Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde

This volume is the first in German studies history to present a comprehensive study of the cultural heritage of the Low German region in the early Middle Ages. It is testament to the vibrant interdisciplinary research being conducted in this field, with the knowledge presented here opening up many new prospects for further research into Old Saxon.

The traditional picture is that there is little information about Tongeren, the capital of the civitas Tungrorum in Roman times, from Late Antiquity onwards. In the last twenty years or so, very cautiously, voices have been raised to nuance the story of the general decline of Tongeren from the beginning of the fifth century. A recurring question is whether Tongeren remained inhabited and what its function might have been. A key site is the Roman basilica, the predecessor of an early medieval church. A key figure is the bishop, whose seat was moved to neighbouring Maastricht in the sixth century. Based on an extensive database, a picture of late Roman Tongeren is drawn, with its public and private buildings, cemeteries and material finds. While the number of finds is decreasing, more historical sources are becoming available for the early Middle Ages. For this period, not only the re-Christianisation is discussed, but also the political, religious and economic role that the former capital of the civitas could have played. Due to its location, one could state that in the civitas Tungrorum the Middle Ages started earlier than elsewhere because of the emergence of a Franko-Roman society.

One of the most well-known potential forgeries is SG-65 Kleines Schulerloch, which has provoked controversies and debates among scientists of various disciplines since its discovery. In this study an interdisciplinary grid of methods was developed and applied to the inscription of the Kleines Schulerloch in order to analyse its authenticity. Due to the approach new results could be made, leading to a revised edition entry of the inscription.

The widespread transmission of bestiaries and the Physiologus, with their allegorical animal narratives, demonstrates the interconnectedness of medieval Europe like few other corpuses. Text and image documents from this tradition spread to Northern Europe, bringing their potential for innovation to literary production there. This monograph focuses on the routes taken by the material heading north and its local cultural impact.

This volume brings together essays by friends and colleagues of Heinrich Beck, editor of the Encyclopedia of Germanic Antiquity Studies (RGA) and cofounder of the Supplementary Volumes to the RGA and the database Germanic Antiquity Studies Online (GAO), with topics ranging from early medieval archaeology, and Old Germanic and Old Norse literature, to linguistics, onomastics, runology, and medieval Scandinavian history.

Assemblies were important institutions in early medieval Europe. This was where decision-makers negotiated hierarchy, did politics, and exchanged information. This volume examines not just the major political assemblies in various European empires but also synods and smaller, regional assemblies. It spans the period from late antiquity to the early eleventh century.

The volume deals with the ducats of the Merovingian Empire from an archaeological and historiographical perspective. The aim is a systematic comparison of duces and ducats, taking into account the time, conditions, and circumstances of their creation, as well as their structure and change. The focus is on the tasks of the officials in the military and administration as well as the consequences in culture and religion.

The Old English Genesis is the sole illustrated Anglo-Saxon poem. In full appreciation of this unique concurrent execution of visualization and versification in a single manuscript, this multidisciplinary work explores the pictorial (Vol. 1) and the metrical (Vol. 2) organization from both synchronic–structural and diachronic–comparative perspectives. Among the most significant findings of each volume are: The first twenty-two images in the Old English Genesis originated on the whole from the Touronian Bibles; and the underlying classical Old English and Old Saxon meters were interactively reshaped through mutual adaptation and recomposition aimed at their firm integration into a synthesized Old English Genesis. While each part is solidly embedded in the respective scholarly tradition and pursues its own disciplinary concerns and problematics, vigorous formal and cognitive reasoning and theorizing run commonly through both. By way of mutual corroboration and integration, the twin volumes eventually converge on the hypothesis that the earliest portion of the extant Old English Genesis (lines 1–966) derived from the corresponding episodes of an illustrated Touronian Old Saxon Genesis in both pictorial and metrical terms.

Research on late antique and early medieval migrations has long acknowledged the importance of interdisciplinarity. The field is constantly nourished by new archaeological discoveries that allow for increasingly refined pictures of socio-economic development. Yet the perspectives adopted by historians and archaeologists are frequently different, and so are their conclusions. Diverging views exist in respect to varying geographical areas and scholarly traditions too.

This volume brings together history and archaeology to address the impact of the inflow and outflow of migrations on the rural landscape, the creation of new settlement patterns, and the role of migrations and mobility in transforming society and economy.

Such themes are often investigated under a regional or macro-regional viewpoint, resulting in too fragmented an understanding of a widespread phenomenon. Spanning Eastern and Western Europe, the book takes steps toward an integrated picture of territories normally investigated as separate entities, and critically establishes grounds for new comparisons and models on late antique and early medieval transformations.

Splendid women’s jewelry from the Moravian Empire has special significance for the 9th century and its archaeological research. So far, the chronology is based on the Staré Město „Na valách“, cemetery, but it shows glaring contradictions. Therefore, the volume presents a revision of typology and chronology as well as a new reconstruction of jewelry development, which is at the same time historically classified.

Controversial discussions about the origins, development, and meaning of Germanic Animal Style II are still taking place. The way that it spread quickly and widely within just a few decades, from Scandinavia to Northern Italy, was astonishing, raising questions about not just from where, how, and why this style made its way through vast regions of Europe so rapidly but also why this only occurred in regions with Germanic-speaking populations.

This volume presents contributions to the conference Old English Runes Workshop, organised by the Eichstätt-München Research Unit of the Academy project Runic Writing in the Germanic Languages (RuneS) and held at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in March 2012. The conference brought together experts working in an area broadly referred to as Runology.

Scholars working with runic objects come from several different fields of specialisation, and the aim was to provide more mutual insight into the various methodologies and theoretical paradigms used in these different approaches to the study of runes or, in the present instance more specifically, runic inscriptions generally assigned to the English and/or the Frisian runic corpora. Success in that aim should automatically bring with it the reciprocal benefit of improving access to and understanding of the runic evidence, expanding and enhancing insights gained within such closely connected areas of study of the Early-Mediaeval past.

In Nordic religious history, the god Balder appears not just as the shining God of Light but also as a ruthless warrior and half-human hero. At the same time, the fact that he is doomed to die is his most striking characteristic. This study brings together these contradictions for the first time, providing plausible reasons for them that go beyond narrative logics in mythical and ritual ideas of the body.

