands originated. The Arabs of Spain also knew them as al-Majus (fire-worshippers), although they used this term rather for the Basques. After the Rus' established Kievan Rus' and gradually merged with the Slavic population, the North Germanic people in the east become known as Varangians (ON: Væringjar, meaning "sworn men"), after the bodyguards of the Byzantine known as the Varangian Guard.
In modern scholarship, the terms Scandinavians "One of the reasons for this is doubtless to be found in the close racial affinity of the Scandinavians, as North Germanics, with the Anglo-Saxons, and in the consciousness of this affinity existing in all modern nationality groups of North Germanic ethnic stock" "Northern Germanic peoples, i.e. the Scandinavians..." "North Germanic (Scandinavian) peoples" and Norsemen are common synonyms for North Germanic peoples. As such, Scandinavians is generally applied to modern North Germanic peoples, while Norsemen is sometimes applied to pagan pre-modern North Germanic peoples.
History
Prehistory
The Battle Axe culture, a local variant of the Corded Ware culture, which was itself an offshoot of the Yamnaya culture, emerged in southern Scandinavia in the early 3rd millennium BC. Modern-day Scandinavians have been found to carry more ancestry from the Yamnaya culture than any other population in Europe. While previous inhabitants of Scandinavia have been found to be mostly carriers of haplogroup I, the emergence of the Battle Axe culture in Scandinavia is characterized by the appearance of new lineages such as haplogroup R1a and haplogroup R1b. The Proto-Germanic language is ultimately thought to have emerged from the Battle Axe culture, possibly through its superimposition upon the earlier megalithic cultures of the area. The Germanic tribal societies of Scandinavia were thereafter surprisingly stable for thousands of years.
Scandinavia is considered the only area in Europe where the Bronze Age was significantly delayed for a whole region. The period was nevertheless characterized by the independent development of new technologies, with the peoples of southern Scandinavia developing a culture with its own characteristics, indicating the emergence of a common cultural heritage. When bronze was finally introduced, its importance was rapidly established, leading to the emergence of the Nordic Bronze Age. The Nordic Bronze Age is closely genetically related to the Beaker and Unetice cultures of Continental Europe, and even the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures of the Eurasian Steppe, with whom it also shares numerous cultural characteristics.
Ancient history