Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic Sagas

by Michael P. Speidel

Presenting a range of evidence for these diverse styles, from Roman art to early medieval bracteate amulets, and from classical texts to Beowulf, the Edda and Icelandic sagas, Professor Speidel here details seventeen different Germanic warriors styles, including berserks, wolf-warriors, club-wielders, long-hairs, ghost warriors and horse-stabbers, and how they indicate an unbroken continuity of customs, beliefs and battle-field tactics.

Ancient Germanic warriors played a decisive role in historical events from 200 BC, when Germanic culture first became identifiable, to AD 1000 when Christianity swept through the Nordic countries. Arising from beliefs and states of mind, a variety of warrior styles manifested themselves in differences of dress, weaponry and fighting technique.

Fully illustrated with over fifty photographs, this vivid and fascinating survey adds a colourful new dimension to our understanding of the history of Europe.

Genres: History

328 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Michael Paul Speidel is a German-born American military historian and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the Roman army and ancient warfare. He is considered one of the world's foremost experts on ancient warfare.

Reviews

[Adam McPhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes a pretty good case that certain Germanic warrior cultures/fighting styles stayed pretty consistent from the time of Tacitus through the migration period and all the way up until Scandinavians converted to Christianity, despite a lack of written evidence. The stuff on animal warriors was especially cool, and how the bear and to a lesser extent wolf warrior evolved into the berserk.

That said, some of the evidence strike me as a bit specious, although I guess that's just the nature of the material, trying to suss out details on Trajan's column or a bracteate or whatever. Kept asking questions like, are long-hairs and helmet-wearers really their own thing? Were these really their own unique things? There's also a lot of overlap in categories. What would stop a berserk from also being a war chanter and club-wielder?

Still, have to admit the book was a lot of fun and that goes a long way. And I think the categories he uses are going to stick in my head for a long time.

The categories he comes up with are as follows:

Animal warriors: wolves, bears, bucks, martens.
Frightening warriors: berserks, ghosts.
Strong men: club-wielders, wielders of huge spears.
Shield warriors: shield castles, chanting, war dances.
Churls: dart-throwers, rock-throwers.
Horsemen: lancers, spear-throwers, wheeling right.
Outstanding warriors: long-hairs, helmet warriors.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ulfhednir, wolf-skins, nods to the naked Gaesatae (Battle of Telamon infamy ca. 225 BCE) - riveting, highly detailed and meticulous. Speidel's accounts are supported with a clear appreciation for the archaeological record, and if he occasionally errs on theoretical interpretations, there always seems sufficient evidence leading to such approximations anyway. The consistency of his arguments and the details and research utilised to support his theory of martial predilections, practices, and styles through ancient Germanic warrior cultures is insightful and easily digestible.

Even where some scholars take (for example) Roman representations to be agitprop and mere caricatures of the proverbial 'barbarian at the gate' when presenting the defeated enemy to the capite censi et alia, they surprisingly attest to the veracity of Speidel's theory. Many of these Germanic 'savages' certainly exhibited characteristics on the battlefield to warrant such pejorative designations and epithets, and Speidel does well to link such archetypes with excavated materials and recent digs that support such a perspective. While hardly an encompassing picture of Germanic societies as a whole, the warrior caste is well represented, and their cultural eccentricities and habits are described in detail with commensurate references to both archaeological evidence and the literary evidence from various classical sources.

Students of classical warfare in particular will find much here that is informative, entertaining, and insightful.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb