Irminones

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Irminones

The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe

Elbe

The River Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It originates in the Krkonose Mountains of northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Germany and flowing into the North Sea....
watershed and by the 1st century AD expanding into Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
, Swabia

Swabia

Swabia, Suabia, or Svebia is both a historic and linguistics region in Germany. Swabia consists of much of the present-day state of Baden-W?rttemberg , as well as the Bavarian Swabia ....
and Bohemia

Bohemia

History...
. Irminonic or Elbe Germanic is a conventional term grouping early West Germanic dialects ancestral to High German.

The name Irminones comes from Tacitus

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman Senate and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories —examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those that reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors....
’s Germania
Germania (book)

The Germania , written by Tacitus around 98, is an ethnography work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire.This work survived only in one single manuscript that was found in Hersfeld Abbey, Holy Roman Empire and brought to Italy in 1455 where Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the later Pope Pius II, first examined and analyzed it, wher...
(98 AD) who categorized them as one of the tribes of Mannus

Mannus

Mannus is a Germanic peoples mythological figure attested by the 1st century AD Roman Empire historian Tacitus in his work Germania. According to Tacitus, Mannus is the son of the earth-born Tuisto and the ancestor and founder of the Numbers in Germanic paganism Germanic tribes Ingvaeones, Herminones and Istaevones....
.

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The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe

Elbe

Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
, Swabia

Swabia

Bohemia

History...
. Irminonic or Elbe Germanic is a conventional term grouping early West Germanic dialects ancestral to High German.

The name Irminones comes from Tacitus

Tacitus

Mannus

Istvaeones

The Istvaeones, also called Istaevones, Istriaones, Istriones, Sthraones, Thracones, Rhine Germans and Weser-Rhine Germans , were a West Germanic cultural group or proto-tribe....
, all of them living in the "Central region" of Germania, as well as the Suebi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c....
, which include the Semnones, the Quadi

Quadi

The Quadi were a smaller Germanic tribe, about which little definitive information is known. The history of non-literate peoples is written by their opponents, and we can only know the Germanic tribe the Romans called the 'Quadi' through Roman eyes....
and the Marcomanni

Marcomanni

The Marcomanni were a Germanic tribe, probably related to the Buri , Suebi or Suevi....
.

Pomponius Mela

Pomponius Mela

Pomponius Mela, who wrote around 43, was the earliest Roman Empire geographer.His little work is a mere compendium, occupying less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures....
writes in his Description of the World (III.3.31) in reference to the Kattegat

Kattegat

The Kattegat , or Kattegatt is a sea area bounded by Jutland , and Scania, Halland and Bohusl?n . The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Oresund and the Danish Straits....
and the waters surrounding the Danish isles (see the Codanus sinus

Codanus sinus

The Codanus sinus is the Latin name of the Baltic Sea and Kattegat.According to Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder , it is an "enormous bay" lying beyond the Elbe"....
):

On the bay are the Cimbri

Cimbri

The Cimbri were a Celtic or Germanic peoples tribe who together with the Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the Roman Republic in the late 2nd century BC....
and the Teutoni

Teutons

The Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greece and Roman Empire authors, notably Strabo and Marcus Velleius Paterculus and normally in close connection with the Cimbri, whose ethnicity is contested between Gauls and Germani....
; farther on, the farthest people of Germania

Germania

Germania was the Latin language exonym for a geographical area of land on the east bank of the River Rhine , which included regions of Sarmatia as well as an area under Ancient Rome control on the west bank of the Rhine....
, the Hermiones.

Mela then begins to speak of the Scythia

Scythia

The Scythians or Scyths were an Eastern Iranian languages of Equestrianism nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic steppe throughout Classical Antiquity....
ns.

Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
's Natural History (4.100) claims that the Irminones include the Suebi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c....
, Hermunduri

Hermunduri

The Hermunduri, Hermanduri, Hermunduri, Hermunduli, Hermonduri, or Hermonduli were an ancient tribe of Germanic people who occupied the area around what is now Thuringia, Saxony, and Northern Bavaria, from the first to the third century....
, Chatti

Chatti

The Chatti were an ancient Germanic tribes whose homeland was near the Weser. They settled in central and northern Hesse and southern Lower Saxony, along the upper reaches of the Weser river and in the valleys and mountains of the Eder, Fulda and Werra river regions, a district approximately corresponding to Hesse-Kassel, though probably so...
, and Cherusci

Cherusci

The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the northern Rhine valley and the plains and forests of northwestern Germany, in the area between present-day Osnabr?ck and Hanover), during the 1st century BC and 1st century....
.

In Nennius

Nennius

Nennius, or Nemnivus, is either of two shadowy personages traditionally associated with the history of Wales. The better known of the two is Nennius, the student of Elvodugus....
the name Mannus (see Mannaz) and his three sons appear in corrupted form, the ancestor of the Irminones appearing as Armenon. His sons here are Gothus, Valagothus/Balagothus, Cibidus, Burgundus

Burgundus

Burgundus was the mythology founder of the Burgundians tribe. He was named as one of the five sons of Armenon, or Irmin, in Nennius' Historia Brittonum . Irmin was the son of Mannus...
, and Longobardus, whence come the Goths

Goths

The Goths were East Germanic tribes who, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, invasion the Roman Empire and later adopted Arian Christianity. In the 5th and 6th centuries, divided as the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, they established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in the Iberian peninsula and Italy....
(and Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Crimean Goths

Crimean Goths

Crimean Goths were those Goths tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the least-powerful, least-known, and paradoxically longest-lasting of the Gothic communities....
), Valagoths/Balagoths, Cibidi, Burgundians

Burgundians

File:Roman Empire 125.svgThe Burgundians were an East Germanic language Germanic tribes which may have emigrated from mainland Scandinavia to the island of Bornholm, whose old form in Old Norse still was Burgundarholmr , and from there to mainland Europe....
and Lombards

Lombards

The Lombards were a Germanic peoples originally from Northern Europe who settled in the valley of the Danube and from there invaded Byzantine Italian peninsula in 568 under the leadership of Alboin....
/Langobards.

They may have differentiated into the tribes Alamanni

Alamanni

Hermunduri

Marcomanni

The Marcomanni were a Germanic tribe, probably related to the Buri , Suebi or Suevi....
, Quadi

Quadi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c....
by the 1st century AD. At this time the Suebi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c....
, Marcomanni

Marcomanni

The Marcomanni were a Germanic tribe, probably related to the Buri , Suebi or Suevi....
and Quadi

Quadi

Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
and Swabia

Swabia

Boii

Boii is the Ancient Rome name of an ancient Celtic tribes, attested at various times in Transalpine Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul , as well as in Pannonia , Bohemia, Moravia and western Slovakia....
out of Bohemia

Bohemia

History...
.

The term Suebi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c....
is usually applied to all the groups that moved into this area, though later in history (ca. 200 AD) the term Alamanni

Alamanni

The Alamanni, Allemanni, or Alemanni were originally an alliance of Germanic languagess located around the upper Main river . One of the earliest references to them is the cognomen Alamannicus assumed by Caracalla, who ruled the Roman Empire from 211?17 and claimed thereby to be their defeater....
(meaning "all-men") became more commonly applied to the group.

Jormun, the Viking Age Norse form of the name Irmin
Irmin

Irmin may be*Old Saxon irmin "strong, whole", maybe also "strong, tall, exalted" , from Proto-Germanic *erminaz, *ermenaz or *ermunaz, in personal names ...
, can be found in a number of places in the Poetic Edda

Poetic Edda

The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems primarily preserved in the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. Along with Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda is the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends....
as a by name for Odin

Odin

Odin , is considered the chief ?sir in Norse paganism. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxons Woden and the Old High German Wotan, it is descended from Proto-Germanic *Wodanaz or *Wodanaz....
. This pans with both the historical circumstances of the Irminones in relationship to Rome, Widukinds confusion over whether Irmin was comparable to Mars or Hermes, and with Snorri Sturluson's allusions at the beginning of his Prose Edda; that Odin's cult appeared first in Germany and then spread up into the Ingaevonic North.

Irminones

See also