Talk:Mythology of the Low Countries

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[edit] split

this article is somewhat anachronistic. We cannot speak of "Dutch" for times before the 16th century or so. Pre-Christian mythology of the area of the Netherlands and Belgium is generically West Germanic. At best, it could maybe be argued to be "Franconian" in particular, but a (well referenced) case would need to be made for that, you can't just take it for granted as the article does at present. It should disambiguate to Continental West Germanic mythology and Dutch folklore. dab (𒁳) 08:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to make it work as Old Dutch or Lowlands. The purpose here are the facts surrounding ancient pre-Christian and native Netherlands and Belgium mythology of the tribes living there. It looks like "Old Dutch" was a language starting with c 500. I already split off Dutch folklore, now in this article was moving back in time and before the Franconians and Christian missionaries unified and took control so its pre-Franconian in a political sense and cultural sense. Franconian people were only one of many ethnic groups, so let's not call it Franconian. I looked up Old Dutch and it seems to be the correct language of the place and period: Old Dutch="Old Low Franconian spoken and written during the early middle ages (c. 500 - 1150) in the present day Low Countries and areas of France near the North Sea coast." That said Maybe rename the page Low Countries Mythology and/or disambig. at the top with a disambigative line. Goldenrowley 20:50, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

OK I tried to fix it so it is not anachronistic. I suggest I could rename page to "Old Dutch Mythology" Goldenrowley 04:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

no, there is no identifiable "Dutch" culture in pre-Christian time, just undifferentiated West Germanic. The pre-Christian stuff should be merged into Continental Germanic mythology. To keep discussions of "Dutch", "Frisian", "Saxon", "Franconian", "Alemannic" and "Baiuvarian" mythologies separate for pre-Christian times merely serves sentiments of provincial patriotism, but has no encyclopedic justification. There is altogether too much provincial patriotism on Wikipedia. Synthesize material into coherent treatments, don't fragment it into isolated local stubs, particularly in contexts as sparsely attested as this. dab (𒁳) 10:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

HI Dbachmann. Unfortunately, I disagree with that reason to merge. It is not provincial to discuss a region's mythology precisely distinct from other regions, this is not a stub and it is not a fragment and it is not sparsely attested. There are other stubs where I might say so, like if we did an article on every single elf type in the world, but not on an article like this, which does a whole region's mythology. What is wrong with the source? Reginheim is really thorough and has written much more than this page on Dutch mythology . My opinion is each country in Europe is distinct enough for a mythology page on what they held sacred. I don't consider Dutch mythology (apart from German) as "provincial" or "patriotic". Even so, Wikipedia Mythology Project is trying to be complete and cover anything in mythology encyclopedias, including "provincial" legends. To put this all under German would speak only of the Frankish Saxon elements and totally ignore (delete as "off topic"?) what St. Eligius said about Flanders, he listed of Roman and Celtic Gods this would be considered "off topic" on the German page. In saying this please kindly overlook any potential errors in my understanding Germanic history, history was not my best subject. Goldenrowley 16:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

What I would like to offer as a potential solution is to rename the page "Low Countries Mythology"- instead of "Dutch mythology" -- the intent was to discuss mythology of the entire region not just of the main (Germanic) culture. Goldenrowley 16:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Still not convinced to merge "Dutch mythology" with "Contintental German(ic) mythology", it's closer to say the topic of this page is Lowlands Mythology, or (as I study it) more specifically the Lowlands is a mixed Belgae culture and region of the Roman empire. Let's not dilute this into a continental discussion, it's hard enough to cover just one region at a time. At the time of missionary witnesses, there are marked differences between the Germans north of the Rhine and the Roman-indoctrinated and Celtic areas south of the Rhine in present day Belgium. Goldenrowley 04:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC) ...I was not convinced to split the article into folklore and deities, as DAB suggested, either for one think a Dutch folklore article exists already and this is about mythology. So saying I renamed the page "Low Countries mythology". I can come back later to elaborate but essentially the region was defined long ago by the Roman Empire, witnesses by them to be culturally mixed. Goldenrowley 05:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

the move to a regional grouping (Low Countries) as opposed to linguistic (Dutch) is an improvement. The topical difference from Dutch mythology is still less than clear. Perhaps this should be pre-Christian traditions of the Low Countries, paralleling pre-Christian Alpine traditions (which began its career as "Paganism in the Eastern Alps "). dab (𒁳) 10:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Why? I really appreciate your thougths, but I don't like changing mythology articles to "tradition" articles, it gets away from the sacred heart of the matter. The article held up as an example is just a stub that could be better done.Goldenrowley 18:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

that's the point. the "sacred heart of the matter" is unsubstantiated and an impression produced by effort of the article's authors. "pre-Christian traditions of the Low Coutries" is neutral. We don't have Alpine mythology, or Harz mythology or Bavarian mythology. We don't even have German mythology (the page is a redirect, in spite of a far better pedigree of the term, about 50 times as many hits as "Dutch mythology" on google books). --dab (𒁳) 11:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

However the German mythology link directs on purpose to German paganism ^Continental Germanic mythology (it used to redirect to the paganism article)^ where mythology is discussed. I think they just wanted to cover both topics in one ^paganism^ article. Jacob Grimm wrote german Mythology that editors can refer to for tons of material and it goes into some of the differences in each region. Goldenrowley 18:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

On the "dubious" flag you put today in that the area is comprised of "Celtic, and Gallo-Roman and Germanic"... the article does go into this, it just cant pack it all into the introduction sentence. The deities and myths in the region fall into these 3 categories (so far), nothing more or less is maintained and thats pretty mainstream knowledge. If you dont mind, I'd like to just keep the page title mythology of the Low Countries and not get off that topic. If in any way it does get off the topic... flag the sentence(s). Goldenrowley 18:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

