Talk:Germanic heroic legend

Guðmundsdóttir 2000, p. 6.
, you included a citation "Guðmundsdóttir 2000, p. 6. " that doesn't match any of the existing articles by Guðmundsdóttir in page numbers or year. Is it another article, or is there a mistake somewhere?--Ermenrich (talk) 15:17, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * My bad! I both made a typo and thought I had already used the source. It is fixed now!--Berig (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Exaggerated historiography
English participation in Germanic heroic legend didn't suddenly end in 1066 and is still ongoing, with major legends appreciated in England even through the Norman filter as well as domestic tales. Hamlet, Havelok the Dane, Holger Danske, Robin Hood and even William Tell have historically been told to an English audience, given an English version, or came from England and retold elsewhere. All of these stories were enjoyed long before the printing press, so it's not merely global curiosity stemming from the internet either. 76.177.11.75 (talk) 23:32, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Those are not typically classified as Germanic heroic legends.--Ermenrich (talk) 01:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Because of this arbitrarily unjustified exclusion of Englishmen from the Germanic category at 1066... Well, if an outside dynasty of Germanic origin, being Northmen followed by Franks is the reason, then Slavic overlords Albert of Mecklenburg and Eric of Pomerania should disqualify Sweden and Denmark around the time of the Kalmar Union. If English wars of a Viking origin in the Danelaw and Normandy against their formerly friendly West Frankish allies against said Vikings did an about-face after 1066 and that imaginatively strips England and its culture simply because bastardised French is understood, then a Sweden obsessed with Poland-Lithuania during the Deluge and just as enthusiastically embracing Latin at court including in naming conventions unlike England but like the Holy Roman Empire should be just as good if not more reason to strip the Swedes of their Germanic heritage, to reclassify them as Slavic aliens in the way some bigots are wont to do to the English, even some English over the topic of Norman yoke and Whig history. If Tudor engagement with Spain was a problem, what of Vasa attachment to Russia?
 * If Luther could describe the German peoples of the Continent in the Holy Roman Empire as depreciated due to Papal slavery, why then do they get a free pass despite cohabiting with Italians (Romance yet actually Lombards) and Bohemians (more Slavs), or even Burgundians (Romance but another double standard), whereas English never cohabited with non-Germanic Kingdoms until the Union of Great Britain and then later including Ireland, although all said Celts became Anglicised tributary or satellite states unlike in Europe where Germanic kingdoms became Latinised? In fact, Charles V of ROME was King of Spain, Sicily, the Indies and Jerusalem, etc yet the debased sense of Germanic tradition somehow doesn't stick to the Teflon Continental Germanics unlike the gibberish and gelatinous excuses for treating English traditions outside of the Germanic category.
 * England would continue with a Germanic heritage outside Holy Roman conventions as well as in them with the Dutch and Hanoverian successions, with the later Saxon Windsors--even now, England has the Oldenburg dynasty originally planned to succeed in the reign of Queen Anne's son by her Danish husband, while Denmark now has a French dynasty to keep up with Sweden's Bonapartist stooges the Bernadottes. The Crusades involved excursions to the Baltic as well as the Mediterranean and the Lancastrians took part in the Lithuanian campaigns, whereas the Teutonic Order followed the "non-Germanic" Franks to the Mediterranean and so, that is another arbitrary sense of distinction, for although Richard the Lionheart took Cyprus, Frederick Barbarossa himself was crowned King of Jerusalem. Even though the Reformation took hold almost exclusively in Germanic nations, Germany belonged to Catholic culture in the Austrian mold far longer, so that Bavarian identity may seem more central to German cultural identity of a Hochdeutsch type as opposed to the Saxon Plattdeutsch type in England. Verily, Ingvaeonic tongues are now a minority in the Continent, whereas Irminonic and Istvaeonic ones are in the majority between them, but I suppose HRE and EU affiliation must somehow mean in or out of the Germanic category. Who decides these things? Are we to conflate Germanic with Catholic Hochdeutsch rather than Protestant Plattdeutsch?
 * Why is English society supposedly no longer Germanic but that of the Holy Roman Empire is? With the casual, indistinct "reasons" for treating English cultural heritage as "non-Germanic" and therefore omitting Germanic heroic legends due to politics despite inconsistencies of logic, categorical inclusion or exclusion means nothing but a cudgel to beat the English with. When in 1066, Northmen took England from the Saxons of Winchester and firmly established the capital more neutrally in London that was a Danish marketplace and burh at one point, on the line of the Danelaw, the said disinherited Saxons ran off to Constantinople for assistance after conspiracies with other Viking dynasties than the one in Rouen to uproot the latter had failed. Harald Hardrada's Varangians by Kiev and the Normans of Rouen also went there by way of Sicily. We see political rhetoric arbitrarily used in the historiography involved.
 * Other examples of debased Germanic states: Swedish cohabitation with Finns and Austrians with Hungarians, Croatians, etc...but the rhetorical standard is about the Welsh principality annexed to England somehow sullying the good name of Anglo-Saxons? Wales, like Finland and Hungary, is no longer within a strictly Germanic realm, if the UK doesn't apply, but at least Welsh find English tongue more native than Finns do Swedish and not so much the Hungarians with German. More reason why inclusion vs exclusion of Englishness is bogus. 76.177.11.75 (talk) 09:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

