Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is episode 24, Germanic Mythology.

Now, last time I looked at the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus, and I used his

book Germania to explore early Germanic society.

In this episode, I'm going to continue exploring Germanic culture, but this time I want to

focus on Germanic mythology and religion, and the impact that Germanic mythology has

had on modern English.

But before I begin, I want to note that I'm going to discuss the Germanic Runech writing

system in the next episode.

I had originally intended to discuss it this time, but it will actually fit better in the

next episode.

So next time, I'm going to discuss the Gothic tribes and their language, which was the

first Germanic language to be written down and recorded for posterity.

So next time, we'll focus on the early written forms of the Germanic languages.

But now, let's turn to the very broad topic of Germanic mythology, and I want to begin

this topic by establishing a general time frame.

So far, my focus has been on the early Germanic tribes, at a time when there was a more

less common culture and a common language, but our knowledge of this early period is somewhat

limited.

I've looked at some of the archaeological evidence and some of the linguistic evidence, and last

time I used Tacitus as a source.

...