History of Great Britain

Post Reply New Topic

Apparently, your Frisian friend believes that the Frisians were pre Indoeuropeans who- maintained a seperate identity from the later Indoeuropean invaders from the east. But still assimilated to a branch of the Indoeuropean language family (thus loosing thier origanal pre Indoeupean tongue). That branch they assimilated to being Germanic.

Like the population of modern Haiti - virtually 100 percent of Haiti is virtually 100 percent of African ancestry. But they all speak French (because thats what their colonial rulers spoke).

Thats a curious belief that he has.

The Basques ( who straddle the Franco Spanish border) not only retain a separate identity from both the French and the Spanish, they retain a separate non Indoeuropean language- an oddball language not related to any other language in Europe, nor to any other in the world.

So he is saying that Frisians are like the Basques.

Could be. Who knows?

Is that a common folk belief among Frisians?

Yes I know two people who are Frisian, one is half frisian/half Australian and they both believe their people are indigenous to the region on the north/west coast and used to occupy coastal areas all the way up to Denmark. Apparently they are fiercely independent and hate being called Dutch.

One of them told me in the English epic Buewulf the Danish king fought many battles with Frisian pirates, The ancestors of the Frisians being boat builders and sea farers makes sense since he claimed in pre-Roman times the Germans pushed them from inland all the way to the coast. Obviously the Danes prevailed and assimilated/wiped them out by the time the Romans.

The region where the modern Frisians live is marshy/bog which was difficult to invade so perhaps the terrain and their ability to escape helped them. Apparently they also traded with the Britains before Roman times so this is an avenue of research that's probably not been explored.

I realise you just deleted your post but the upshot was that the Danes didnt invade their lands etc....and beuwulf is post-Roman

This is one of the areas that's really murky to me. The Angles/Saxons and Jutes identify themselves as seperate from the Danes. When they arrived in England the language they spoke was not Danish. Old English is identical to old Frisian.

Beauwulf (excuse my spelling) is a myth that contains within it an oral history dating back to the time the Anglo-Saxons first settled in Britain. At the time there is no dispute that they once occupied the lands that are today Denmark and northwest germany. But at around 500AD there identity was erased and replaced by Danish. Some people argue that they are all the same people. But it's strange then that Frisians (whose language we speak a variant today) don't identify with Danes let alone with the Dutch who you would think are all one people?

The last sentence doesnt make any sense.
The Fris did indeed settle in their coastal lowland homelands long before the Romans.

But Beowulf was written after the fall of the Roman Empire, and was presumably talking about the Danish king fighting Fris pirates in its own post Roman times.

So the Danes couldnt have kicked their asses "by Roman times" since Roman times were already long over.

The Danes (along with Swedes, and Norwejians) probably just beat the Fris at their own sea marauding game by...becoming the Vikings.

There are varying notions as to when Beowulf was written down. Some say 8th century; many others say 10th or 11th century.

It is certain that the events which occurred were after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476.

I believe it to be an "ethnic epic" of the Anglo-Saxons----sort of like the Iliad and the Odyssey are "ethnic epics" of the Greeks.

These Germanic tribes who crossed the North Sea to Britain did come from the whole stretch of northwest Netherlands, northwest Germany (the Hanover area), AND from that piece of land that juts north from Germany into modern Denmark called "Jutland". And their original homelands straddled the modern Jutland border between modern Germany and modern Denmark. But they didnt come from the core of Denmark (the north, the islands to the east).

The Jutes came from "Jutland". And the Angles came from "the Angle" (an ancient Anglosaxon word that originally meant 'bent thing', or 'hook', which is retained in the modern word for the sport of 'angling'). This hook being "Jutland" were the northwest coast of Germany bends and becomes the lollipop stick upon which Denmark is mounted upon.

Some books say that when the Jutes migrated to Britain their homeland on the Jutland coast- became just a vacant piece of land with no inhabitants (they all just schlepped over to Britain). The surrounding folks who filled the void with new settlement were probably Danes.

But the main northern part of Denmark, and the Danish islands to the East (in fact a slice of coastal Sweden was also part of the Danish realm back then) just didnt figure in the story of the peopling of Britain, until Viking times. Then ofcourse the Danes became VERY important.

