The Germanic Tribes: Warriors Who Shaped Europe | Full Documentary

The alphabet, seafaring and trade, the foundations of globalisation. Their roots go back thousands of years to the Carthaginians. The Germanic peoples shaped the map of Europe. The Arabs transmitted the rich knowledge of the ancient world, revolutionising mathematics and medicine. They all created a new world. The Carthaginians, the Germanic peoples and the Arabs, their achievements produced modern Europe. They took on the mightiest peoples of their time, terrifying even the superpower Rome. The sagas of their heroes were passed down from generation to generation and they are still retold today. In extremity they offered their gods human sacrifices. They revered their seeresses. These women could pronounce on the fate of entire tribes. They built small settlements in the wilds. But they went on to found kingdoms, laying the foundation of modern-day Europe. Stretching from Europe's far north to the western edge of the continent, the home of the Germanic peoples covered a huge area of forests, lakes teeming with fish, boglands and wide river valleys. There were over 70 Germanic tribes. Frisians, Teutons, Suebi, Angles, Saxons. It is a long list and many of the names on it are little known. But none of these tribes ever referred to themselves as Germanic. That name was coined by their arch-enemy Julius Caesar. The ancestors of the Germanic tribes were probably Indo-Europeans. From Eurasia they spread out in all directions. Around 1000 BC one such group settled the vast region between the Baltic Sea and the Alps. There they mixed with the locals, creating the Justorf culture, named after the burial urns found near Justorf in Lower Saxony. This was the real birthplace of the Germanic peoples. Over the centuries the original Germanic tribes spread to Scandinavia, the Danube and the Vistula. They built villages and founded new clans and tribes. Although they settled in very different areas, the tribes were connected by their way of life. At first, all of the Germanic peoples were peasants, tending small plots of land. Their diet consisted mainly of bread made of mixed grain cereal and baked in a kind of pit oven. Sometimes vegetable soup was on the menu, but that was more the exception than the rule. The life of the Germanic peoples was simple and hard. They had no surplus of anything, only what they could glean from nature. Everyone is pretty poor, certainly before the third century AD, but that doesn't mean that everyone is of the same status. If you've got more access to food, if you're having to do less physical labour, then there can be strong status differentiations, even within societies that to us look unimaginably poor in material terms. And certainly from the time of Tacitus onwards, the Roman sources are reporting status distinctions. There are slaves and there are higher status people as well. In the first century BC, all the Germanic tribes of Europe numbered only about two and a half million. None of their villages had more than 200 people. A village consisted of several clans, with each clan comprising a dozen or two dozen households. A household had about 12 people, including servants, maids and slaves. It was headed by the father of the family. The typical Germanic settlement had a longhouse made of wood, clay or turf. In southern Germania, they were built only with wood. The longhouse roof usually reached almost to the ground. It was a durable construction of straw and reeds. Each house had just one room, which served as a home for the extended family, as a stable for the working animals and as storage for the household belongings. Not everyone has the same amount of resources, not everybody has the same status in society. And one of the things that you can see this on is actually the length of the house. Imagine having a house, if it's longer, you have more room for yourself, but if the stable end is longer, you also have room for more animals. And animals mean wealth. In winter, fodder often ran short. So in autumn, most of the animals were slaughtered and their meat was smoked over a wood fire. The smoke escaped through a roof opening or wind eye, the origin of the word window. Large pieces of meat were hung from the rafters for several weeks until they were aromatic and well preserved. Smokehouses in northern Germany still follow a simple natural procedure, very like the old Germanic custom. But only a small minority could afford to eat meat several times a week. It rarely graced the tables of anyone else. Livestock is an expensive resource and of course you eat them, because they taste good and they give lots of energy. But imagine them eating lots of porridge, imagine them baking bread. And then also there is another nice thing that you can do with grain. You could make it into beer. The everyday drink was beer made from fermented barley. The Roman historian Tacitus thought it a disgusting brew and deemed the Germanic carousing barbaric. But to the tribes, the