Anglo-Saxons i guess, it's part of the norse birb blob, same colour. I mean just one look at that map is enough to make a dozens of ethnic conflicts so why not few more just for them.

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I think the bird is Danes/jutes though? I'm not really that up to date on this kinda phrenology, but I'm pretty sure you'd normally differentiate between saxons, anglo-saxons, normans, Norse/Danes/jutes and germanic tribes (goths, Huns, allemani, whatever else). Either way it doesn't make sense, the Scandinavian tribes should have control of the Danelaw if you're gonna give them anything of Britain... Hang on a minute, this white supremacy doesn't make any sense!

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

The bird is raven, quite popular symbol in medieval Scandinavia attested for i think all countries and symbolising at first Odin's ravens and then genrally death. It was mostly used by Danes, notably by Cnut the Great. It was never attested as universal symbol though, so using it as one for Scandinavia, let alone everything that was Germanic once is something one would expect from someone birdbrained enough to make such map.

[–] axont@hexbear.net 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah there were so many Germanic symbols it's goofy to try and make one universal. It would make way more sense for it to be a little club or inverted hammer, like the amulets that Germanic pagans wore from between the 5th and 9th centuries. My understanding is they did that in response to Christians wearing crucifixes, so it was a conscious adoption of a religious/ethnic symbol in response to another one.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 4 months ago

My understanding is they did that in response to Christians wearing crucifixes, so it was a conscious adoption of a religious/ethnic symbol in response to another one.

Yes that was exactly the case, a lot of what we know about old Germanic religion and culture might be either fabrication or late versions already being under the influence of christianity. The contacts with mediterranean cultures were much earlier, even the famous runes were derived from northern Italic script, most likely Etruscan, somewhere around I century BCE/CE.

Funnily enough the first symbol that was really used by all Germanic people is the christian cross, under that they unified into states, and that's also what is on every Scandinavian flag today.

[–] Leon_Frotsky@hexbear.net 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think the reason he's using that symbol specifically is because it's the one used in Crusader Kings to represent the Asatru religion

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 4 months ago

Possibly, but i don't feel the real CK vibes, or at least not CK3 where cultures and languages have some meaning.

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that's what's confusing me, cause I only see that raven as something to do with Scandinavia, not Germanic tribes. Don't they have that weird triangle thing?

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

There was simply no symbol that would be even close to universal even for Scandinavia, let alone entire body of Germanic people (at least before they all converted to catholicism), because there was no point in history when they thought about all of themselves as one people. Same with Slavic, Romance etc. Language groups are not unified people. All tries to invent such symbols are only tied to XIX century+ pan-something movement and those are way too fashy to be comfortable with (and have no chance in hell as history proven already).

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago

Yeah I know, it's kinda funny to see them treated as international and inter-ethnonational symbols when they never really were.
Speaking of such symbols, a fun example of that is national anthems from pre-french revolution and post-revolution. Gone is the focus on the royal house, now we instead see tribal signifiers (our mountains are prettiest).

[–] WittyProfileName2@hexbear.net 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I assumed it's supposed to be Anglo-Saxons but, like, it doesn't really fit with the territory they had before the Normans conquered them.

[–] Noven@hexbear.net 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

None of these tribe boundaries are from the same time period, by the time the Hungarians crossed the Carpathians you already had Al-Andalus covering all of Iberia

[–] WittyProfileName2@hexbear.net 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This map is the kinda thing you make when your only understanding of history comes from 4X games.