Central to the Færeyinga Saga, whose themes and narrative strategies are analyzed here, are portraits of political actors embroiled in Faroese power struggles during the Viking Age. Its ambiguous narrative strategy requires readers to make their own interpretations. It thus provides insights not just into the Norse world of ideas, but also into the functions and foundations of Icelandic storytelling as a medium that generated social discussions.

The Old Icelandic kings’ sagas are unique medieval narratives about the origins and establishment of the Scandinavian kingdom. They tell stories, but not straightforward tales of success, instead examining the diverse coincidences and uncertainties of Norse history. This volume examines the significance of this indeterminacy from the perspective of historiography, narrative theory, and the history of mentalities.

Were early medieval burial objects the personal property of the person who had died? This book looks at the case study of brooches to critically examine this question. The key component is an empirical study on the potential correlation between the use of brooches and the ages at which their wearers died. The insights gained in the study are joined by an analysis of wear factors and a compilation of theoretical modalities of purchase.

In the pop-cultural imagination, medieval Iceland is associated with an exaggerated, warrior-like image of masculinity. Much less-known are the portrayals of figures that are branded as unmanly in the Sagas of the Icelanders, which reveal how fiercely contested social ideas of masculinity were. This volume delves into these figures and conflicts at a literary level.

Combining perspectives from archeology, art history, philology, religious scholarship, and zoology, Vierck develops new, pathbreaking insights about an enigmatic figure in German heroic saga: Wayland the Smith. Wayland is a figure that dates back to the seventh century found in mostly fragmented relics, celebrated by Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians as a tragic hero of a violent fable of revenge and escape.

The scattered research history of the Old Frisian runic inscriptions dating to the early Medieval period (ca. AD 400–1000) calls for a comprehensive and systematic reprocessing of these objects within their socio-cultural context and against the backdrop of the Old English Runic tradition. This book presents an annotated edition of 24 inscriptions found in the modern-day Netherlands, England and Germany. It provides the reader with an introduction to runological methodology, a linguistic commentary on the features attested in the inscriptions, and a detailed catalogue which outlines the find history of each object and summarizes previous and new interpretations supplemented by pictures and drawings. This book additionally explores the question of Frisian identity and an independent Frisian runic writing tradition and its relation to the contemporary Anglo-Saxon runic culture. In its entirety, this work provides a rich basis for future research in the field of runic writing around the North Sea and may therefore be of interest to scholars of historical linguistics and early Medieval history and archaeology.

Over the past several decades, archeological research has made major progress through excavations and enhanced methods, thus furnishing a new picture of “old” Germania. In virtually all domains of life, this new understanding runs contrary to earlier impressions from ancient historians, such as Caesar and Tacitus, who have dominated the view of history held by society up to the present day.

Researchers broadly agree that the European Early Middle Ages can be grasped as emerging from Roman antiquity. The essays in this volume examine the role of social and communicative realities in this history. They use as a methodical instrument the concept of an “invisible Roman Empire,” which is understood as a continuous principle of Roman and post-Roman society.

Any reader of scholarship on the ancient and early medieval world will be familiar with the term 'Germanic', which is frequently used as a linguistic category, ethnonym, or descriptive identifier for a range of forms of cultural and literary material. But is the term meaningful, useful, or legitimate? The term, frequently applied to peoples, languages, and material culture found in non-Roman north-western and central Europe in classical antiquity, and to these phenomena in the western Roman Empire’s successor states, is often treated as a legitimate, all-encompassing name for the culture of these regions. Its usage is sometimes intended to suggest a shared social identity or ethnic affinity among those who produce these phenomena. Yet, despite decades of critical commentary that have highlighted substantial problems, its dominance of scholarship appears not to have been challenged. This edited volume, which offers contributions ranging from literary and linguistic studies to archaeology, and which span from the first to the sixteenth centuries AD, examines why the term remains so pervasive despite its problems, offering a range of alternative interpretative perspectives on the late and post-Roman worlds.

The Old Norse magic known as seiðr is associated in various ways with the phenomenon of liminality. This study traces the threshold-crossing elements in the tales of seiðr and the two divine seiðr masters Óðinn and Freyja. Using the mostly fragmentary sources, the author reconstructs the conceptual ideas behind the connection of seiðr and liminality.

Norse researchers have been studying the berserkir for centuries without coming to a consensus about this phenomenon. Samson uses a comparative examination of literary and archeological sources to present the historical context surrounding the animal-warriors and the popular beliefs associated with them. The study shows the evolution of the image of the berserker.

Theft and robbery are reciprocal actions with diverse literary applications. Though they figure centrally in Viking literature, scholars have paid them scant attention. This book shows that the crimes are gateways to the Sagas of Icelanders and their narrative technique. Moreover, they open windows through which to see the values of Icelandic saga society.

This volume was created as part of the Göttingen Academic of Sciences research project "RuneS." It presents brief inscriptions from about 100 South German runic objects dating from the 3^rd to the 7^th centuries from the viewpoints of archeology, epigraphy, and linguistics. The work is an essential reference for researchers in runology, comparative historical linguistics, onomastics, and cultural and religious history.

The rich corpus of literary otherworld journeys that has survived from the Scandinavian - and especially the Icelandic - Middle Ages is in many respects tied to a space 'Between the Worlds'. Every otherworld journey quite literally engages with a space 'between the worlds' in the sense that it plays itself out between this world and a world beyond, an otherworld. Yet this is not all. Also in terms of its cultural context this branch of the literature of the medieval North takes up a position situated midway between a broad range of poles. Texts from the Christian period treat pre-Christian mythology; allegedly pre-Christian material is studded with Christian motifs; Scandinavian texts adapt the learning and literature of the European continent, Ireland, and the classical Mediterranean; and Finnish narratives in turn appear to adapt Scandinavian narrative patterns. The volume presents a rich panorama of a broad range of very different - Scandinavian, Finno-Ugric, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Ancient Near Eastern, and archaeological - perspectives on the topic of the 'otherworld journey', which contextualises the motif of the otherworld journey in Old Norse-Icelandic literature in an unprecedented breadth.

