[Lutiferre]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

As a part of the XIXth century Romanticism, in Sweden a cultural movement called Gothicismus created a confusion between the Geats and the Goths, and tried to link the inhabitants of Götaland to these.

The Geats are generally accepted to be Goths, and are linked to the Goths in the area of the Baltic, where they likely originate, yes. Similarly, Jutes have been linked to the Goths, I dont know if Jutland is considered Baltic but it is certainly in that region.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

But there is no certainty whatsoever that the Goths came from modern Sweden. Probably from the area of the Baltic. Anyway, the legacy of the Goths (for better or for worse, as I said earlier) lies in Spain. Not in Sweden.

I havent said so, actually I wasnt dealing with origins, that doesnt make the Geats any less Gothic.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

If you are using "Germanic" as an ancient tribal type linked to an ancient culture, i.e. in terms of blood, and if you presume a Germanic influence in Spain because of it, then you will have to deny the degree of germanicity of many of the to-day so-called Germanics, in modern speak.

But Germanic in these contexts is nearly always and invariably used based on cultures and languages, which share an origin. So if they were influenced and assimilated, instead of being them who influenced and who assimilated, there is no room for such a claim.

And, whatever remains in the Spaniards of the Gothic character, it is distinctively Gothic and not generically Germanic.

Else, you would be pretending that all Germanic tribes were equal in character, which is too pretentious especially in this case where you would be comparing peoples from settlement societies, with a semi-nomadic people who after a long wandering are assumed by logics to have acquired and assimilated a wide cultural influence from other peoples who they encountered, and who had forged their character through their long trajectory.

I wasn't referring to that. More in the line of the terms of the discussion of the Council of Basel, and of the details discussed above.

But true, it would be extremely naïve to believe that after that long age of nomadism, they did not assimilate other peoples.

Take for example the Vandals. At the time when they arrived in Hispanis, they were accompanied by a smaller tribe which was Indo-Iranian, the Alans, who were federated to the Alans. And they later merged in a joint crown of Vandals and Alans, before crossing to North Africa.

Everything you are saying does not change the simple fact that the Goths were Germanic, and the content of their culture was related to the content of Germanic culture in general. It is the Germanic tribes that define Germanic culture, not vice versa. No one is truly Germanic today, seeing as the only cultural legacy is a limited level of tradition which has diverged from any uniting element in this meta-ethnic designation, that was only once preserved by the proximity of Germanic tribes, so I am not going to discuss the Germanicity of their legacy.

Anyway, they were Germanic both by blood and culture, but I am not denying that they were probably influenced culturally by the indigenous after they settled, because they were absorbed when their kingdom collapsed. That does not make their ethnicity or origin any less Germanic, though.