plentiful consumption of beer was a sign of manliness. Fashion was also a matter of manliness. Germanic men paid a lot of attention to their hair, which they twirled with their all-purpose combs. Their premier hair treatment was butter. It made their hair stink after a while, but what counted was how their hair looked. The Swabian knot with a braid on the right-hand side was especially popular. Initially it was a badge of recognition amongst the Swabi, but it became a fashion statement for men from other tribes. The beauty kit also included tweezers and ear cleaners. Their cosmetic bags were stuffed full. Germanic people went half-naked. Animal skins covered the bare minimum, or so ancient authors said. But archaeology suggests otherwise. The Germanic tribes would use wool, just like the Romans, for most of their garments, sheep's wool. But there are also indications that they have used plant fibres, such as flax, which we know today, but as a surprise to most people, also stinging nettle. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to produce it. It's never really been industrialised and therefore it's been forgotten today that you can actually make clothing out of stinging nettle stems. Bold colours, distinctive patterns and jewellery were also very popular among the Germanic tribes. Dresses were long and usually sleeveless, with a narrow belt accentuating the waist. During pregnancy, it was simply pushed a little higher. The Germanic man wore the trousers, literally and figuratively. The reputation of the whole clan depended on him. He could enhance his reputation through bravery in battle, or through a harvest that made him rich, or simply by belonging to a superior clan. Out of these noble circles, there emerged a tribal aristocracy, the leaders in battle. They and their followers raided the lands of neighbouring tribes. The booty was shared out and in return, the liegemen swore eternal loyalty to their leader. Over time, small tribes banded together into larger tribes, always led by a warrior. The striking thing that emerges when you look at words for leadership in the different Germanic sub-dialects is that by the 4th century, every word for leader amongst eastern Germanic groups like Goths, west Germanic groups like Saxons and Franks, they're all descended from the word for warrior, for war leader, war band leader. The Germanic system of vassalage evolved into the medieval feudal system. Most of our noble titles also go back to the days of the Germanic peoples. A duke, in German a herzog, was a man who herzog, that is, rode into battle ahead of his warriors. Fürst, the German word for prince, goes back to the word for the first. They could not be called the inventors of trousers, but the men of the Germanic tribes did begin the trend of wearing them, even though trousers were not widely accepted until the 10th century, and much later than that for women. It's the same with beer. The Germanic peoples were not the first to brew beer, but they did make barley beer an everyday drink north of the Alps. Nowadays, beer is more popular than ever. The Germanic tribes had their dark side. They were warlike, glorifying armed combat. They even saw it as an economic necessity. The looting of slaves, tolls, land and food was commonplace. Individual clans often attacked each other, and often it was solely a matter of power and prestige. Every member of the clan was bound to protect the lives and property of the other members, if necessary, by force. If a dispute arose with another village, it had to be arbitrated publicly. This was done at the ting. The ting meeting place was like an open-air courtroom. A truce, called the ting peace, operated during its sessions, and all parties had to abide by it. If an offence was against the community, the penalty was decided communally. The clashing of weapons meant approval of the judgment. A rumbling murmur meant dissent. With the tribal chief presiding, the sentence was carried out immediately. Those who had been cowardly in battle, betrayed their tribe, or broken sacrosanct traditions often got death. When they faced the Romans, the Germanic tribesmen needed a lot of courageous men. The wars between the men from the Tiber and the barbarian Germans went on for centuries. Undoubtedly, the sort of biggest shark swimming in West European waters is the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is unimaginably huge, you know. It runs from Scotland to Iraq, and it lasts for 500 years, half a millennium. It's the biggest state that Western Eurasia has ever seen, and the longest-lived one. This is the politically dominant force that's overhanging most of the ancient Germanic world. When storms and floods destroyed the villages of a few of the northern tribes, they began a fateful migration. The Kimberi and Teutons from Jutland were the first to venture into Roman territory. They wanted to move into the Celtic lands of modern-day Carinthia. But the Celts were allies of the Romans, and called on them for