So, how does English culture not pass the litmus test, that English heroes and their tales are not counted Germanic? How can 1066 be any more than a fiction when West Germanic Anglo-Saxons and Franks are both equally defined as Germanic before the North Germanic Danes and Normans added another Germanic layer of society? Only afterwards are these nations somehow less Germanic, but how and why, except in doubling down on the Roman Catholicism which was the basis of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation? Romano-Germanic culture mean nothing? That's far more fundamental to Continental than Insular Germanic peoples, especially since England was the seat of power in the North Sea Empire. The very name "Germanic" could be suspect, because it denotes a couple Roman provinces and not some "Magna Germania" beyond, at least where this classification is considered to exclude former Roman provinces of Britain, in which English stories came to be based in "Britannic heroic legends" by virtue of geography rather than heritage. Jus soli vs jus sanguinis. Hair-splitting distinctions? Bavaria, along with Bohemia, have the same Celtic foundations. Iceland is about half Gaelic, a true Norse-Gaelic colony.

Those entrusted with the Germanic title are no more justly entitled than those who are not classified thus by you. If these flimsy walls of distinction are allowed to stand, who'd want to fit into such a box anyway? If Germanic is used so restrictively, it's not really the correct, factual category. But, hey, if Finland and/or Estonia can be seen as Nordic rather than Eastern, while England, despite equality or superiority of stature with respect to the Scandinavian nations under the Jelling dynasty of Gorm the Old, by virtue of shared Danes, Jutes, Angles and Saxons from common blood and geopolitics before Holy Roman and German Imperial domination of Scandinavia to eventually become Lutheran playthings in the Hanseatic and Prussian orbits, there's no substance of these classifications anyway. Under this framework, Iceland belongs more with Germanic diaspora, along with England as a second England in the Viking Age following the Völkerwanderung, of those nations surviving intact beyond the middle ages. Of course, a double standard invention will be used to excuse the biased ownership of "Germanic". Unlike Iceland, England is actually the land of a Germanic tribe, because Iceland was a mere outpost of Norwegian farmers, whereas Ingvaeonic nationalism and terminology such as the "Saxon race" actually was and sometimes is central to the English experience, since England is the focal point of North Sea Germanic statehood in fruition, unlike anywhere else.
 * Please see WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS and also WP:WALLOFTEXT. We follow reliable, secondary sources and how they categorize things as belonging to this genre or not. Also, plenty of later material from Germany and Scandinavia is not considered Germanic heroic legend, see Spielmannsdichtung, for instance.—-Ermenrich (talk) 12:27, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * It's your prerogative to define Germanic as inclusive of some non-Germanic origins and exclusive of other Germanic origins on what basis? I was going to include The Knight's Tale by Chaucer, until I saw it had no Germanic setting or character, despite being a story by an Englishman. You play fast and loose with the meaning of Germanic, as in Germanic+non-Germanic yet excluding English to suit your own interests. It's all political theatre and actual dictonary truth doesn't matter here. Nice. Why go to the POV Wikipedia for a source to present the viewpoint of Wagner or Ludwig the Mad's conception of Germanic? WWI & WWII don't mean English aren't Germanic either. Conflating Germanic with German interests is a logical fallacy. 107.77.192.167 (talk) 13:26, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The end result of political ownership of Germanic definition is the deconstruction of Germanic ethnolinguistics, but hey, Prussia was a Baltic country and hence, the German Empire was run by Balts. Why not? After all, Englishmen aren't seen as Germanic running a British Kingdom. Let's see how far perceptions can stretch reality. Play to your supposed advantage. It won't end well when subjective monopoly of definitions get the better of you. The framework of "Germanic" in the article is exclusive of any French association, in the context of the Franco-Prussian War. The Rapprochement and Entente anachronistically would wipe out Germanic classification of English culture, by German partisans in academia. Never-mind it was the French who created the German Reichs, both the Carolingian and Napoleonic inceptions, leading to Ottonian, Hohenzollern and Hitlerian copycats. English politics was always at a variance hostile to France when the Habsburgs couldn't get themselves together and be serious about it.