Disputes lie at the heart of the sagas. Consequently, literary texts have been treated as sources of legal practice – narrations of law – while the sagas themselves and the handling of legal matters by the figures adhere to ‘laws of narration’. The volume addresses this intricate relationship between literature and social practice from the perspective of historians as well as philologists. The contributions focus not only on disputes and their solution in saga literature, but also on the representation of law and its history in sagas and Latin historiography from Scandinavia as well as the representation of laws and norms in mythological texts. They demonstrate that narrations of law provide an indispensable insight into legal culture and its connection to a wider framework of social norms, adjusting the impression given by the laws. The philological approaches underline that the narrative texts also have an agenda of their own when it comes to their representation of law, providing a mirror of conduct, criticising inequity, reinforcing the political and juridical position of kings or negotiating norms in mythological texts. Altogether, the volume underlines the unifying force exerted by a common fiction of law beyond its letter.

Many refrain from considering the Carolingian Empire as a state system because it lacks transpersonality. However, there certainly were transpersonal institutions in Carolingian society, and they took the form of churches and families. This publication researches their internal structures and functionality as a constitutive element of the empire. In this manner, it argues that the Carolingian Empire was organized based on pre-modern principles.

The deconstruction of the feudal system includes basic elements of the early medieval social order. This volume proposes a new theory for understanding one of the most critical elements of social order and interaction in the Carolingian dynasty during the decades around 800: military organization. The new theory links collective and personal structures in order to furnish a unique model of social order.

This book assesses the importance of poetry for the Old Icelandic literary flowering of c. 1150–1350. It addresses the apparent paradox that an extremely conservative form of literature, namely skaldic poetry, was at the core of the most innovative literary and intellectual experiments in the period. The book argues that this cannot simply be explained as a result of strong local traditions, as in most previous scholarship. Thus, for instance, the author demonstrates that the mix of prose and poetry found in kings’ sagas and sagas of Icelanders is roughly contemporary to the written sagas. Similarly, he argues that treatises on poetics and mythology, including Snorri’s Edda, are new to the period, not only in their textual form, but also in their systematic mode of analysis. The book contends that what is truly new in these texts is the method of the authors, derived from Latin learning, but applied to traditional forms and motifs as encapsulated in the skaldic tradition. In this way, Christian Latin learning allowed for its perceived opposite, vernacular oral literature of pagan extraction, to reach full fruition and to largely replace the very literature which had made this process possible in the first place.

This volume examines the generic patterns of behavior and aesthetic constructs employed by Norse Völsunga sagas to create their special world, based on a unique foundation of imagined worlds and figures.

The study examines the space of historical discourse in which the self-image of the Roman upper class developed in Gaul between West Roman Empire and the gentile regna. It analyzes the performative potential of textual sources from antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The investigation shows that from Sidonius Apollinaris until Gregory of Tours, romanitas underwent phases of transition, hybridity, and latency.

During the upheavals in the transition from late antiquity to the Middle Ages, Duces played a prominent role. This volume offers the first comprehensive comparative presentation of this office and its characteristic features. It considers the Alemanni, Burgundians, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards, and Franks. A particular focus is placed on the question of the continuity of the Roman ducatus structure.

The volume examines the cultural significance of gold in European epic poetry – or more precisely, imagined golden objects in the context of the narrative worlds of the Old English, Norse, Latin, Old High German, and Romance literatures of the Early and High Middle Ages. The textual analyses are amplified by new archeological findings on hoards and golden objects.

Personal names often move between languages. This volume brings together studies of interferences in systems of names in the Middle Ages; the emphasis is on the Merovingian and Frankish Empires and Italy. Jewish name traditions in the Iberian peninsula and the relationships between names in Scandinavia, England and Lithuania are also taken into consideration.

New scientific methods offer new insights in the past. Promising opportunities for archaeology and historiography are confronted with the challenges of interdisciplinary cooperation between the sciences and the humanities. This volume presents contributions by European researchers, arranged in four sections: fundamental questions of archaeology and biosciences, migrations, transformations, and social structures.

This volume contains a broad collection of new essays in Old Norse studies, archeology, runology, and visual culture. The addressed topics range from the Ring of the Nibelung, figurines of Odin, and the miracles of Mary to necromancers, Old Norse sagas, and remarkable runic inscriptions. It presents various aspects of archeological scholarship through an analysis of textual and pictorial sources, archeological finds, and place names.

This work studies the at times tense coexistence of polytheists and Christians in Anglo-Saxon England of the 7^th century. It examines how, when, and under what conditions these different religious groups came to live together in the same kingdoms. Particular attention is given to the reconstruction of polytheist perspectives.

This book discusses the 3rd–11th century developments that led to the formation of the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the Viking Age. Wide-ranging studies of communication routes, regional identities, judicial territories, and royal sites and graves trace a complex trajectory of rulership in these pagan Germanic societies. In the final section, new light is shed on the pinnacle and demise of the Norwegian kingdom in the 13th–14th centuries.

The Royal manor Avaldsnes in southwest Norway holds a rich history testified by 13^th century sagas and exceptional graves from the first millennium AD. In 2011–12 the settlement was excavated. In this first book from the project crucial results from an international team of 23 scholars are published. The chapters cover a wide array of topics ranging from building-remains and scientific analyses of finds to landownership and ritual manifestations.

The author investigates the relevance of the socio-economic practice of plunder for organizing subsequent economic activities in Gaul from 451 to 592. The study offers new insights into economic and social history. In addition, methodological reflections about terminology and historiographical works disclose new perspectives for historical research beyond the express theme and period.

This volume offers an up-to-date review of early medieval life in Alammania. It is structured according to five central dualities: archeology and history, law and language, habitus and funeral customs, settlements and economy, and church and faith. Its interdisciplinary approach takes stock of issues of source interpretation along with the burdens of past scholarship.

This volume showcases current scholarship in Old Norse and the neighboring disciplines of German linguistics, ancient history, and early modern history. Leading scholars analyze runic inscriptions (both in terms of their meaning and cultural context), medieval poetry (skaldic, eddic, and Old English), and individual Germanic languages (such as Gothic and Friesian).

The 100^th volume of the series Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde – Ergänzungsbände presents 18 papers from over 150 years of research on the history and culture of the Germanic peoples. The selected papers had a considerable influence on future academic debate, and thus mark watershed moments in the discipline. This first part comprises six historiographical and six archaeological contributions.

