Goths and Celts: Interlocking Myths of Ethnic Identity
Brendan Sweeney
During the last two centuries, the Celtic heritage of the British Isles has provided a
foundation myth for the construction of national identities in Ireland, Scotland and
Wales. But the literature created by this revival also had a huge influence on the rest of
Europe – and especially on Sweden which is my own field of study. Narrative
templates from Scotland and Ireland were employed by Northern Europeans to
reinterpret their own past, and in Sweden many of the attributes of the ancient Celts
were successfully reformulated within the context of their own Gothic heritage.
In this essay I will explore the influence of the Celtic revival on constructions of
national identity in Sweden, and show how literature inspired by Celtic mythology
allowed the Swedish elite to reinterpret their own foundation myths.
Defining Myth
More than anyone else, Anthony D Smith, the leading proponent of the ethno-symbolist
theory of nationalism, has argued for the significance of mythmaking to the
development of modern national and ethnic identities. In Myths and Memories of the
Nation, he states:
Since the late 18th century, spokesmen for every ethnic community have made
frequent appeals to their alleged ancestry and histories, in their struggle for
recognition, rights and independence. In the course of these struggles, ethnic
spokesmen have drawn on, or in some cases invented, a ‘myth of origins and
descent’ which then inspired writers and artists to recreate for their publics the
events, atmosphere, and heroic examples of remote archaic eras found in the
epics and sagas of Homer and Aeschylus, Dante, Ossian and the Edda. (Smith
1999: 60).
By the mid-19th century, most of Western and Eastern Europe was caught up in the
romantic quest for origins, and during the following century the search for ethnic roots
spread to Asia and Africa (ibid).
Smith identifies many different categories of ethnic and national myth, and focuses
particularly on myths of origins and chosenness, but he does not specify exactly what a
myth is. For that I would like to refer to the work of Bruce Lincoln, a specialist in IndoEuropean and Middle Eastern religions. Like Smith, Lincoln regards myths as powerful
narratives which consolidate and maintain ethnic and national identity, but, in addition,
he categorises them along with other forms of narrative according to the credibility,
truth-claims and the authority invoked by their authors. Under Lincoln’s system of
classification, myth can be directly compared with history, legend and fable as
narrative forms, and may be regarded as a more powerful narrative even than history
since it is frequently backed up by the authority of the state (Lincoln 1989: 24 ff).
2
Lincoln also makes what I consider to be an important point regarding the formation of
myth; i.e. that myth thrives where history has least to say. One could take this a step
further and argue that where identity cannot be firmly rooted in a deep, historically
attested past, then myth may be employed by elites to fill in this epistemological
vacuum (cf Lincoln 1999: 211). Lincoln’s insight that myth can be used to fill in the
empty pages in national narratives leads us directly to the subject of the Goths and their
place in the Swedish myth of origins.
The Gothic Myth of Origins
The modern Swedish state was founded by Gustav Vasa in the 16th century after a short
war of independence with Denmark. By the early 17th century, this upstart nation had
become a major player in European history, winning wars for the Lutheran cause in
Germany, Poland and Russia, and developing colonies all along the Baltic coast.
However, because of the country‘s peripheral location and late conversion to
Christianity, Sweden lacked the written records that could bestow a sense of legitimacy
and a glorious myth of descent. There was simply no Swedish equivalent of Saxo
Grammaticus’ monumental early 13th century history of Denmark (Saxonis Grammatici
Historia Danica), which provided the Danes with an ancient foundation myth and
became an early best seller when it was printed in Danish translation in 1575.
The Swedish elite got around this embarrassing absence of historical records by
inventing an ancient past and a myth of origins. Thanks to a statement in Jordanes’ 6th
century work Getica, and a number of place names such as Gotland and Vestergötland,
it was decided that the Swedes were descendants of the Goths, a heathen people who
swept over the boundaries of the Roman Empire in the 4th century.
The movement to define the country’s ethnic origins was called Gothicism (in Swedish
götticism) and during its first manifestation culminated in Johannes Magnus’s Historia
de omnibus Gothurum Sveonumque regibus, a massive work of scholarship published
in 1554, which aimed to fill in the gaps in the Swedish national chronicles. Magnus’s
opus was part of a European trend; all the major nations were at the time producing
great patriotic histories in Latin. But it had one major flaw: it had been written in exile
by the last Roman Catholic archbishop in Sweden.