107.77.192.167 (talk) 13:39, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Please see the policies I already link you to. I have no power here - we rely on WP:Reliable sources. They don't say Chaucer wrote Germanic heroic legend or that Robin Hood is Germanic heroic legend, so neither do we.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:39, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

If you can prove that "Germanic heroic legend" is defined by a creed and canon law that corresponds solely to Walhalla (memorial) statue honorees, I shall demur accordingly. Taking the words: "Germanic" AND "heroic" AND "legendary" literally and at face value in this precise triad of factors, there's no way you can exclude what I included on that basis. Cnut the Great, Lady Godiva, Hereward the Wake, Siward of Northumbria and Robin Hood are all "Germanic" AND "heroic" AND "legendary". Just because they aren't part of the German Romantic nationalist movement from the time of Bismarck, doesn't mean they don't meet this definition.

In fact, the corpus of sources celebrated by German Unification includes subject matter properly belonging to Greco-Roman countries, like Ermenrich and Dietrich, who were rulers of formerly East Germanic countries, but which were assimilated by intermarriage or wilful identification with their claims to inherit the authorities of Greece and Rome, having taken over them and insisting they were rightful claimants to those glories, hence the HRE and also the Latin Empire or Frankokratia. In their absolute domination of the Mediterranean establishment, those Germanics (Goths, Vandals, Burgundians) withdrew their Arian confessional distinction from Latin Catholics to become mainstream Chalcedonians without any discrepancies from their subjects. West Germanic nations all still have collective memory of Germanic origins, even if some of them speak Latin and had converted directly from Paganism to Catholicism later on, such as the Irminonic Lombards and Istvaeonic Franks, whose dominions became the HRE in the aftermath of their Arian East Germanic predecessors. One (East) became slippery slope to the other (West), but the only West Germanic nation having shared administration with North Germanic nations is England.

Those others have no right to arrogate terminology in favour of a false rendition of history to make it seem otherwise, like Nazi ideology, to justify German aggression and annexation of Scandinavian nations, the Nazis first cajoled them with Nordicism more properly befitting White Anglo-Saxon Protestants in respect to Germanic heritage than any ethnic profile for old HRE lands that never could quite separate themselves from Roman culture, because their ethnogenesis is at least partly dependent upon Roman heritage, unlike Englishness. Only the Ingvaeones of all West Germanic nations, even then except Saxons (and Frisians) but not Angles or Jutes, didn't become part of or attempt to replicate the Roman Empire, which means English society stayed as aloof as North Germanic nations in this respect, despite all nations under Cnut's rule or claims to have been subsequently made into giving tributary or feudal homage to the Irminonic and Istvaeonic copycats of Rome, whether Teutons or Franks.

