(Please note, I am in the Central European Timezone. This diary is in the queue and will be published in the middle-of-night my time. I will try to answer and/or acknowledge all comments in the morning my time)
This diary is a summary (in two parts) of the introduction to my dissertation-by-publication: The Germanic Narrative of the Eldar in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium: Northern Courage, Wyrd and Redemption. The dissertation consists of six peer-reviewed, published or forthcoming articles of around 10,000 words each. I am now working on two additional chapters that will extend the thesis to also include the Númenóreans of the Second Age and the Dúnedain and Rohirrim / Eorlingas of the Third. This will encompass my book manuscript that I hope to submit to Walking Tree Publishers at the end of Summer (and maybe ride the wave of Fandom from the rumored, new Amazon series and make some dough, heh!). Perhaps some of the feedback I get here will assist me in that endeavour.
My first chapter of the dissertation, after the introduction, was published as an article in Tolkien Studies 11 (2014) and I published a diary for Language of the Night (here) in 2017. While the academic journal Tolkien Studies is not online, those interested in the article itself may review it via my academia.edu page (here: Original Sin in Heorot and Valinor). However, I think I need to back up a bit, if you are interested, and introduce my thesis. Therefore, in the interest of brevity, this diary will focus on the concept of the ‘Germanic’ before we get to J. R. R. Tolkien in part II (next week).
The task of this introduction, parts I and II (coming next week), is to establish a thematic framework in which to view the forthcoming five or six diaries. My argument is simply that the Elves of Middle-earth function as Germanic heroes within an illustrative, Germanic heroic narrative that echoes the medieval tradition of the exemplum. Our understanding of the intradiegetic Elvish history inside this framework of Germanic heroic narrative furthers our understanding of Tolkien’s theory of Northern courage through his fiction, academic views, and personal correspondence.
This is, admittedly, a rather bold claim and requires an equally robust explanation. The main problem of the statement is what exactly do we mean by ‘Germanic’? The term is problematic, to say the least, especially in the fields of historiography and ethnology and to some extent in literature. Because this and future diaries will venture into historiography and ethnology at times, it is important to discuss how the term ‘Germanic’ is currently used in these fields as well. I need to define my terms, especially this one. Therefore, the discussion firstly begins with the use of the term ‘Germanic’ in its historical, ethnological, and literary use, and how it is used here. Secondly, the discussion will endeavor to answer the question how did Tolkien himself interpret the ‘Germanic’ in heroic literature? However, that will be addressed in the next diary of this series. It is important to note at this point, however, that Tolkien rarely, if ever, used the term ‘Germanic’ (perhaps for the reasons discussed below), instead he referred to the theory of Northern courage.
Note that, in this diary, key words and concepts that will recur in future diaries of this series appear in bold and are recapped at the bottom under Keywords.
I. The Historical and Ethnological Problem
There is one field in which the term ‘Germanic’ is not at all problematic: historical linguistics. The Germanic is simply a sub-family of the Indo-European language family. The term becomes problematic in historiography and ethnology. Historian Patrick Armory (1997, xv) identifies the controversy from a historiographer’s viewpoint:
Germanic: properly used, this refers to a language family, not a culture, ethnic group or race. No evidence from the [Migration] period indicates that speakers of different Germanic dialects or languages were aware that language ties gave them anything else in common: there was no “pan-Germanic” identity.
Amory separates the linguistic from the historical and anthropological. He, and other contemporary historians, reject the view of a monolithic ‘Germanic’ identity and any idea of cultural and political unity, or ‘national’ identities, among speakers of the Germanic language group.