3
Over a hundred years later, another Swede, with an impeccable Lutheran background,
set out to improve on Magnus’ work. This was the polymath, Olof Rudbeck, who
published an encyclopaedic work, Atlantica, in four volumes between 1672-79.
Atlantica took on board all of the mythical origins concocted by Johannes Magnus, and
earlier historians, and with wonderful hubris added a new layer of myth. Sweden now
became not only the original home of the Goths 1 but the site of the lost civilization of
Atlantis. Through a system of etymological calculations, Rudbeck revealed that
Swedish place names were actually the original forms of ancient Greek localities. Thus
Thebes was a transposition of Swedish Täby, Hercules found himself performing his
labours beside the Öresund, and Odysseus as well as the Argonauts bravely sailed the
chilly Baltic instead of the Mediterranean or Black Sea.
According to Rudbeck, the Goths were a chosen people, who had invented the art of
writing and timekeeping, and had populated the rest of Europe with their progeny 2 .
Thanks to the chilly Northern climate, Swedish men were hardier and more masculine
than their southern counterparts and Swedish women more fertile than Southern
European women. Not only that, all the other major languages, Greek as well as
Hebrew, were based upon an ancient form of Swedish, i.e. Gothic.
In terms of Anthony Smith’s theory of nationalism, Rudbeck had created a perfect myth
of origins to promote the sense of Sweden’s chosenness and world destiny. Atlantica
also offers an example of the malleability of myth and its usefulness as propaganda: by
focusing on the Goths and ‘proving’ that the Swedes were their descendants, Rudbeck
turned the preconceptions of classical culture on their head. Instead of Sweden being an
upstart nation with no historical tradition, he revealed that Sweden was the
fountainhead of European culture. Scandinavia moved from the absolute periphery of
Western civilization to its centre, and was redefined as a Nordic version of Greece.
With support from the monarchy and the University of Uppsala, where Rudbeck carried
out his research, the Gothic myth gained a dominant position in Swedish culture during
the 17th and early 18th centuries. As a narrative, it fits in with Lincoln’s description of
myth, i.e. a powerful narrative claiming credibility and authority, since it was officially
incontestable during Rudbeck’s lifetime (Hall 1998: 150). And it also achieved a
certain influence in other parts of Europe. When Voltaire published his History of
Charles XII, King of Sweden 3 , in 1731 one of the most popular history books of the
century he repeated the myth, i.e.:
It is said that the Goths [which] flocked Europe and liberated it from a Roman
Empire that for five hundred years had been its invader, tyrant and lawmaker,
came primarily from Sweden. (quoted in Hallberg 2001: 30, H’s translation)
1
The Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals and Burgundians et al, who contributed to the demise of the
Roman Empire consisted of motley bands of warriors and cannot be attributed to any specific region or
ethnic grouping (Moore 2002: 4,5).
2
Like previous Swedish scholars, Rudbeck was influenced by Jordanes’ Getica which stated that
Scandza was a ‘vaginum populum’ or ‘womb of nations’ (Eriksson 2002: 260).
3
There were at least 60 French editions (cf Hallberg 2001: 30)
4
Goths and Celts
Ever since antiquity, the ethnic origins of the Germanic Goths have been intertwined
with those of the Celts. To some extent, this confusion was understandable, since the
very first time that the Germans were mentioned in a classical text they were fighting in
a Gaulish army against the Romans (Römer 1989: 85 ff). Rudbeck had also stated that
the Celts were a Gothic tribe, but then again Rudbeck insisted that the Greeks too were
a subcategory of Goths.
In fact, one could say that the most clear-cut similarity between the Goths and the Celts
was that they lived in the North of Europe, were not Latins, and that they fought the
ancient Romans. By the 18th century, when the Enlightenment was creating a new,
more radical philosophy of human society, both of these shadowy early peoples were
regarded as possessing the sort of ‘primitive nobility’ which was lauded by writers such
as Paul-Henri Mallet and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While Rousseau inaugurated a
change in European attitudes to nature and the primitive, Mallet was one of the
pioneers of the Nordic and Celtic Renaissances, restating the Rudbeckian myth that the
Scandinavians had played a major role in world history. Not only that, Nordic society
was, pace Mallet, characterized by an insatiable desire for freedom and an unbending
sense of honour. In contrast to Rudbeck, however, the Swiss historian regarded the
Germans and Scandinavians as branches of the great Celtic family of nations. After he
published his six-volume Introduction to the History of Denmark (1755-56) which
promoted the myths of the Icelandic Eddas as being of fundamental importance to
European culture (Lincoln 1999: 50), Mallet wrote a supplementary volume entitled:
Monuments of the Mythology and the Poetry of the Celts, and especially the ancient
Scandinavians (Schmidt 2003: 437).
