Language and history in the early Germanic world. By D. H. Green. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1998, Hardcover]. Pp. xvi, 438. Paper. £16.95.

Abstract

This book explores aspects of early medieval Germanic social organization and cultural practice on the basis of word semantic studies. The lexical data are taken from three layers of the vocabulary in Old Germanic, corresponding to the three cultural tradition—native Germanic, Roman, and Christian—that were fused to form a new identity in the early medieval Germanic world. By careful interpretations of a wide range of literary and historical sources and by rigorous linguistic analyses, Green examines the rise and fall of closely associated words in relation to the complex of political, military, legal, and religious forces working through society. Taken as a whole, the work provides a broad, richly informative, and well-balanced survey on the contacts that the early Germanic tribes made with Rome and Christianity during the period from classical antiquity to the early Middle Ages, ranging from approximately 300 B.C.E. to 900 C.E. No less wide is the geographical coverage of the book, from Ireland and Visigothic Spain to the Crimea and the eastern Baltic.