help. In 113 BC, there was a showdown, the Battle of Norea. The tribesmen went on the rampage, defeated the Romans, and pushed on westward. They crossed the Danube and the Rhine, marched through Gaul, and ended up in what is now Orange in southern France. The Romans had long had a garrison in Provence. It was usually a peaceful place. Time passed slowly, but not on the 6th of October 105 BC. At first, the legionaries failed to grasp the peril they were in. As the enemy approached, the Romans thought them a handful of undisciplined tribesmen, who posed no threat. They could not have been more mistaken. A loose union of various tribes had grown into a large and efficient army that was determined to stop at nothing to defend itself against the Romans. The Roman image of the Germans is dictated by their own understanding of themselves. As far as Romans, and they inherit this from the Greeks, are concerned, then human beings are a very strange mixture of rational mind and irrational body. And in civilized people, the rational mind controls the irrational body. But in barbarians, all barbarians, and of course the ancient Germans are just one subgroup of barbarians, the irrational body controls the mind. So the drives of the body, sex and drugs and rock and roll, that is what dictates the behavior of barbarians. Tacitus claimed to know what made the Germanic peoples tick. They were persistent, he wrote, including in the pursuit of the worst things. He had never been to what the Romans called Germania. Nonetheless, he maintained that they all looked the same, with blue eyes and a wild gaze. Their hair was reddish and they were tall. They were good at only one thing, attacking. But when things got tough, he wrote, they didn't have the stamina. They couldn't cope with heat or thirst. They were only hardened against hunger and cold. Caesar described the ferocity of the ancient Germans. He held them to be undisciplined and impetuous in combat. Chaotic, in fact, and the complete opposite of his legionaries. But it was to be these wild, chaotic warriors who brought almost 120,000 Romans to their knees at Orange. It is said that two Roman generals were to blame for the defeat because they could not agree on which of them was in command. If this is true, two squabbling Roman armies went into battle against a united body of furious Germanic warriors. In combat, they were legendary. This furor teutonicus, this teutonic, Germanic brawling, the Romans had a lot of respect for. Because since the Cimbri and Teutons, they were extremely afraid of this wild, impetuous way of fighting the Germans, which, of course, meant the opposite of the organised Roman legions. Many more battles followed. The Cimbri fought the Romans in northern Italy. Caesar battled the Suebi in modern-day Alsace. And although outnumbered, he won. Decades passed. The turning point came with the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. In just three days, the Germanic tribes wiped out three Roman legions. So great was the shock to the empire that the Romans abandoned all thought of subduing Germania. Shortly afterwards, the Romans withdrew behind the Rhine and the Danube. And they built several walls, the most famous being the 500-kilometre-long Lemus, which they hoped would protect them from the warlike Germanic hordes. History was to prove otherwise. In war and in daily life, religion played a central role in the lives of the Germanic peoples. Nature in any form was at the heart of their faith. Nature was sacred and provided the setting for countless sacred sites. Germanic stake or pole gods date back to the earliest times. They were simple wooden idols carved from long branches with a fork at the base. They were found mainly in low-lying wetlands or in bogs. The names of these deities are lost forever. But some look strikingly human, such as these figures discovered at Brach in Schleswig-Holstein. There were also gods with famous names. Chief of the gods was Odin, or as he was called in southern Germania, Vodan, which is where our word Wednesday comes from. His wife was Frigg, the goddess of marriage, motherhood, hearth and home. She gave her name to the word Friday. Her son Donar, or Thor, was the weather god. His name is preserved in our word Thursday. Tyr, the god of war, gave his name to Tuesday. The ancient writers told blood-curdling stories about Germanic seeresses, the mediatrixes between the worlds of gods and men. It was said that they could see into the future. They allegedly divined prophecies from reading the bloody entrails of slaughtered enemies. One of the few seeresses we know anything about was called Valeda. She was revered in Germania because her predictions always came true. The tribes depended on the advice of these mysterious women, especially for political decisions. They disclosed the will of the gods. Would a battle bring victory or defeat? The seeress would know the answer. They passed on messages from the gods by casting lots, sticks covered in mysterious