Mallet’s work achieved considerable popularity in Europe and his writings were well
received in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia. However, to understand the most farreaching connections between the Gothic myth of origins and the Celtic Renaissance,
one has to travel to Britain, where the theoretical and historical approach to the Celts
and Scandinavians was adapted to meet new tastes in literature.
The first writer to spin gold from Celtic narratives was the English poet, Thomas Gray,
who created a stir about 1755 with a poem entitled The Bard. Based on a Welsh legend,
the eponymous Bard denounces the army of Edward I after the subjugation of Wales in
1283. He laments the slaughter of his own bardic companions by the English and then
commits suicide to show his defiance (Lonsdale 1977: 52). Apart from taking an
interest in Welsh and Scottish mythology, Gray also made translations of Icelandic
sagas as did his contemporary, Thomas Percy (Mack 2000). Their work was, however,
quickly overshadowed by the translations of a Scotsman – James Macpherson - who
became a sensation not only in the British Isles but also across the whole of Europe.
5
Unfortunately, it is not possible here to give more than a few sketchy details of the
implications of Macpherson’s writings on European literature but it is no exaggeration
to say that his bogus translations of the poetry of Ossian and the work of his admirers,
especially his fellow Scot, Hugh Blair, paved the way for the Romantic Movement in
Europe. Much of the appeal of Macpherson’s translations was based on their presumed
authenticity. In the preface to his first publication Fragments of Ancient Poetry,
Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, Hugh Blair makes the claim that dogged
Macpherson’s career thereafter, i.e. that the poems were translations of original poetry
from the 3rd or 4th century. The writings were actually composed by Macpherson
himself.
This is not to say that the translations of Celtic and Icelandic poetry by Thomas Gray
and the reproduction of old Scottish and English ballads by Thomas Percy, were always
much more authentic but, unlike Macpherson, these two English writers weren’t
meeting any deep-felt desire to mythologize their own ethnic origins. In short,
Macpherson’s writings have to be regarded within the context of Scottish national
identity and as a reaction to the destruction and repression of the Highland clan system
in the aftermath of 1745. Macpherson’s patriotic intentions are obvious and in many
ways prefigure the misuse of national identity in the 19th century. He promoted, for
instance, the idea of a Caledonian myth of ethnic origins and descent unsullied by
foreign influence: both culturally and linguistically Macpherson considered the Irish to
be inferior to their cousins on the east coast of Scotland, and he insisted that the Irish
had falsely claimed to be the originators of Scottish themes and mythical characters
(Macpherson (1792) 1996: 338). Despite an enthusiastic reception in England,
contemporary southern commentators were not so easily taken in by Macpherson’s
claims to authenticity. Dr Johnson, for instance, was never in doubt about the bogus
nature of the poems, and stated after his trip to the Western Isles, that the Scots have
good reason:
…for their easy reception of an improbable fiction: they are seduced by their
fondness for their supposed ancestors. A Scotchman must be a very sturdy
moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth… (in Wordsworth 1996:
vii).
But there was also an intriguingly pan-nationalistic side to this obsession with glorious
ancestors. Macpherson’s work could be used as a template for other ethnic groups who
wished to evoke a noble ancient past. The plasticity of ethnic mythmaking and the
absence of firm historical sources encouraged this tendency, and Macpherson actively
facilitated the process by fudging the issue of the origins of the ancient Caledonians. In
a dissertation on the antiquity of Ossian’s poems, he mentions that Tacitus was of the
opinion that the Caledonians were of German extraction although he himself
considered them to have originated in Gaul. As a sort of compromise, Macpherson
suggested that the Caledonians might have been a colony of Celtic Germans
(Macpherson (1762) 2004: iii).