This book presents the first comprehensive study of Anglo-Saxon manuscript texts containing runic letters. To date there has been no comprehensive study of these works in a single volume, although the need for such an examination has long been recognized. This is in spite of a growing academic interest in the mise-en-page of early medieval manuscripts. The texts discussed in this study include Old English riddles and elegies, the Cynewulfian poems, charms, Solomon and Saturn I, and the Old English Rune Poem. The focus of the discussion is on the literary analysis of these texts in their palaeographic and runological contexts. Anglo-Saxon authors and scribes did not, of course, operate within a vacuum, and so these primary texts are considered alongside relevant epigraphic inscriptions, physical objects, and historical documents. Victoria Symons argues that all of these runic works are in various ways thematically focused on acts of writing, visual communication, and the nature of the written word. The conclusion that emerges over the course of the book is that, when encountered in the context of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, runic letters consistently represent the written word in a way that Roman letters do not.

The Thul, a figure in Old Norse and Old English literature, resists precise definition. In his analysis of the textual corpus, Tsitsiklis shows that as a source of performative and consistently authoritative verbal action, the Thule has more of the diverse features of a spokesman figure rather than representing a fixed typology.

This new edition has been substantially revised and expanded. New elements include discussions of rune stones as legal sources, Danish and Swedish conquests in the Baltic area, and the local administration in that area. The literature has been brought fully up to date. The figures have also been updated, such that the new edition is once again an indispensable reference for Scandinavian scholars and legal historians.

Chronology is foundational for archeological research. But research based on written sources may run the risk of circular reasoning. This volume addresses the problem using the example of Southern Germany between the 5^th to 8^th century. The author shows that already around 500, chronologies were biased by the assumption of an opposition between Franks and Alemanni. Hence, he develops a new chronological model based on over 650 grave finds.

Egeler has produced the first scholarly treatise about the mythical kingdoms of Ódáinsakr und Glæsisvelir that fully examines the relevant materials and places them in the larger context of religious and literary history. He shows that these two mythical otherworldly realms in Old West Norse tradition represent the northern reception of Celtic mythical themes that play such a large part in Arthurian and Early Irish literature.

In the world of the Old Norse gods, Heimdallr represents a many-faceted and opaque figure. Researchers have failed until now to satisfactorily resolve questions about his character and function. Sebastian Cöllen shows that Heimdallr was less disparate than has often been assumed. He served an important structural function in Norse mythology, embodying ideas of order and lineage, among others.

This volume studies local priests as central players in small communities of early medieval Europe. As clerics living among the laity, priests played a double role within their communities: that of local representatives of the Church and religious experts, and that of owners of land and other goods. By virtue of their membership of both the ecclesiastical and the secular world, they can be considered as ‘men in the middle’: people who brought politico-religious ideas and ideals to secular communities, and who linked the local to the supra-local via networks of landownerhsip.
This book addresses both roles that local priests played by approaching them via their manuscripts, and via the charters that record transactions in which they were involved. Manuscripts once owned by local priests bear witness to their education and expertise, but also indicate how, for instance, ideals of the Carolingian reforms reached the lowest levels of early medieval society. The case-studies of collections of charters, on the other hand, show priests as active members of networks of the locally powerful in a variety of European regions. Notwithstanding many local variations, the contributions to this volume show that local priests as ‘men in the middle’ are a phenomenon shared by the early medieval world as a whole.

There are key aspects of the Viking settlement of the Isle of Man that remain unexplained: When did first contact take place? When was a permanent settlement established? Was the island conquered violently or did a peaceful settlement take place? This study uses a careful analysis of the source materials from archeological and written records to reconstruct a totally new image of the Scandinavian presence in the Irish Sea.

The authors present the most important iconographic sources for German mythology and heroic legends and discuss the latest research. A focus is on interpretation and on new technical methods for autopsy and visual documentation. The geographic scope includes Scandinavia, England, and Germany; the time frame extends from the period of the Roman Empire to the late Viking Age.

The social transformation of the Roman world is a highly topical and much-discussed subject among historians. The importance of kinship in this epochal process has been largely neglected until now. This compendium seeks to close this gap by examining the role of kinship in transforming the social order. It significantly expands our perspective on the epochal upheaval between late antiquity and the middle ages.

Köster investigates the subject of death and dying as depicted on Scandinavian runic stones from the Viking era. Her study calls into question our conventional understanding of the function of these inscriptions, showing that runic inscriptions were not limited to epigraphs, but were also prepared more generally for individuals who were still alive.

This book places the phenomenon of sports and games in its philological, archeological, and art historical context, and examines its connections to cultural and social history. The temporal scope extends from Tacitus' mention of dice games to courtly falconry and includes the culture of games among 17th century Swedish miners. The thematic spectrum includes among others dice and board games and the chivalrous septem probitates (seven skills).

By the early middle ages vernacular aristocratic traditions of heroic narration were firmly established in Western and Northern Europe. Although there are regional, linguistic and formal differences, one can observe a number of similarities. Oral literature disseminates a range of themes that are shared by narratives in most parts of the continent. In all the European regions, this tradition of heroic narration came into contact with Christianity, which led to modifications. Similar processes of adaptation and transformation can be traced everywhere in this field of early European vernacular narrative. But with the increasing specialization of academic fields over the last half century, inter-disciplinary dialogue has become increasingly difficult. The volume is a contribution to renew the inter-disciplinary dialogue about common themes, topics and motifs in Nordic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic literature, and about the different methodologies to explore them.

This book is a formal and functional study of the three distinct meters of Old Norse eddic poetry, fornyrðislag, málaháttr, and ljóðaháttr. It provides a systematic account of these archaic meters, both synchronic and diachronic, and from a comparative Germanic perspective; particularly concerned with Norse innovations in metrical practice, Suzuki explores how and why the three meters were shaped in West Scandinavia through divergent reorganization of the Common Germanic metrical system. The book constitutes the first comprehensive work on the meters of Old Norse eddic poetry in a single coherent framework; with thorough data presentation, detailed philological analysis, and sophisticated linguistic explanation, the book will be of enormous interest to Old Germanic philologists/linguists, medievalists, as well as metrists of all persuasions. A strong methodological advantage of this work is the extensive use of inferential statistical techniques for giving empirical support to specific analyses and claims being adduced. Another strength is a cognitive dimension, a (re)construction of a prototype-based model of the metrical system and its overall characterization as an integral part of the poetic knowledge that governed eddic poets' verse-making technique in general.

The Icelandic historian, poet, and politician Snorri Sturluson was an exceptional figure of the Nordic Middle Ages. The essays by renowned scholars gathered in this volume present the current state of research on Sturluson while also suggesting new approaches. In addition to examining questions related to the history of religion, they consider issues regarding the nature of biography, the history of science, and historical text transmission.