In the nineteenth century, the view of national identities were, as historian Peter Heather (2009, 13) asserts, “… ancient, unchanging ‘facts’, and their antiquity gave them a legitimacy which overrode the claim of any other form of political organization…the assumption that ancient and modern speakers of related languages somehow share a common and continuous political identity has proved “unsustainable”.” The use of the term ‘Germanic’ for contemporary historiographers who specialize in the periods of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages is generally rejected. Or it is used skeptically for lack of a better term with some scholars preferring ‘barbarian’ and ‘Barbaricum’ although these terms also carry connotations of their own. Historian Guy Halsall (2014, 24) uses ‘Germanic’ only with inverted commas when not referring to the language group and German medievalist Victor Millet warns us not to return to a postulate of a Germanic cultural tradition, although while he admits that his work Germanische Heldendictung in fact insinuates such a cultural tradition. Rather, his title merely means that if it
speaks of a ‘Germanic heroic poetry’ (the expression is deliberately avoided in the text), it simply means that these heroic traditions have been handed down in Germanic literature. So the reason is purely linguistic, not cultural. Although the languages are related, the peoples who used them were very different, and even more so were the historical-cultural contexts in which the narrative was generated. The heroic sagas do not form a mythical substrate inherited from dark times, rather they were created in a certain place and then spread in different regions because they were considered good stories and because the communication between these areas worked well thanks to the relative linguistic proximity. (Millet 2008, 9, translation and emphasis mine)
Synchronically, peoples and their cultures were very diverse and therefore Millet uses the ‘Germanic’ exclusively in a linguistic sense. Diachronically, culture (Germanic or otherwise) does not remain static. What may have been observed by Tacitus most certainly had changed by the time Snorri Sturluson wrote down the Eddas. There is no ancient, misty, pagan legendary past to search for, these are merely good stories in a common language group spoken among diverse peoples.
The problem, then, is lumping all Germanic-speaking peoples into one monolithic entity: at times synchronically and at other times diachronically and sometimes even both. Historian Andrew Gillett (2002, 2) establishes the cause of the problem when he states that the “usual conventions of textual and historical analysis are bypassed in order to privilege Germanic philology; … the barbarians of Late Antiquity are linked with Scandinavian mythology of almost a millennium later; and the whole interpretation is directly indebted to Germanist scholarship of a century ago.” Halsall (2014, 22-23) also laments
To lump all Germanic-speaking tribes together is to repeat the assumptions of Roman ethnographers or the politically contingent Germanist interpretations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries… That the peoples from the Frisians in the west to the Goths in the east spoke Germanic languages does not create a fundamental unity amongst them any more than the fact that people from Portugal to Romania speak Romance languages permits us to treat them interchangeably… It is implicit in such interpretations that all ‘Germanic’ peoples somehow share a common mentality. In their minds is a common stock of cultural traits which all ‘Germanic’ people can draw upon as and when they see fit.
Halsall reinforces Millets view from the standpoint of historiography. Again, diverse cultures from the Frisians to the Goths cannot be considered a monolithic Germanic entity even as certain themes and motifs show up in various heroic epics at various times in medieval history.
II. Literary Problems
The same sort of problem appears in the Germanic heroic literature of, in H. Munro Chadwick’s (1967, 29) definition, the Heroic Age . While the definition is one which is used here, the problem is apparent in “… the common poetry and traditions of the various Teutonic peoples.” This definition, in my thesis, caveats ‘common themes and motifs’ with ‘but differing and evolving motivations for those themes and cultural attitudes.’
The Heroic Age is marked by the “barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, which began when the Goths first swarmed the frontier, and ended with Alboin’s falling upon an Italy worn by famine, pestilence and the sword of Visigoth, Hun, Vandal, and Ostragoth” writes Raymond Chambers in his Widsith (2010, 9-10). In this heroic age, the ‘Germanic’ hero emerged and crucial to this hero was his ethos that focused on such themes as the right of the fittest, martial proficiency, victory over opponents and loyalty to one’s lord (Nusser 2012, 117). However, the heroic poetry portraying these events and personages was based less on preserving collective memory of these historical events themselves but rather on models of behavior for the noble and warrior classes who listened to them (Millet 2008, 11). The Germanists Hermann Schneider and Wolfgang Mohr (1961, 5) suggest that where a poetic form is lacking, one should be modest and regard the subject matter as legend. As such, they state, one may discern enough through its motives, scenes and storytelling to view the narrative as one that portrays how the heroes saw their life-world and what ethos animated them.
What separated mere Germanic legend from Germanic heroic poetry, however, is not just the loose chronological and historical situation but also the thematic conflict-situations. Klaus von See (1971, 11) is worth quoting in full here, as his differentiation also has implications for why the Germanic narratives spread over all of northern European barbaricum.
