TheIrminones, also referred to asHerminones orHermiones (Ancient Greek:Ἑρμίονες), were a large group of earlyGermanic tribes settling in theElbe watershed and by the first century AD expanding intoBavaria,Swabia, andBohemia. This included the large sub-group of theSuevi, that itself contained many different tribal groups, but the Irminones also included for example theChatti.
The term Irminonic therefore is also used as a term forElbe Germanic, which is one of the proposed (but unattested) dialect groups ancestral to theWest Germanic language family, especially theHigh German languages, which include modernStandard German.[1]
The name Irminones or Hermiones comes fromTacitus'sGermania (AD 98), where he categorized them as one of the tribes that some people say were descended fromMannus, and noted that they lived in the interior ofGermania. OtherGermanic groups of tribes were theIngvaeones, living on the coast, andIstvaeones, who accounted for the rest.[2] Tacitus also mentioned theSuebi as a large grouping who included theSemnones, theQuadi, and theMarcomanni, but he did not say precisely to which (if any) of the three nations they belonged.
Pomponius Mela, in hisDescription of the World (III.3.31) described the Hermiones as the farthest people ofGermania, beyond both theCimbri andTeutones who lived on theCodanus sinus, which is understood today to have been his name for theBaltic Sea andKattegat, although it was described by him as a very large bay filled with islands, east of theElbe river. Still farther east Mela describes theSarmatians whom he places west of theVistula, and then theScythians whom he places east of the Vistula.[3]
Pliny'sNatural History (4.100) claimed that the Irminones included theSuebi,Hermunduri,Chatti, andCherusci.
In the so-calledFrankish Table of Nations (c. 520), probably a Byzantine creation, the son of Mannus, who was the ancestor of the Irminones, is named Erminus (or Armen, Ermenius, Ermenus, Armenon, Ermeno, as it appears in various manuscripts). He is said to have fathered theOstrogoths,Visigoths,Vandals,Gepids, andSaxons. In a variation on the table that appears in theHistoria Brittonum, the Vandals and Saxons have been replaced by theBurgundians andLangobards.[4]
They may have differentiated into the tribesAlamanni,Hermunduri,Marcomanni,Quadi, andSuebi by the first century AD. By that time the Suebi, Marcomanni, and Quadi had moved southwest into the area of modern-dayBavaria andSwabia. In 8 BC, the Marcomanni and Quadi drove theBoii out ofBohemia.
The term Suebi is usually applied to all the groups who moved into this area, although later in history (around 200 AD) the term Alamanni (meaning "all-men") became more commonly applied to the group.
Jǫrmunr, the Viking Age Norse form of the nameIrmin, can be found in a number of places in thePoetic Edda as aby-name forOdin. Some aspects of the Irminones culture and beliefs may be inferred from their relationships with the Roman Empire, from Widukind's confusion over whether Irminwas comparable toMars orHermes, and fromSnorri Sturluson's allusions, at the beginning of theProse Edda, to Odin's cult having appeared first in Germany before spreading up into the Ingvaeonic North.
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