Wolfgang Krause was one of the founders of German-language runology. The study of runes can uncover clues about everyday ancient life as well as about linguistic history – a cultural study at the juncture between linguistics, philology, archaeology, and history.

In his widely read dissertation, the author explained that the structural form of the two-part Germanic first name dates back to a distant Indo-German past. In his new book, he subjects his theory to testing, revision, and extension. This volume will be an indispensable resource for name researchers and all those interested in medieval and Nordic literature and the social history of the medieval world.

The study of North Germanic mythology has been greatly influenced by the writings of the Icelandic scholar and politician Snorri Sturluson (1178/9–1241). Yet the past 200 years has seen much disagreement among Sturluson scholars. In this book, Jan Alexander van Nahl provides a constructive new way to think about the debates. He casts a critical eye on medieval interpretations and uses a lexematic analysis in examining the versions of Snorri’s work passed down through history.

This work provides the primary source as well as German translations, critical commentary, and overview discussions on the topic of clothing.

This volume is the first study of the influence of Roman law on the first written law of Iceland. Starting with a presentation of the legislation during the period of the Icelandic free state, Hafliði Másson is presented in detail. Through him influences from Roman law, as well as norms from the Old Testament played a part in the legal codex of Grágás. The work is thus of significance for legal history as well as for German and Byzantine studies.

2007 saw the completion of the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. This volume takes stock of developments and brings together the fields of archeology, history, philology and numerous natural sciences. The themes in the book address current topics, methods and new sources.

This study explores the various aspects of cultural exchange between three find areas (Southern Germany, England and Scandinavia) during the transition from the Migration Period to the Early Middle Ages. The author reflects on the cultural terms used in various disciplines and presents a theory of space which views man as a social-cultural being who continually reconstructs his spheres of action. This leads to an enhanced understanding of the archaeological concept of culture.

In the past the ethnic duality of the Visigoths and the Hispano-Romans has been seen as one of the main characteristics in the formation of the Spanish Visigothic kingdom. This study shows that, instead of an ethnic division of the population, a Gothic identity, which was above all politically defined, was already applied to the entire population in the 6th century, and that overall it had less effect than is generally assumed. An analysis of the extant literary sources takes into account the historical conditions and new methodical approaches to interpretation.

The image of eating and drinking in the middle ages is mainly determined by vernacular poetry. However, it not only imparts a very fragmented but also ideal concept of past conditions. The analogy with contemporary illustrations and statues as with archaeological finds can complete if not revise previous assumptions. In addition to the living spaces of the nobility, it also examines urban and rural communities as well as cloisters.

Medieval Nordic legal sources are to be found from Greenland, the Scandinavian countries to Russia. The acceptance of Christianity led to decisive changes in these legal sources, the polity, private law and everyday life. This volume considers the sources, explains how they came about and reviews their content and their further development until about AD 1500. It presents for the first time a consistent picture of these sources.

On over 130 Swedish rune-stones of the Viking period, a depiction of a quadruped appears beside the memorial inscription. The wild animal is a lion or a wolf that is sometimes bound. Sigmund Oehrl associates the motif with the binding of the wolf Fenrir and the banishment of the Hellhound by Christ and evaluates it against the background of the expectation of the end of the world and the strategy of missions. For the first time this volume collects, describes and compares pictorial and written sources which illuminate old Germanic conceptions of the binding of animals.

This work considers Valkyries in the medieval Scandinavian mythology and literature and places them in the context of the early history of European religion. Drawing on textual and archaeological sources, a detailed review of Celtic, Etruscan and Graeco-Roman female demons of the battlefield and of death is presented, and their remarkable similarity with the Valkyries analysed against the background of Mediterranean-transalpine cultural contacts.

The 70th birthday of Heiko Steuer, Professor of Pre- and Protohistory at Freiburg University from 1984 to 2005, and for many years one of the editors of the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, has been the occasion for the presentation of this collection of 35 papers. The six sections cover Steuer’s research fields: 1. Prehistory, 2. Antiquity, 3. The Early Middle Ages in West and South Europe, 4. The Early Middle Ages in Northern Europe, 5. The High and Late Middle Ages, 6. The history of scholarship and matters of method.

Archeology still tends to be seen as a young science. In this two-volume history of archeology, the author fundamentally reshapes this notion and describes the emergence of archeological methods since antiquity. She also explains the origins of today’s national and sub-disciplinary differences, using examples from pre-history and early history. Volume 2 covers the period from the founding of the first national institutions in 1632 to 1850.

Archeology still tends to be seen as a young science. In this two-volume history of archeology, the author fundamentally reshapes this notion and describes the emergence of archeological methods since antiquity. She also explains the origins of today’s national and sub-disciplinary differences, using examples from pre-history and early history. Volume 1 covers the theoretical foundations and the period from the classical age to 1630.

This work focuses on one of the most striking archaeological phenomena of the Early Middle Ages in Europe, the so-called “Reihengräberfelder” (cemeteries with graves in rows). The author covers the development of their historical interpretation against the backdrop of an apparently fundamental contrast between the “Germanic tribes” and the “Romans.” However, his analysis demonstrates that these cemeteries cannot be seen as archaeological evidence of Germanic migration to the former boarder regions of the Roman Empire, but rather represent a cultural reaction to the break-up of Rome.

Because of their chronology and geographical distribution, double-plate fibulas – pins for closing clothing – have long been regarded as a clear archaeological indicator for the Gothic migrations known from written sources. The present study undertakes a critical appraisal of previous interpretations of this central category of find from the Great Migration Period and their methodological bases. The subsequent systematic new analysis leads to a far more sophisticated view.

The main focus of the present collected volume is placed on early medieval personal names, which are examined for their value as sources both for linguists and for historians. There is a discussion of Germanic, Romance and Slavonic names. In addition, there is a paper dealing with pre-historic place-names, and one looking into the future under the title of ‛Project in the field of early medival onomatology and prosopography’. The papers collected in this volume were delivered at an international interdisciplinary conference on the subject held at the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg from 25th - 29th October 2007.