What distinguishes the 'heroic legend' from the 'legend' in general, however, is not only this chronological moment, so to speak, but also the nature and design of the material: the heroic legend has little interest in problem-free, merely fabulous adventures and ghost appearances, which are often at the center of a 'legend'. Rather, it is mostly about human conflict situations, e.g. the conflict between loyalty and revenge (Ingeldsage, Finnsburgsage), the conflict between the commandment and love of sons (Hildebrandslied), the political compulsion to fratricide (Hunnenschlachtlied), the betrayal of his own king (Iringsage). Whether the Germanic hero was therefore perceived as a hero, because he acted in this situation exemplary, because he was considered an educational ideal, whether heroic legend – as Otto Höfler means – may be defined to the effect that it is "hero worship" throughout, or if the heroes' attraction lay in the fact that they acted in the same way as they were not allowed to do in real life, and that is a question that will have to be discussed. It is certain, however, that this interest of the heroic legend in human action and decision, for which the historical facts ultimately became a more or less accidental substratum of action, explains the far-reaching spread of the heroic legend throughout Germania. (translation mine)
The themes of human conflict-situations are the ‘common denominator’ that shows up in texts spread throughout the very diverse ‘Germanic” world over the centuries from the Migration era to Snorri and the Icelandic Family Sagas. That doesn’t mean that these peoples were culturally the same, just that their oral and subsequent written literature shared certain themes that also happen to constitute Tolkien’s theory of Northern courage.
The historical background is simply the foundation in which these heroes – kings, warriors, in one case a smith – find themselves and their situations (Schneider 1961, 2). For historian Herwig Wolfram (1997, 21), the “interplay of kings and the power of fate allows creation of the heroic saga. The saga derives its theme from the heroic pathos of a threatened and dying kingdom.” The traditions, set in this Germanic heroic past of an older world, at once “become more ancient and remote, and in a sense darker” (Tolkien, BMC, 21). Victor Millet (2008, 5-6) further suggests that
… The heroic traditions pretend to play in an earlier time, in the time of the heroes, or, to use the term coined by H. Munro Chadwick, in a heroic age. Many references to the heroic narrative type, such as the Marner's Song, show that all those stories that purport to be more or less explicit in this imaginary time were considered heroic. Over time, new myths were very likely to be incorporated into the circle, which, in terms of subject matter or motif, were loosely based on existing stories. These narratives thus form the material of heroic traditions. (translation mine)
The themes of the Germanic heroic tradition include motifs such as the two-fold problem of honour between king and retainer and the problems that jeopardize that honour: for example, vengeance (Schneider 1961, 12). Traditional heroic poetry and its themes form a specifically aristocratic subject matter in which the individual stories tell of heroes who belong to an upper class of kings and princes (Millet 2008, 10). Moreover, the Germanic themes may not necessarily center on the hero him or herself, but rather on an event or a situation of conflict – a memorable and unusual situation (von See 1971, 71), and more often than not, a situation that requires a choice between two hateful outcomes (Phillpotts 1991, 5).
Further complicating matters of the literary Germanic in the early (and high) Middle Ages is that any hypotheses of early ‘Germanic’ must be based on reconstructions. Winfred Lehmann (1992, 78, bolding mine) notes that “[A]part from Germanic place and personal names, we have no data until the fourth century; our attempts to determine the early history of Germanic must therefore be based entirely on reconstruction.” However, such reconstructions are often fraught with fallacy and traps. John Lindow spoke to the problem of these fallacies and traps at the 1973 Second International Saga Conference in Reykjavík, where he gave his paper ‘The Sagas as Ethnographic Documents’:
Comparative philology and the discovery of linguistic prehistory introduced the concept of a retrievable Germanic past. And the [Icelandic] sagas were taken, somehow, as the literature of the Germanic world. The historical fallacy thus lived on, but in somewhat different guise. According to the prevailing view, the sagas told of the saga age but indirectly – or even directly! – illuminated the mores and social customs of the Germanic peoples during the common Germanic period. They could thus be regarded as historical documents for the saga age and ethnographic documents for the common Germanic period. (Lindow 1973, 6)
Again, as with the historical and ethnographical fields of study, Germanic literature has for the most part fallen subject to the germanische Alterstumskunde of the nineteenth century, which viewed the ‘Germanic’ as a monolithic, unchanging structure. Lindow makes the same argument as the above cited historians and he suggests that this same problem is present in philology as well. Where Germanists like Schneider and Mohr (1961, 12) claim that “the millennium-long tradition of the Germanic heroic sagas and their strong charisma throughout Europe has been substantially supported by their strong poetic imprints” does not mean that we should assume those poetic imprints were without change. Lindow (1973, 18) notes that the concept of a stagnant Germanic warrior ethos
…would strain the credibility of even the laxest of historians or ethnographers to accept that the concept of honor existed virtually unchanged throughout those many years [from Tacitus to the Icelandic sagas], especially when we know that so much else changed.