symbols. These symbols evolved into runic writing. There are 24 characters in the runic alphabet, also known as futhak, after the first six letters. Some of the oldest runic writing is found on two ancient combs. The meaning is not very exciting. One has the owner's name. The other simply says comb. The elites of the Germanic tribes used writing from the second century AD for blessings, excommunications and curses. It is hard to tell nowadays whether an inscribed name belongs to the owner or the maker, as with this splendid sword, which bears the name Beagdoth. Swords were cult objects for the Germanic peoples. In their eyes, swords had magical powers. That is why they liked to capture their foes' weapons and take them back to their sacred sites. The Germanic tribesmen threw thousands of swords into bogs or lakes as a special sacrifice to their gods. There are a few very specific things that we find in Germanic archaeological contexts. These bog deposits of weapons are very specific and what you see there is that the weapons are all destroyed before they're thrown into the moor. So spears are shattered, swords are bent, shields are broken up and this is an incredibly deliberate act. And they went one step further. Over the years, researchers have discovered hundreds of bog bodies. Some may have been executed criminals and some probably died on the battlefield. But a few of the mummified corpses bear the marks of a cruel custom. One of these is Graubiller Mann, discovered in Jutland in 1952. There are grounds for suspecting that he was the victim of a sacrificial rite carried out to appease a powerful deity. Graubiller Mann is very well preserved. He was 34 and had dark hair. It was turned a rich red by the acidic bog. His fingernails were well cared for. He had not done hard manual labour. He was suffering from an inflamed tooth, but this wasn't why he died. He died of a slit throat, professionally executed. His death would have come very quickly. For fear that the dead might come back to take their revenge, the Germanic tribesmen often made assurance doubly sure. For years, Germanic tribesmen performed sacrificial rites at the same place on the shore of a lake on the Danish island of Schellen. In the 1st century BC, a woman was killed and her corpse was carefully interred. The Germanic tribesmen were not afraid of death. Hers is the only mummified corpse ever found at Rappendam, and it poses a puzzle. There may be a connection with a Germanic festival honouring the harvest goddess Erke. Her image is said to have been driven through the countryside on a wagon before being washed in the lake. In certain parts of North Germany, this figure is still known by the name of Frau Hake. The Germanic festival is also known as the Hake Festival. Frau Herke, or Frau Hake, or as she's known in the grim fairy story, Frau Holle, is a figure from later German legend and folklore. And it's just about possible that the figure is descended from a female deity worshipped in pre-Christian times in northern Germany. And it's just about possible this deity is a reflex, that's to say a reflection of Terra Mater, Earth the Mother, that Tastus describes in Germania. Frau Holle is by no means the only relic of Germania. A list of them all would include a number of German customs, such as the Harvest Festival or the St. Martin's Day procession in the dark of November when work in the fields has ceased. As we have seen, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are all derived from the names of Germanic gods. The dread of ghosts, spirits and vampires goes back to the Germanic fear of the undead. The Germanic love of the forest is still part of the modern German identity, forming the backdrop of fairy tales, poems and musical works. They're a monument to Germanic heroes such as Arminius who defeated the Romans in the Teutoburg Forest. They are reminders of storied events and sites. One of these tales is set along the Rhine and the Danube. The legend of the Nibelungs has been told countless times. Essentially a historical epic, it also has elements of a soap opera. The hero of the piece is Siegfried. He slays a dragon and bathes in its blood. This makes him invulnerable or almost. One vulnerable spot remains on his back. Siegfried rides to Burgundy to court the beautiful Krimhild, whose brother Gunther wants to marry the warrior maiden Grunhild. Siegfried agrees to help him. Grunhild challenges Gunther to single combat and she loses because Siegfried, invisible in a magic cap, helps him to defeat her. So Gunther wins Grunhild. The wedding night is a farce. Gunther falls upon his bride while the invisible Siegfried holds her down. Grunhild learns of the trick and has Siegfried killed. His widow, Krimhild, plots revenge. At a feast, there is a brawl. Everyone slays each other. But where the Nibelung treasure is, no one knows. A debt of gratitude is owed to the medieval poets of Iceland. It was they who, in the 13th century, first wrote down the myths of the North Germanic