Compared to other medieval philologies, the particular nature of the literature of the North, and in particular of Iceland, has always meant that the study of Old Norse languages must be interdisciplinary and rely on methodical variety. This volume, published on the occasion of the 80th birthday of the Munich old Norse scholar, Kurt Schier, contains some three dozen studies on the mythology, history of religion, literature and poetry of the North, as well as runic and onomastic studies, and so reflects the broad thematic spectrum of modern old Nordic studies.

The central topic of this work are the Iron Age runic stones in modern-day Sweden, which are analysed for the first time in relation to where they were originally erected. An interdisciplinary approach first of all considers their archaeological environment, before analysing the inscriptions with regard to their intended site. The second part of the study discusses the function of runic stones, and in particular how this relates to where they were set up.

The volume contains 17 papers by archaeologists, historians and linguists who met at the University of Jena in October 2006 to compare the state of research in their particular disciplines on the early history of Thuringia. Here it became clear that in many respects the findings of historians and archaeologists cannot be reconciled with each other. The material finds made in Thuringia cannot easily be attributed to the early Thuringians as presented in the written records.

This Festschrift celebrates the 65th birthday of Dieter Geuenich, who held the Chair of Medieval History at the University of Duisburg-Essen from 1988 to 2008; it contains 41 papers dedicated to him by friends and colleagues from the fields of historical onomatology, memoria and memorials in the Middle Ages and Early Medieval archaeology and history.

The present volume provides an overview of the present state of knowledge of the archaeology of the Early and High Middle Ages. A comprehensive account is given of the most recent reinterpretations ‒ dendrochronology, interpretations from cultural history and historical modelling. The main focus is on the history of culture, settlement, society and economy of the Western Slavs between the Elbe/Saale and the Vistula. Brief summaries of the historical framework and the history of 'Slavic Archaeology' contextualise these aspects. Access to many detailed questions is provided by a thematically arranged bibliography.

This study deals with the origins of kingship among the Germanic speaking barbarians. Its starting point is a long overdue methodical review of the old view that the kingship of the Migration Period is to be regarded as a kingship based on military power and distinguished from an older, sacral based popular kingship. On the basis of recent research and archaeological evidence a new perspective of the development of power forms within the barbarian societies is expounded.

The volume provides collected papers by the Indo-Europeanist Günter Neumann (1920-2005) on Germanic, and especially Old Germanic, names. The author's main interest lays in the semantic and etymological interpretation of personal and place names, together with exploring the motivation behind the giving of names. Here, the link with historical studies is particularly evident.

In April 2004 a conference on Late Antique hilltop settlements was organised in Freiburg im Breisgau to mark excavations at such sites, in the Black Forest by the University of Freiburg and in North Italy by the University of Munich. In more than 20 contributions scholars from 10 countries presented the results of their own excavations in Late Antique and Early Medieval hilltop settlements, identifying similarities and differences. Not in every prehistorical or historical period were hilltops used as refuges or – since they were highly visible – for representational purposes, and these comparative studies were intended to analyse the military, political and social backgrounds. The results are presented in this volume together with a supplementary commentary.

The 15 articles in this volume are dedicated to the analysis of fundamental cultural developments between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Archaeologists and historians offer new perspectives on Central and Western Europe which do not simply polarise between Romans and Germans. Central themes are the relationship between historical studies and archaeology, the beginnings of the Early Middle Ages, the archaeology of early medieval “peoples”, the role of burials, as well as trade and exchange. The result is a complex picture of an epoch of decisive change.

Our present-day view of the Vikings and their activities is based mainly on Swedish poetry of the romantic period, as well as the results of archaeological research in the 20th century. But what pictures were conjured up by Vikings and their travels in the Middle Ages? An answer to this question can be provided by medieval Scandinavian literature, in particular Icelandic. This is the first study of the reception of the Vikings and their travels in medieval Old Norse literature to be attempted.

Clothing and outward appearance as a means of expressing individual and collective identity were of great importance in Late Antiquity. This publication is the first interdisciplinary overview of source material and provides a critical view of opposing statements on the value of written sources, images, and archaeological finds on habitus barbarus . Based on these sources, the book develops not only a new perspective on the meaning of “barbaric” clothing but also sheds new light on the Late Roman “barbarians” themselves.

Annette Hoff examines agricultural information contained in the oldest Danish, Swedish, English, Irish and Frankish law books to present an important study of the development of cultivation systems, forms of settlement and land use in Northwestern Europe from about 600 - 1250. The insights gained from legal codes are compared with archaeological, cartographic and scientific sources.

The book deals with all aspects of rural society: the farmsteads with living accommodation, barns, animal sheds and mills, the use of common land and forest for animals, and the construction of roads and bridges.

The papers in this volume deal with fundamental areas of life in the Iron-Age from a cultural studies perspective. Fields covered include social orders, the role of women, weapons and the organisation of warriors, tools and implements, burial, religion and rituals, art.

Boathouses, built for the protective storage of watercraft, have a centuries old tradition that is archaeologically proven. Used in great numbers in Scandinavia and the North Atlantic even today, boathouses of lengths up to 40 m were widely used between the 1^st and 15^th century, especially in Norway. They are great focal points in the discussion of naval history, as well as prime indicators of the centres of power along the coastline.

Runes are the oldest known writing system in which texts have been recorded in Germanic languages. The ordering of the runes, which dates from a later period, gives the origin of the term ‘futhark’. Like all the other writing systems, the futhark underwent far-reaching changes over time. The volume deals with the changes which occurred in the writing traditions of the individual languages.

The most important source for the situation on the Upper Rhine in Late Classical Antiquity is to be found in the Notitia Dignitatum, a register of all the offices and honours of the Late Roman Empire. The present book deals with one office in the Notitia, the Dux Mogontiacensis, the Commander for the Upper Rhine, residing in Mainz. In it, the author succeeds in re-determining the genesis and purpose of the Notitia. At the same time, this study is the first to meld the regionally-oriented German archaeological research on the Rhine regions in Late Classical Antiquity with studies on the Notitia working in the English-speaking tradition.

After the Second World War, the question of the religious character of Germanic kingship was no longer prominent - not least because previously excessively hybrid views had been developed on the existence of a Germanic religious kingship. Now that in the meantime important insights have been gained into the practical exercise of power in the early kingdoms, it is time to enquire again into their ideological and religious foundations. The multiple perspectives developed in these papers lead to new insights which differ distinctly from earlier understandings of the early kingdoms. Above all, weight is added to the doubts about the existence of Germanic religious kingship.