6
I mentioned previously, Mallet’s conflation of the Scandinavians with the Celts. This
appears rather odd to us today, but it was not a particularly eccentric point of view in
the 18th century. Although some works pronounced that the Germanic and Celtic
languages were quite separate as far back as 1610, there were numerous studies by
German scholars during the 17th and 18th centuries which attempted to prove that these
two language groups belonged together (Schmidt 2003: 450 ff). In 1700, for instance,
Daniel Morhof, published a book on the Germanic languages and argued that Celtic,
German and Greek shared a common origin. Even Leibniz regarded Celtic as closely
related to German (ibid: 451), and thanks to the enormous success of Macpherson’s
translations in Germany, this tendency to equate the Germans with the Celts intensified
during the second half of the 18th century. According to the German historian, Klaus
von See, Celtic gods, druids and bards were used to fill in the gaps in German
prehistory, and this process of cultural borrowing continued until the end of the 19th
century. “Without this influence, the spread of Ossianism in Germany and the German
bardic poetry would not have been possible” (von See 1994: 64). In a monograph on
Macpherson’s translation, Herder compared Ossian directly to Homer, and the bard was
frequently referred to as ‘the Homer of the North’ in Germany and England.
The impact of the Celtic revival was felt all over Europe, but this process of cultural
repackaging was particularly intense in Sweden. Although Macpherson’s writings were
based on Gaelic themes, they included numerous references to Vikings and
Scandinavia, which made them amenable to reinterpretation by Nordic authors.
Abraham Niklas Clewberg-Edelcranz (1754-1821), the first Swede to use Nordic
mythology to write a modern national poem, i.e. Ode to the Swedish People, was
heavily indebted to Macpherson and like his Scottish predecessor, he combined the
effect of stirring landscape descriptions – cliffs and moody seascapes are endemic in
Macpherson’s writings – with mythical Scandinavian themes (Blanck 1911: 324-32).
But the influence of Macpherson’s vision of the past was not confined to the 18th
century: by the early 1800s, it took on a new importance as the necessity of updating
the previous myth of Swedish origins had become acute. Sweden’s status as a great
Baltic power had collapsed and Rudbeck’s theory of the Gothic origins of the nation
had fallen into disrepute. After the humiliating loss of Finland in 1809, the Swedish
elite desperately required a new patriotic narrative to inspire the population.
Swedish poets copied the style and content of both Gray and Macpherson’s poetry and
began to adapt it to the Gothic myth created by Rudbeck. The most successful of these
writers were Erik Gustaf Geijer and Esaias Tegnér who were both co-founders of the
Gothic Society, a patriotic fellowship of young writers and poets established in 1811
with the express goal of reviving ancient Nordic culture and ideals. Geijer produced the
first major poem that helped define the Gothic revival, i.e. The Last Scald from 1811,
and the influence of both Gray and Macpherson is unmistakable when the Swedish poet
describes the Gothic bard:
His size was giantlike, but bowed down by the years,
With slow steps he strode across the heath;
7
From his crown, the white hair flowed,
On each side, his beard hung to the girdle down 4 . (Geijer 1926: 11)
Here is how Gray described his Welsh poet fifty years earlier:
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream’d, like a meteor, to the troubled air. (in Lonsdale 1977: 53)
And it is also worth comparing Geijer’s scald to Macpherson’s Ossian:
By the side of the rock on the hill, beneath the aged trees, old Ossian sat on the
moss; the last of the race of Fingal. Sightless are his aged eyes; his beard is
waving in the wind. (Macpherson (1760) 1966: 37)
Just as in Gray’s 18th century work, Geijer’s bard criticises the king and dies at the end
of the poem. But the thematic parallels with Macpherson’s Ossian are even more
marked. Geijer’s scald – who like Ossian was also a warrior - is the last of his kind and
facing death remembers the bards whom he once knew:
Methinks I see them
The grey shadows
in stilly earnest
loftily stand
among the noisy guests.
I come, I come!
Not in vain do they wave,
I long to be with you,
With you the noble heroes! (Geijer 1926: 15)
Compare this to Ossian’s melodramatic farewell to life, where the ghosts of his past
also beckon him to the otherworld:
The voice of Ossian has been heard. The harp has been strung in Selma. ‘Come,
Ossian, come away,’ he says, ‘come fly with thy fathers on clouds.’ I come, I
come, thou king of men! The life of Ossian fails. (in Blanck 1918: 192)
There is no evidence that Geijer read Gray’s poetry, but he acknowledged his debt to
Macpherson and he was also an avid reader of Walter Scott, whose writings were
inspired by both Gray and Macpherson. The borrowing of stylistic and thematic effects
was made easier because Geijer and his contemporaries accepted the Ossianic poems as
historical documents, and because the Swedes regarded many of Macpherson’s
characters - especially Fingal, the father of Ossian - as being of Scandinavian descent
4
Unless otherwise stated, all translations are by the author of this article.