This also does not mean that in Germanic literature there is not a certain continuity of themes. Certain concepts remain inherent in the language even as it evolves, which structures thought and how one views the world (Cambell 2003, 99). For example, the term for honor (Gmc. *aizō) appears in all of the Germanic languages and remained significant for the lord – retainer relationship, which is a specific, aristocratic literary “Stoffkreis” (Millet 2008, 10). Nonetheless the emphasis of honor changed from one of battle-field martial glory to one of social utility in regulating, for instance, blood feuds:
The relationship between the two kinds of honor [individual and comitatus] and their interactions with the comitatus parallels the chronological development of the institutions [of honor] we discussed. We have suggested that the honor of the martial glory is older than that of social utility; the older kind of honor adhered to the older kind of comitatus, the *druhtiz. The hirð, on the other hand, appropriated the newer kind of honor, the honor of social utility. (Lindow 1976, 143)
Note that this is a change in the motivation for the blood feud, as Lindow here accentuates a significant change in the concept of honor. Nonetheless, the themes remain in the foreground, albeit with evolving motivations, in Germanic literature. The decisive criterion for these Germanic poems, suggests A.T. Hatto (1980, 165), is ethos (or in Tolkien’s terms, Northern courage): “[T]he ethos of the truly ‘heroic’ epic poems of medieval Germany was an inheritance from the Heroic Age (Age of Migrations) through both poetry and the feudal ethos, which had absorbed and transformed the earlier ethos” (ibid., 166). The ethos, in concurrence with Lindow, evolves throughout the corpus of Germanic literature.
III. Germanic Heathen and Pagan Problems
The term ‘Germanic’ is often used as a synonym for ‘heathen’ or ‘pagan’ and I try to avoid this use of the term, except when noted. Most of the historic ‘Germanic’ peoples were already Christianized when the subject matter of the lays and epics occurred. The Burgundians were already Christian when the Hunnenschlacht occurred and decimated their tribe [including in all the subsequent Nibelungen-stuff]; the Goths were long Christianized in Arian Christianity before Theodoric the Great took Italy. Likewise, the Langobards in the time of Alboin (von See 1971, 151) and the Danes in Beowulf experience a brief return to paganism as a plot point, indicating and contrasting their previous Christian status. Klaus von See (ibid.) suggests that only the Scandinavians turned the heroes into pagans and it is first and foremost the Old Norse tradition that gave the impression of a thoroughly pagan heroic tradition.
In the Old Saxon Hêliand [i.e. ‘Savior’], for example, the structure of Christ’ relationship with his twelve Apostles is that of a Germanic lord and his comitatus: “[T]hat Christ is portrayed as a chieftain in the Heliand, and his disciples as retainers, has never been a matter of debate … [B]oth Germanizing and Christianizing are detectable” (Haferland 2010, 214). Likewise, the cup in Gethsemane is symbolic of judgement and punishment and Jesus takes the cup and toasts God and “promises as a faithful thane to fulfill His will, as did the Good Soldier promise to die with and for his drohtin [lord]” (Cathey 2002, 227). Not even the ‘mildness’ of Christ really contradicts the image of the Germanic chieftain as G. Ronald Murphy (1995, 86-87) notes:
While it may not be appealing to think of a paid north Germanic warrior as mild (i.e., kind and generous), nevertheless it is a common and respected term for the lord of those warriors to be perceived as powerful but mild. Conforming with and appealing to that heroic tradition, the author has justified what is otherwise a somewhat embarrassing statement in warrior tradition. Once again the author skillfully places an obligation on the lords of the clans and tribes to act with kindness, if they expect their Lord to be kind and generous to them. The Heliand author is forming a new Germanic-Christian synthesis of the ideal man: a composite of personal strength and interior gentleness, a “heroic chest with a kind heart inside.” [see also Dr. Lori Beowulf: What is a Good King]
The Germanic as a reconstructed, pre-Christian religion — the search for a pagan pan-Germanic culture, is untenable with our limited knowledge. As an antithesis to Christianity it cannot be supported with any available evidence and appears to be a false dichotomy. Our literary evidence points to rather a particular form of northern European Christianity incorporating the framework of lord-retainer relations. Once more Klaus von See (1999, 191) illustrates for us the Germanic-Christian dynamic which is
… not only and primarily the expression of a defiant adherence to native tradition or even a relic of old relations between religion and heroic legend, but the precise expression of ecclesiastical-theological thinking: one put the events of the pagan past into a "typological" reference to the Christian salvific event, interpreted it as a promise, as praefiguratio, as a forward-looking "pre-image" of future acts of salvation. (translation mine)
Von See refers to a phenomenon such as what we see with Beowulf and evidence points toward what J. R. R. Tolkien called a “fusion” of new and old and not simply a Christian-pagan dichotomy. We will see, as the discussion progresses, that Tolkien seemed to take this approach to Northern courage as well.