peoples. The Edda songs and Edda legends feature a multitude of heroes, gods, tribes and clans. The Prophecy of the Seeress takes us into an adventurous, magical world full of strange gnomes and goblins. They have names like Bombur, Bofur, Thorin and Gandalf, all of which Tolkien drew on in creating his world of Middle-earth. A lot of it comes back to Tolkien. Tolkien was an expert in Anglo-Saxon and Norse literature. And when you trace the sort of spread of Germanic saga-type themes in modern culture, a lot of it goes back to Lord of the Rings, the book and then the films. And everyone's really just doing copies of that, as far as I can see. So Tolkien, Tolkien is the man, the crucial conduit for spreading this in the modern world. Whether in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, the mythic Germanic world lives on, losing none of its imaginative power. The Germanic heroes live on even in comics. Thor battles his envious stepbrother Loki, who was already a troublemaker in Norse mythology. The makers of computer games have followed the formula. Millions of players slip now into the role of superhero and embark on adventures. The arrival of the Huns marked the beginning of a dark new chapter in Germanic history. In 375 AD, the men on horseback invaded Europe. The Huns destabilized the relations that had operated between largely Germanic groups around the Roman Empire and the Roman Empire itself. Those had been stable for about 100 years, from the last quarter of the 3rd century to the last quarter of the 4th century. But the Huns arrive and create such a level of insecurity and violence in this frontier world that you find Germanic groups either being subsumed into Hunnic domination or trying to get out of the way and ending up inside the Roman Empire. The Goths, Franks and Langobards set out on treks in search of somewhere else to settle. Some had ox carts with wheels of solid wood, which later gave way to spokes. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes used longboats to cross the North Sea to Britain. The Vandals crossed the Mediterranean. The Germanic boats were narrow and fast, forerunners of the streamlined Viking ships. Generations of Germanic tribesmen were on the move. Some lived by plunder, others settled peacefully. It was the Hun invasion that sparked this large-scale migration. But the underlying cause was hunger, caused by failing harvests. At the end of the 4th century, the climate had gone berserk. The Germanic tribes felt robbed of their future. A wave of refugees, thousands upon thousands of people, swept over Europe. The Franks prospered from their migration. They were made up of several smaller tribal groups, who settled on the east bank of the Lower Rhine. Gradually, they merged into bigger groups, and finally into one large and powerful tribe. This large tribe came to an arrangement with the Romans, and got their permission to cross the Rhine. The tribes found new homes, in what is now northern France, in Alsace and Switzerland, in Belgium and the Netherlands. In almost 200 years on the move, the tribes spread all over Europe, and in the case of the Vandals, into North Africa. They fought repeated wars with Rome, which ended only when the Goths swept into Italy, bringing down the Roman Empire in the west. From their original modest settlements, the Franks spread out further and further. Paris soon became their capital. Their king was Clovis, a Merovingian who had appointed himself. Yes, everything as desired. It's just missing... Clovis ordered a collection of laws to be written, the Lex Salica. Although focusing on Frankish interests, it was the first ever legal text produced by the Germanic peoples. The Lex Salica dealt with a range of legal questions, such as inheritance law, and it codified legal cases and forms of punishment. The penalties included strokes of the rod and fines, with freemen more likely to be fined. Only a few offences carried the death penalty. I think you're faced with the problem of having to deal with a world where populations from two different traditions are now living side by side. Interestingly, Lex Salica, although it's Frankish law, is written in Latin. And most Franks couldn't cope with Latin, but it comes with glosses in Germanic language, so-called Malburg glosses. One argument is that it's actually Frankish law for Romans, so they can understand what the hell the Franks are going to do, and how Franks think, because you're going to face disputes where Franks and Romans are involved on each side, and Romans are going to have to be able to cope with the way that Franks view the world. So Lex Salica is arguably a text that allows them to do that. In order to become king of the Franks, Clovis subjugated all of the Frankish tribes, the Alemanni, the West Goths, and the Burgundians. Only a few had bowed to his will voluntarily. To demonstrate their allegiance, subject lords had to kneel before the king, the Germanic way of making it quite clear who was boss. Clovis