We have a "No true Scotsman" fallacy of definitions, which is causing WP:BIAS to obscure the truth. It may seem reasonable to limit the eras of Germanic heroic legends to pre-Reformation examples, because the conflation of Germanic and Protestant could lead to too many edit wars. As much as I admire Gustav Vasa, it would be better not to have him or the Emperor, Tilly, etc as heroes and the printing press has removed most mystique turning into occasions of legendary materials building up to begin with. Most cases of other than factual expositions of individual lives since the press deal more with misinformation, propaganda and libel, etc, that may forensically be examined, unlike most sources before the press, that form essential characteristics of the characters in question.


 * is quite correct. We simply go by what we can source to what Wikipedia considers to be a reliable source (WP:RS). This isn't the place for long posts that do not provide suppport from reliable sources. If you want something included on Wikipedia, your time is better spent hunting for sources that meet WP:RS. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 17:46, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * He's failed to justify Germanic, heroic, legends as irrelevant to the article Germanic heroic legend. Insecure dogmatics are sure to operate reflexively on deletionism whenever NPOV attempts challenge their perceived sense of authority. 107.77.192.167 (talk) 19:56, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Look there and see WP:OWN and cybersquatting. Where is it Wikipedia policy that the exact phraseology: "Germanic heroic legend" must be stated to justify belonging in this article? I doubt this is the case for all added and edited by him, only nobody has been around to challenge his own positive participation despite this. It's a case of attempts in cornering the issue to be tailored for his subjective POV, which is why he spends so much time. Far be it for others to contribute to the information by inputting Germanic, heroic, legends outside the purpose he does, after he's crafted the article as a fork for his user sandbox. English is Germanic according to sources already on Wikipedia. Noted Anglo-Saxon personalities with renown for dashing and daring heroism already have articles here on Wikipedia. Legends about said English heroes are included in said Wikipedia articles. In order for Wikipedia to have internal consistency, there needs to be full faith and credit between wikilinks. To compartmentalise Wikipedia in such a way as to deny its own components is to discredit it. Therefore, no service is done for the common good nor Wikipedia's reputation. This article will remain a pet project of one user and those who look at it his way. That's what happens with mob mentality. Wikipedia is infamous for Wikilawyering.

Whatever way you spin it, there's no way that the mentions made are off-topic to the article. As Ermenrich himself admitted, he doesn't find merit because the focus isn't "typical" and I made many forms of rebuttal to improve the NPOV against systemic bias often structuring the topic to fit German Romantic nationalism rather than inclusive of all Germanic Romantic nationalism. That's why I addressed the widespread classification error conflating Germanic with German, which is itself addressed elsewhere on Wikipedia, but ethical and honest editors on this topic don't need reminding about pushing a loaded word to fit their agendas. Need it be mentioned that an equivalent of tendentious editing led to besmirching the word Germanic and the Swastika symbol, because of overidentification of them with Nazi failed policies attempting ownership of all their meaning, much more originally broader than their later reduction to politicisation? Due to inappropriate and narrow representation, Germanic and Swastika have themselves become practically "verboten". NPOV reclamation of terms and symbols is the only appropriate manner of presenting them on a website with the only stated purpose being free participation and free sharing of information. If German ideological constraints are definitively exclusive of any equivalent Anglocentrism per this article to enrich and balance it in true fullness, then the context must be frankly stated in the lede to be its true purpose and not hide undercover the trappings of purported neutrality. WP:BOLD fits my edits.


 * "Mob mentality" my ass. Without sources to support your fringe claims, you've got nothing except these pompous, self-indulgent walls of text bludgeoning the page. Carlstak (talk) 20:45, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Do you challenge Wikipedia's own collection of sources? 76.177.11.75 (talk) 23:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)