The 13^th century Eyrbyggja saga is one of the most important Icelandic sagas, but also one of the most discussed because of the seemingly heterogeneous elements of its plot, which unfolds it as a chronicle. The present study takes as its starting point the central significance of the god Thor in his function as the founder and preserver of culture for the community of settlers, and attempts to develop the ideas connected with the establishment of an ordered community life for the medieval Icelanders. The thematic foci are provided by the occupation and settlement of land and the complex discourse of sacrifice in the saga.

Old geographic names often shed light on the linguistic and cultural conditions of the “Dark Ages” and are of high value to the field of archaeology. This study from the year 1950, published here for the first time, offers a meticulous collection of all names (especially, landmarks and rivers) reported by Greek and Latin writers. In the appendix, Hermann Reichert illustrates the merits of the Alexandrine geographer Klaudios Ptolemaios (2^nd century).

This book presents the first collection of the earliest West Germanic bridal-quest narratives together with a comparative study of them. In contrast to earlier studies, the author locates the origin of this narrative tradition in the oral and written Germanic literary tradition, a result that leads to a re-assessment of the genesis of vernacular German and Scandinavian literature. The chapters deal in chronological order with the Latin chronicles of the Germanic peoples and with the early Latin and vernacular literature in Germany and Scandinavia.

For many years, 260AD was seen as the dividing line between a Romanesque classical age and a Germanic early medieval period. Now, however, it is necessary to take more account of the manifold and mutual cross-influences between the various population groups and analyse forms of continuity and discontinuity, acculturation and persistence. An examination of archaeological sources in Alamannia shows the existence of Romanesque structures up to around the year 400. The "Reihengräberfelder" (burial gounds with the graves laid out in rows) dating from the mid-5th century can be seen as marking a new beginning. Various links to the Germanic Elbe region and the Danube area show the heterogenity of the population at the beginning of this era. As late as the 6th and 7th centuries, however, different forms of burial can be found in areas close to the Rhine and in the Danube region, which demonstrate the manifold cross-influences.

Namenwelten presents a broadly-based documentation on names and onomastics, with its main focus on the German and Scandinavian area. Beside studies on place-names and personal names, it contains theoretical and methodological papers, together with articles dealing with runological topics. The contents give access to some 5000 place-names and personal names.

The linguistic and cultural relations between the North Germanic and the Alemannic tribes are a controversial area of research with a long tradition. This interdisciplinary collection of papers takes account of both linguistic and onomasiological aspects and archaeological and runic viewpoints. New perspectives result for the academic discourse in historical linguistic research and in ancient studies.

This volume analyses previous attempts to delineate ethnic groupings with the help of archaeological finds. After a short review of the history of these interpretations, central concepts are examined (people, culture, race, language) and ethnological and sociological concepts of identity are adduced. Against this background, Brather undertakes a comparative description of the methodological problems of ethnic reconstructions for the period between the Iron Age and the Middle Ages, and contrasts them with interpretations from cultural, economic and social history as alternative approaches to an explanation which is closer to the sources. This structural historical analysis places the explanatory power of archaeological sources on a footing with those of literary texts.

For over ten years now, the interdisciplinary research group Nomen et Gens has been examining the mutual dependence of personal names and group memberships. The papers collected in this volume are the results of the 3rd international colloquium in March 2002, which was organised in conjunction with the German Historical Institute in Paris and the Paderborn Institute for Interdisciplinary Research into the Middle Ages and their Influence (IEMAN). The political unification of large parts of Central and Western Europe by the Franks and the multiplicity of further imperial formations led to the contact and mutual influencing of varied languages, institutions and traditions. In their papers, linguists, historians and archaeologists from different countries examine the sustained processes of synthesis for European culture in the late Classical Age and Early Middle Ages, which they characterise as being of long duration, multi-layered and diverse.

With their rich iconography and runic inscriptions, the gold bracteates are one of the most important sources for research into Germanic religion. This volume combines contributions on the history of scholarship, iconography, chronology, the inscriptions and the names mentioned, as well as on the cultural and religious background to the bracteates. Together with a catalogue of new finds made since the completion of the Ikonographischer Katalog in 1989, this volume thus presents a work of fundamental importance for research on the subject.

This book focuses on the decisive upheavals of the years after 375 A.D. in the Pannonian provinces, which were located between eastern Alps, the middle Danube, and the Adriatic Sea. It covers the Roman administration, the conquest by the Gothic Divisions, the development of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths as well as the appearance and eclipse of several peoples up to the late sixth century A.D. The treatment points out causal aspects that heralded the fall of the (western) Roman Empire.

Morten Axboe presents a detailed analysis of the gold bracteates from the period of the migration of the peoples - a long-established research topic in early medieval studies. He first reports on the present state of research into these decorative pendants with their amuletic function and indicates outstanding problems.

The stylistic development of the bracteates is illustrated using computer imaging of the pictorial details of their human heads, which are divided into 4 typological groups. Axboe examines the relationship of the bracteates to the medallion imitations from the imperial age and follows the precursors of both types to Roman coinage. The bracteates are located chronologically through comparisons with animal ornamentation from the time of the migration of the peoples, through finds of dated coinage and through the discovery of bracteates in Continental and English burial sites. The author concludes by discussing possible origins of the large gold hoards of the 6th century. There is a short listing of gold bracteates discovered between 1989 and 2003.

The chapters on the Middle Ages or on later epochs deal with questions of the reception of Antiquity or aspects of its continuity - e.g. the reception of the Germanic tribes in the 20th century and the history of Germanic and Nordic Studies, Runology, Old Germanic Studies and Early Germanic Languages and Literatures.

The various methodological approaches of the internationally renowned contributors combine to give a comprehensive and many-facetted view of recent research. In addition, the articles cover the spectrum of the scholarly work and interests of the Göttingen medievalist and runologist Klaus Düwel, to whom this volume is dedicated.

In the predominantly non-literate culture of migration period Germania gold bracteates were an authentic statement of the identity of those who wore them and of how they saw the world. Their standardised programme of designs demonstrates that they were all produced according to strict, common rules governing motifs and style. The fact that the designs were diffused by a process of copying allows us to reconstruct a network of interrelations between central places, so that bracteates are one of the primary sources for research into early medieval Germanic society.