went down in history as the founder of the Frankish kingdom. His dynasty expanded. In the 6th century, his empire ran from Western Germany to the Pyrenees. The successor states still exist today. King Clovis, or Hlodhe Wech in his own language, could be called the grandfather of Europe. The father of Europe is a title that might be reserved for Charlemagne. But if we start with Clovis, he's the founder or the consolidator of the Merovingian dynasty. And he conquered most of Gaul and named it after his own tribe, the Franks. He united the different Frankish tribes. And most importantly of all, he converted to Catholicism. And this was the first major success for the Christian religion with a Germanic tribe. Clovis was christened in the French city of Reims. For this, he had to give up his claim of descent from the pagan gods. In its turn, the church promised him that after his death, he and his successors would continue to rule in heaven. And his rule on earth was henceforth legitimated by God. The conversion of Clovis to Christianity paved the way for preachers and monks to evangelize the Germanic peoples. By and large, they did so peacefully. The Germanic peoples gradually abandoned their pagan faith and turned to Christianity, and for one main reason. The great champion of Christianity was Charlemagne of the Frankish Carolingian dynasty. In 771, he assumed sole power in the kingdom of the Franks. Charlemagne carried on where Clovis left off, but his ambitions went further. Charlemagne wanted to stamp out all pagan belief, if necessary, by force. Above all, he opposed the Saxons, because they clung tightly to their old beliefs. And their leader, Widukind, was not a man to go quietly. The fight is brutal, in fact. Charlemagne can dispose of enormous resources by the 780s. He's already conquered Italy. He's already conquered all of Gaul. In a head-on confrontation, the Saxons wouldn't stand a chance. So they have to fight the equivalent of guerrilla warfare in the modern world. They have to try and make it so difficult for Charlemagne to conquer Saxony that he gives up. But Charlemagne is not going to give up. His prestige is on the line. The fact that they're pagans, because of his religious understanding of his own position, just makes it impossible for him to give up. Charlemagne decreed that the heathen had to die. His soldiers attacked the Saxon villages, pillaging and murdering. Charlemagne's ruthless pursuit of the pagans earned him the nickname Slaughterer of the Saxons. The Frankish king had an ambitious goal. He wanted to rule a huge empire, like the Romans before him. Charlemagne is not just a king of the Franks. Charlemagne is imperator, emperor. And his understanding of that term is derived from but not exactly the same as Roman understanding. He regards himself as having been given supreme power by God for a reason. It's not just an accident. He's God's choice to rule over the whole of Western Europe and to spread Christianity. Only after a decade of death and destruction did the Saxons recognise that they would not be able to keep the mighty Franks out of their tribal areas. The Frankish chroniclers would claim that Widokind had become a Christian because of a miracle. In truth, Widokind just wanted peace. That is why the last of the old Germanic kings accepted baptism. Widokind's baptism, his forced baptism in 785, was by no means the end of Germanic paganism. It was subsumed into Christianity. It didn't have an independent status. But I think for farming communities away from the church, life continued in much the same way. They had Christian names for festivals. They worshipped God, just one God rather than a whole collection. But paganism was still alive in the lower levels of superstition and ritual to do with farming practices. And later European folklore is a direct descendant of paganism. So it continued in all but name. Under Charlemagne, the Frankish kingdom expanded to run from the Pyrenees to Carinthia and from North Germany to central Italy. With his coronation as emperor, he founded a new empire in the image of ancient Rome. Charlemagne was the greatest Carolingian and he established an empire. And he could be called the father of Europe because his empire in Europe was the... It could be regarded as a blueprint for modern Europe. France and Germany, if you look at those territories together today, actually have the same area, the same extent as Charlemagne's empire in the late 8th century and the early 9th. Emerging from origins that could not have been more diverse, the Germanic tribes still determine the face of Germany today. The names of some of the old peoples live on. The Germanic Swabians are the Swabians of today. The mysterious Bavarians became the Bavarians. And Hesse comes from the ancient Chattai. Their influence is also felt all over Europe. England, Spain, Scandinavia and France all go back to Germanic foundations. And the languages of 500 million people have their roots in the ancient Germanic languages.