"Continental Germanic" covers both German and Dutch. If German mythology redirects there, so can Dutch mythology. That's the entire point of the "Continental Germanic" article: Discussing a spuriously attested topic in context. Grimm wrote Deutsche Mythologie, which was translated as "Teutonic Mythology". Deutsch isnt always equal to German. The 'dubious' expresses doubts that there even is such an animal as a "mythology of the Low Countries" which has 'its' roots in various prehistoric and proto-historic cultures. Where is this mythology documented? Was it just invented for the purposes of Wikipedia? Or is any random collection of stories related to a certain region considered "a mythology"? Very dubious. There is Celtic (Gaulish, Gallo-Roman) and Germanic (Continental Germanic) mythology. But who says this was ever syncretized into a single pre-Christian(!) "Mythology of the Low Countries"? When is that mythology supposed to have formed? Between AD 400 and 496? Any source for that? dab (𒁳) 19:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Look I think it's a good idea to make "dutch mythology" (which is now a redirect) become a disambig page instead of a redirect to this page, since it is a vague term as we agreed. However this page has already moved away from claiming theres one mythology for all of Holland. but if we merge it to German-ic (or Teutonic?) we'd have to pull in many other countries ^and erase references to Celts?^, and its long enough already. If you dont think this region has mythologies like the one about the lake being formed by God and the snake, I could try and pull together a longer list of books to satisfy you? Now back to the thing you marked as "dubious", On this page citation 3 says " Celtic was noted by Tacitus and Ceasar in 1st Century; both Celtic and Gallo-Roman deities noted by Saint Eligius (588 to 660)." so if doing the disambig right, if you would agree, I would say there's 3 to do a dab right we'd have to dab Dutch mythology to 3 different religions. Goldenrowley 22:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

no, you see, I do not claim at all that it wrong to discuss "mythology by region". The problem is in the term "mythology". Greek mythology, Celtic mythology, Germanic mythology discusses mythologies, that is, standing bodies of myths that evolved during pre-Christian times. "regional" collections of mythemes is more problematic, and needs solid references when drawing lines between regions. This is clearly such a regional article. As is the "Continental Germanic". The point is, that this is a true subset of the "Continental Germanic" one and should be treated as such. Mere collections of fragmentary tales is also different from a fully attested body of myths. It overlaps with "folklore". Hence, I do recognize that there is valid and well presented material here, but it should be divided among the "Folklore of the Low Countries" (medieval to modern sources) and the "Continental Germanic mythology" (pre-Christian fragments and reconstructions) articles. I just do not see that the concept of a "Mythology of the Low Countries" is attributed to any reliable source here, and we have to be critical with this sort of thing. dab (𒁳) 11:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I edited Continental Germanic mythology a little bit, making it WP:SS with this article as a subtopic. I understand that patriotism is a strong incentive to investing effort in this sort of thing, and of course people will be more into contributing to "Dutch mythology" than to a rather abstract "Continental Germanic mythology". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, we just have to canalise such efforts into encyclopedicity. I suppose we should let this article stand as it is, but be wary of topic overlaps with its two parent articles, Continental Germanic mythology and Folklore of the Low Countries. Both these articles should also be linked prominently from the lead. dab (𒁳) 12:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

As your writing was balanced and fair overnight, I don't disagree.Goldenrowley 16:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

"To keep discussions of "Dutch", "Frisian", "Saxon", "Franconian", "Alemannic" and "Baiuvarian" mythologies separate for pre-Christian times merely serves sentiments of provincial patriotism, but has no encyclopedic justification."
Sorry?? Thanks for bringing me in. Keep in mind "being encyclopedic" should not mean to generalize. Germanic tribes have never been a unity (even Mallory, I found some time to read him for a second time, separates a western Harpstedt from a more general Jastorf, and even has heard of something called Nordwestblock : differences derived from an ancient prehistory going back to at least the Later Bronze Age certainly would have left some traces!) and though we don't know much about their worship (we only have a pretty complete Norse mythology), we certainly know the Germanic religion to be very diverse and typified by some outspoken local features. While agree with the notice it is hard to draw lines (for instance, what the hack is "Franconian", with the whole of Europe making claims for being included?), some definite entities can and should be isolated. Rokus01 21:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

"encyclopedic" means "not making things up". I have no doubt that if we could send field researchers with tape recorders to each of these tribes, we could set up a brilliant separate article for each. As it is, we simply don't have enough information, and we have to combine what little we have to build a very sketchy picture of "Continental Germanic" mythology in general. If you can cite an academic monograph on "Alemannic mythology", that's perfect, we'll certainly be able to create such an article then. --dab (𒁳) 08:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I beleive the wording merely suggests they lived in the region. thanks for clarifiying what "unencyclopedic" means to youGoldenrowley 15:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Nordwestblock theory

From the Wikipedia article "Nordwestblock": "The Nordwestblock theory attributes to the people of the area a separate identity from their Germanic and Celtic neighbours. Ethnicity involves a focus on genetic and anthropological features." I don't know what to think about this theory yet. Should we discuss the possible mythology? Goldenrowley 18:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

this theory is also known as the "Rokus01 theory". dab (𒁳) 11:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Well I asked the question and since then, I haven't seen very many scholarly opinions come to light on Nordwestblock theory. However I dont see any reason to suppress the exploration as long as the hypothesis was published. Goldenrowley 17:36, 6 October 2007 (UTC)