This guy always does a great job discussing languages.

Except that he calls it "Frisian". Folks who speak the language call it "Fris".

Anyway- there are more than one Frisian speaking communities with more than one Fris languages plural. Though they are related.

The maps he shows are quite relevant to what were all talking about.


Frisian languages

The main body of Frisian speakers is that area of northwest Netherlands. But notice that the second biggest (North Frisian) is in the region I was just talking about. Right on the west coast of Jutland in Germany - but abutting the modern German-Danish border.

Then there is also that lonely little speck of "Saterland" in inland German Saxony about halfway between the other two enclaves of Frisian. All are remnants of a once large and continuous "Frisland" -that you were talking about.

About 350,000 people speak "West Frisian," which is called merely "Frisian" in the Netherlands.

The other dialects of Frisian have, in total, less than 100,000 speakers.

It is considered somewhat of a "vulnerable" language.

If this was the case (and it seems likely) then the questions is why? one thought is that there was crop failure at the time and famine which might have spurred the Jutes and Angles to leave their homeland.

Crop failures and famines probably inspired many migrations in ancient days.

Some interesting articles suggesting the English are descended from Frisians and not Scandinavians or Germans
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/19/7/1008/1068561
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-DNA-in ... risian-DNA
https://dutchreview.com/culture/are-the ... lly-dutch/

Interestingly it seems to suggest the Frisians are outliers in the german gene pool

Opportunity. "Hey. The Romans have left Britain, so lets grab some new and better land in Britain, and leave this stinkin swamp we live in!"

This was the age of the Volkesvonderung. The great 'folk wandering'. Germanic tribes were spilling over the old Roman Frontiers on the Rhine, and the Danube, and invading all of Europe, and Mediterranean. The Vandals started in Sweden...migrated through Finland, finnally crossed the Rhine, and didnt settled down until they seized the richest grain growing region of the old Roman Empire: modern Algeria, Tunisia, and Morrocco. They were smart to plan that far ahead, and to seize that particular part of the collapsing empire. But they didnt have the skills to hold on to the place. A couple centuries later the Arabs and Moors just swept the Vandals aside while the Muslim invaders speeded their way out of Arabia and onto Spain.

Also the Germanic tribes were themselves getting an ass-kicking from their eastern rear by...the Huns.

The ancestors of the modern English may have been fleeing Atilla as much as looking for better diary pastures and farmland.

Yes that's a good possibility. The Volkesvonderung may have also pushed the ancestors of the English/Frisian speakers out of north-west Germany. It was a kind of domino effect started by the huns.

I don't remember the last time Britain was great. It was such a long time ago. We call it the UK, these days.

That's why I labelled this as "history"

If you read beuwulf, the Fris were also raiding the Danes. This suggests the Fris were also engaged in "viking" like activity. The scandanvians were not the only ones engaging in raids. Pirates from north Africa were involved in slaving all along the coast of Europe from Italy/Spain up to the Swedish coast. In addition to human slaves they also took booty.

Beauwulf himself killed many Fris in the sagas, Beauwulf's identity is confusing as he was thought to be Anglo-Saxon as he hailed from England. But then there is no reason he wasn't also a Dane living in Anglo-Saxon Britain as it was also a Danish viking saga.

Since it's an oral saga the original date for its creation is difficult to pinpoint. But it would be reasonable to assume it was post-Roman occupation.

Since the outgoing Romans were having trouble with the northern Picts its reasonable to assume they were already recruiting germanic peoples into their ranks to man Hadrian's wall. While the troops from the Levant, north Africa, Spain and Rome would have desired to go back to their warmer homeland. the Germanic garrisons might have accepted land grants in exchange for their service. It may well be the Anglo-Saxon land holders might have already been in Britain much earlier than 450AD and stayed on to occupy what was to become England the moment the Roman administration did their "Brexit". This alternative narrative still aligns with the venerable Bede's tales of the Anglo-Saxons who being present on the eastern coast of Britain offered an attractive alliance with the Romanised Britons against the pagan Picts who were spilling over Hadrians wall at that time.