IV. Literary-ethnographic Germanic Problems
Lastly, in our discussion of the Germanic is the literary-ethnographic identity of the heroes and their situations in the corpus. The poems do not center around anything in the nature of national interest or national sentiment except for that the heroes belong almost entirely to the Germanic world (Chadwick 1967, 34). This is not to say that the literature is ‘pan-Germanic’ but only that there is a lack of centering on whether the heroes belong to any particular clan, tribe or confederation (unless it is particularly relevant to their royal lineage). While Chadwick states that the tone of the heroic poems may in fact be international, he caveats the point that the characters and scenes are “drawn exclusively from the Teutonic world” (ibid., 40). Historical events of particular peoples may be the source material for the setting of a poem or lay, but they soon develop into strictly poetic narratives themselves (see Dr. Lori's Beowulf) and therefore “[E]thnic groups become individualized through their leaders and heroes; these ally themselves or clash with one another in a heroic time-continuum that often defies historical chronology; and they do so for private, mostly family reasons” (Hatto 1980, 167).
Ethnic identity, that is how the heroes identify themselves, is multi-layered. However, it is not so much a national identity (although royal lineages do appear as identifying factors) but rather the situation [1] the hero finds himself or herself in and the performance of the hero within the social structure of the Germanic heroic ethos — a mode of behaviour. Again, Klaus von See, cited above, suggests that “the Germanic themes may not necessarily center on the hero him or herself, but rather on an event or a situation of conflict.” If so, then it follows that the thematic conflict-situation of Germanic heroic poetry is as much involved in defining the Germanic warrior ethos as the ascription of the hero. The situation determines how the hero will behave, if he or she will perform [2] “heroically” and therefore considered to be, or ascribed (by others) the status of a hero. The situation provides the opportunity for the warriors to perform within their respective roles. And the ultimate expression within the Germanic ethos is not necessarily the deeds of the hero during his or her life, but rather how he or she chooses to meet their fate and die as “his heroism displays itself with decidedly greater clarity in demise than victory” (Haferland 2010, 208).
The heroic lays and epics of the northern European Germanic-speaking peoples combine aspects from overlapping disciplines: linguistics, historiography, ethnology and literature. In all but one of these disciplines, linguistics, the use of the term ‘Germanic’ has usually been problematic and controversial. The poetry is neither national nor pan-Germanic in nature, but varies according to region and language. Nonetheless, the themes of the subject matter, made up of various motifs in which the heroes act according to their (conflict) situation and which may differ slightly in details and motivations, provides a loose unity that we may call the Germanic warrior ethos as these same themes appear in a wide and diverse spectrum of what we call heroic poetry.
With these problems and controversies in mind, the use of the term ‘Germanic’ in the following diaries adheres closely to the definition of Joseph Trahern, Jr. (2010, 161), who suggests that we
...can view the literature, in short, as a body of writing which has no known antecedents in a pagan Germanic past but which occasionally addresses, as part of the subject matter of both its fiction and its philosophical, historic and homiletic prose, pagan times and beliefs.
Or as Tolkien (BMC, 39) wrote: the drawing of distinctions and representing the “moods and attitudes of characters conceived dramatically as living in a noble but heathen past.” The use of the term ‘Germanic’, unless explicitly otherwise stated, refers to the common motifs and themes of heroic literature and the tone, moods, and attitudes they generate.
