Germania

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Practically all day long I've watched youtube videos on the origins of language. Today was my day for exploring a little more about the Viking world the Arabian ambassador guy describes in his journal, but I got side-tracked into figuring out what the Friesian languages are about.

What made me curious were several comments I read in my search that involved the Rus Vikings, and association with the Friesian language. I was clueless. Never heard of it. Friesian is considered the last precursor language to the English language. A web search led me to the Wikipedia articles on the various languages that are called Friesian in one area of Germany or Netherlands. They're based mostly on the German language.

The Friesian speaking people inhabit the coastal areas of Germany and the other European countries that were on the coast of the North Sea right across the English Channel from England. The Celts who were there when the Romans conquered England lost the war, and it is apparently recorded somewhere that the Romans killed all the Celts, man, woman, and child.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frisians.png

Then, because of some threat in other parts of the Roman Empire, the Romans pulled all their troops out of England and abandoned the field to the Friesian speaking countries close by. They, in turn, were routed by the Anglo-Saxons, who were later whipped up on by the Normans who were Norsemen who were Vikings... and the band plays on.

I have speculated before that the Roman Catholic priesthood was invited into Germany and Scandinavia because they had a written language and social organization skills. They had Latin, and once a tribe without a written language became aware of the advantages of it they were willing to negotiate. This invitation to govern was not so rare with groups who had no idea how to govern or organize their own protective forces.

When I was reading about the Rus and Vandals and other tribal movements they were described as having a ruddy complexion. I have a ruddy complexion. I only found out when I joined the Navy and they put Ruddy down as my complexion. I had an anthropology professor who accused me of being "one of those barbarians" because of the shape of my skull. This research was beginning to take on a "roots" prospective.

This is a link to the web site that I've been polluting my mind with:

http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm

Somewhere, either on this web site or at one of the linked site that appear there, a story about a Viking and his encounter with his son about his inheritance. The father gave his son a sword and a battle axe and told him that was his entire and only birthright.

He got no other property. He was told to use those weapons to provide himself with the wherewithal he personally found important. A license to kill? In effect, the son was sent "a'viking" in the hope of gaining enough loot and booty to return home and create his own kingdom. Centuries later, the sword was replaced with the word, and a new way of coping with the rancor of the world of nature was forever changed.

Another bit of information I was ignorant about was that the Rune symbols are not as ancient as I'd led myself to believe. According to what I read today they were the initial attempt of the Scandinavian and Germanic tribes to come up with their own written language.

The runes were generated only after the Northern tribes become aware there was such a thing as a written language. I'm not sure of the dates. It's my guess that the Runes were not satisfactory to them, and their Druid priests felt as though they had been betrayed by their followers by deserting them for Latin and the black-robed Catholic priests.

I'm speculating that the Druid leadership was insulted beyond measure, and withdrew from the north country en masse to prove to their former charges that they couldn't live without them. Paradoxically, they probably immigrated to the slums around Rome where they intermingled with the Jewish Christian refugees from Israel.

The Druidic priesthood had been in charge of all the Germanic and Scandinavian tribes. They had all the skills needed to adopt the Christian religion and organize the Church of Rome much better than the decimated Jews could.

For the sake of argument, I playfully claim that the Druids used the executive skills they still possessed to organize the Christian Jews refugees in the slums and catacombs of Rome into a secret society whose effort was to proclaim Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah.

In my highly questionable opinion I believe the embarrassed and shamed Druids, formerly of the Northern tribes were welcomed into the Jewish Christian community and incrementally took over the Church of Rome as their new religion, and by extension the Holy Roman Empire which was their old stomping grounds. YMMV '-)

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