What changes coincided with Roman rule on the lower reaches of the Rhine? What aspects of life remained untouched by Romanization? What continuities and discontinuities can be identified in politics, society, the economy, and culture of Germania Inferior? Historical transitions such as the early and final phase of Roman rule are especially illuminating phenomena for the historical sciences.

As small as Germania Inferior was, the province did not develop uniformly. Differences between urban and rural environments, between northern and southern regions, and between political, social, economic, and-cultural aspects of life have been found. The Dutch and German archaeologists and experts on ancient history who have contributed to this volume offer discriminating answers to the question of continuity.

This volume investigates the question of why for centuries the Germans have unhesitatingly regarded the ancient Germanic tribes as their direct ancestors - and commonly even do so today. Although advances in academic research have shown that we are dealing here with an artificial continuity and an invented tradition, in the 19th and 20th centuries the 'freedom-loving' and 'warlike' Germanic tribes of ancient times served to motivate contemporary behavior. The papers in this volume analyze the complex processes of this equation.

"Why have you not sent the clothes which you were supposed to send from the province of the Frisians? For the sake of God the Almighty, send them soon." - from an anonymous letter to a cleric in Frisia in the spring of 748.

In this work the author presents a pioneering cultural history of clothing from approx. 750 to 1050, which places the clothing and life of medieval people in their social context. The findings of this volume are based on the detailed examination and evaluation of written, graphic and archaeological sources. The author presents the clothing of the laity, the robes of the ruling classes and the habits of monks and cathedral clergy, and gives an overview of the changes in clothing and fashion. A more technical second section deals with raw materials, dyes, and production and processing technology.

The international and interdisciplinary colloquium conducted by the research group "Nomen et gens" is concerned with the collection, inventory, interpretation and evaluation of personal names from the age of the migration of the peoples up to Charlemagne. The present volume continues from the 1997 publication Nomen et gens. The papers address the historical and philological problems arising from the conception and compilation of a dictionary of proper names. The first part deals with developments in research into persons and personal names, prosopography and dictionaries of names in recent times. Part two provides space for fundamental reflections on methodology.

This interdisciplinary volume brings together 37 contributions, most of them on the history of Ancient Nordic religion. In addition, there are papers on later European and Mediterranean religious history and investigations into Bahai'ism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrism, and the history of research in the history of religion.

The present volume provides an overview of the present state of knowledge of the archaeology of the Early and High Middle Ages. A comprehensive account is given of the most recent reinterpretations - dendrochronology, interpretations from cultural history and historical modelling. The main focus is on the history of culture, settlement, society and economy of the Western Slavs between the Elbe/Saale and the Vistula. Brief summaries of the historical framework and the history of 'Slavic Archaeology' contextualise these aspects. Access to many detailed questions is provided by a thematically arranged bibliography.

The disciplines of prehistorical and early archaeology were given massive support by the National Socialist state, for example through the establishment of countless new professorships. The present volume examines the work of ten typical university teachers; it is not, however, primarily concerned with their biographies and political conduct, but uses a critical reading of their academic publications to approach the question of how they thought before, during and after the Third Reich and how they formulated their research findings.

What transpires is that both the academic paradigms, questions and accounts from earlier epochs of pre-history and early history and the linguistic vocabulary were developed long before 1933, going back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, and that the language did not change until long after the end of the War.

Germania inferior, province between the civilizations: Celtic periphery, immigration area for the Germanic tribes, Roman dominion. The South fertile and rich in raw materials, the North barren and inhospitable. Roman cities and native settlements, villas and farms; too Roman for the Germanic inhabitants, too Germanic for the Romans. Who did actually inhabit the province? To what social conditions did the regional environment give rise? What economic exchange was there between town and country, between the native inhabitants, the Romans and the free Germanic peoples? Archaeologists and historians now have more sophisticated tools and can provide new, more precise answers to these questions. The North of the province in particular has been explored more thoroughly, and the results of that research form the basis of this volume. The papers resultet from a colloquium with German and Dutch archaeologists and historians. They draw up an account of the current state of the art and show the perspective for future research.

From the 4th century, following the imperial edicts of toleration and the ‘conversion’ of Emperor Constantine, Christianity could take on a more public form, building and decorating its places of worship and assembly in line with its own needs.

The marvellous mosaic floors of churches from the late antique period on the Northern Adriatic are impressive monuments to early Christian archaeology and culture. The author examines these pavements with their inscriptions, known as offertory inscriptions. They give details of the names of the sponsors and their contributions to the relevant mosaic floor. The first part of the volume provides a historical overview, in which the author demonstrates how the distinctive yet enigmatic tradition of using floors as a medium for text and illustration can be traced back to ancient pagan times. In the region studied, of Histria and Venetia, the custom of inlaid mosaic floor decoration was already widespread before it came to be used in church buildings around the Mediterranean. The second part of the study examines the historical architectural and religious characteristics of the Adriatic offertory inscriptions, which reveal information both about contemporary church organisation and about liturgical customs and views of salvation.

The editors and authors of this Festschrift honour a colleague whose academic work has gained international reputation and standing. Working from the tradition of the Leipzig School of Nordic Studies, Rolf Heller's particular specialism was the Icelandic family sagas. This topic is taken up by the 19 contributors from the USA, England, Iceland, Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries, who present a broad spectrum of present-day research into the sagas. The volume is completed with a bibliography of Rolf Heller's writings.

Mit theodisca lingua (zu althochdeutsch theoda 'Volk') bezeichnete das frühe Mittelalter jede germanische Volkssprache im Gegensatz zu Latein und seinen Nachfolgesprachen, den romanischen Nationalsprachen Europas. Auch Deutsch, das noch nicht existierte, wuchs aus solchen 'theodisken' Volkssprachen heraus.

Dieser Band ist der Vielfalt jener vordeutschen Sprachen und Literaturen des frühen Mittelalters im Rahmen des fränkischen Reiches gewidmet. Seine Beiträge gehen den Wegen der neueren Forschung im Spannungsverhältnis von Latein und Volkssprache, Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit nach, suchen die pragmatische Interdependenz von Völkern, 'Stämmen' und Sprachen zu bestimmen. Sie messen Strukturen der Sprache, des Wortschatzes und der Bedeutungen aus, graben nach verschütteten Gattungen frühester Dichtung (Heldensage, Lyrik), rekonstruieren schließlich den 'Sitz im Leben' der Literatur zwischen geistlicher und öffentlicher Funktion, zwischen der Welt der Klöster und der Könige.