… OK, a good place to stop… before it’s ‘too long, didn’t read’. Next time — Tolkien’s interpretations of the ‘Germanic’
Notes
[1] „… [The situational] approach, which has been termed situational ethnicity, merges both cognitive and structural aspects of ethnicity as its principle focus is on the actor’s ascriptions of ethnic identity to organize the meaning of his social relationships within given social situations. The cognitive dimension of situational ethnicity refers to the actor’s perceptions and understandings of cultural symbols and signs and the relevance he attributes to these elements as a factor on his behavioral options in the situations he finds himself. On the other hand, the structural dimension has reference to the role constraints enjoined upon actors within social situations as a consequence of the overall structure of ethnic group relations. Thus a situational approach to ethnicity illuminates the fact that variability is the essence of ethnicity in its significance for the structuring of social relations in diverse situational contexts.” Jonathan Y. Okamura, "Situational ethnicity" in Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (4) (1981), 452-46.
[2]„The cultural contents of ethnic dichotomies would seem analytically to be of two orders: (i) overt signals or signs – the diacritical features that people look for and exhibit to show identity, often such features as dress, language, house-form, or general style of life, and (ii) basic value orientations: the standards of morality and excellence by which performance is judged. Since belonging to an ethnic category implies being a certain kind of person, having that basic identity, it also implies a claim to be judged, and to judge oneself, by those standards that are relevant to identity.” Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Long Grove: Wavela Press, Reprint 1998), 14.
Keywords
These terms will continue to come up as the series progresses: ethos, tone, mood, tenor, fusion, themes, motifs, behaviour, conflict situation, identity
Citations
Apollinaris, Sidonius. 1965. Sidonius: Letters III-IX. Translated by W. B. Anderson. Edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library ed. 2 vols. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Amory, Patrick. 1997. People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barth, Fredrik. 1998. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Reprint, 1998. 1969.
Cathey, James, ed. 2002. Hȇliand: Text and Commentary, Medieval European Studies. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
Cambell, Lyle. 2003. "The History of Linguistics." In The Handbook of Linguistics, edited by Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller, 81-104. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Chadwick, H. Munro. 1967. The Heroic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chambers, Raymond Wilson. 2010. Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic legend. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. Reprint, 2010. 1912.
Haferland, Harald. 2010. "The Hatred of Enemies: Germanic Heroic Poetry and the Narrative Design of the Heliand." In Perspectives on the Old Saxon Heliand: Introductionary and Critical Essays, with an Edition of the Leipzig Fragment, edited by Valentine A. Pakis, 208-233. Morgantown: West Virgina University Press.
Halsall, Guy. 2014. Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hatto, A.T., ed. 1980. Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. 2 vols. Vol. 1 The Traditions. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association.
Heather, Peter. 2009. Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe. London: Pan Publishers.
Lehmann, Winfred P. 1992. Historical Linguistics. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
Lindow, John. 1973. "The Sagas as Ethnographic Documents." Second International Saga Conference, Reykjavík, 2-8 August 1973.
— 1976. Comitatus, Individual and Honor: Studies in North Germanic Institutional Vocabulary. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Millet, Victor. 2008. Germanische Heldendichtung im Mittelalter: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Nusser, Peter. 2012. Deutsche Literatur: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Frühen Neuzeit. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Okamura, Jonathan Y. 1981. "Situational ethnicity." In Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (4): 452-465. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1981.9993351.
Phillpotts, Bertha S. 1991. "Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought." In Interpretations of Beowulf, edited by R.D. Fulk, 1-13. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Original edition, 1928.
Schneider, Hermann and Wolfgang Mohr. 1961. "Heldendichtung." In Zur Germanisch-Deutschen Heldensage, edited by Karl Hauck, In Wege der Forschung, 1-30. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 2006. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 5-48. London: Harper Collins. Original edition, 1983.
Trahern, Joseph B. Jr. 2010. "Fatalism and the Millenium." In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcom Godden and Michael Lapidge, 160-171. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
von See, Klaus. 1971. Germanische Heldensage: Stoffe, Probleme, Methoden. Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag.
— 1999. Europa und der Norden im Mittelalter. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.
Wolfram, Herwig. 1997. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Finally, the result of this work:
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