8
(Blanck 1918: 385). As Anton Blanck, the chief expert on Geijer’s literature put it: “All
of Geijer’s scaldic poetry is permeated with a grey Ossianic mist… The nuances
between Gray and Macpherson are almost imperceptible.”
In 1811, the same year The Last Scald was printed, Geijer’s friend, Tegnér published an
overtly patriotic poem called Svea, and he also makes allusions to Macpherson’s
literary universe. In Svea – the title invokes the ancient name of Sweden - the Goths fill
the same sort of mythical space as the heroic Caledonians, and Tegnér directly
compares the heir to the Swedish throne, Oscar I, with his namesake, the brother of
Ossian and the son of Fingal:
and Victory stands close, admired by the world,
and Oscar grows tall to take up Fingal’s sword. (in Michanek 2003: 249)
It is difficult for modern people to imagine poetry as an influential mass media, but the
work of Geijer and Tegnér became an integral part of national culture in Sweden. Not
only did they spellbind their contemporaries, these two poets also influenced
generations of Swedes until well into the 20th century. In fact the literature produced
during the Gothic revival in Sweden fits in much more neatly with Lincoln’s definition
of myth than Macpherson’s work, which never enjoyed official support, and whose
authenticity was constantly challenged.
Unlike the Ossianic ‘translations’, Geijer’s poetry and historical works were backed up
by the authority of the Swedish state. Apart from being a popular poet, lecturer and
historian, Geijer was also a leading member of the committee which designed the
curriculum for the first national school system in 1826. His poetry and his patriotic
view of the past became incorporated into the Swedish national and secondary school
syllabus, and it was only in the 1950s, when modernity began to replace the past as the
basis of Swedish identity, that this cultivation of the Gothic heritage was seriously
challenged (cf Tingsten 1969). The debt that Geijer and Tegnér owed to Macpherson
probably explains why Swedish secondary school children were still reading not only
their poetry but also extracts from the songs of Ossian until well into the 1960s.
But there was a downside to this hyperbolic praise of the ancient Scandinavians. When
national character began to be expressed in racial terms at the end of the 19th century,
some Swedish archaeologists and scientists enthusiastically attempted to prove that the
Swedish people were the purest and most racially valuable element in the Germanic
family of peoples. Sweden became the original homeland of the Nordic race rather than
that of the ancient Goths. And, in contrast to the provenance of the Goths, these
mythical roots could be proven ‘scientifically’ by measuring skulls, height and hair
colour.
This pseudo-scientific view of ethnic origins reached a peak during the 1920s when the
Swedish parliament approved the establishment of the world’s first National Institute
for Race-Biology at Uppsala. Its first director, Herman Lundborg, carried out largescale biometric surveys of the Swedish population and conjectured:
9
[T]here are compelling reasons to believe that the people who developed the
original [Indo-Germanic] tongue were of the Nordic race. Through wide-scale
migration and colonisation they have transferred their language to people of
non-Nordic race…Even linguistic factors indicate that the original home of the
Indo-Germans was situated on the Baltic. (Lundborg (1927) 1995: 440)
It is interesting to note the similarities between Rudbeck’s Gothic myth of Swedish
origins during the 17th century, and Lundborg’s racist theory of origins in the 1920s.
Just as Rudbeck had concluded that all European culture could be traced back to
Sweden, which he maintained was the original homeland of the Goths, Lundborg
insisted that all the Indo-European languages originated in the Baltic. Not surprisingly,
Lundborg became an enthusiastic supporter of the National Socialists in Germany and
his theories were quietly shelved once it was clear that the Germans would lose the
war. However, his research and that of many of his colleagues in archaeology and
physical anthropology, cast a pall over the whole subject of Swedish origins in the
post-war period.
The Return of the Goths and Celts
At both the official and popular level, history suffered a decline in Sweden after the
Second World War and Swedes began to regard their identity as essentially modern and
progressive. However, in the wake of the country's accession to the EU in 1995 and the
perceived decline of the welfare state, Swedish interest in history and the deep past has
enjoyed a renaissance. Unfortunately, this trend has also reactivated old tensions about
racism and ethnic exclusivity, especially when the Gothic tradition tries to make a
comeback. In the summer of 2001, a museum in Värnamö, in Southern Sweden,
organised an exhibition about the Vandals. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition
put forward evidence that the origins of these near-relatives of the Goths could be
traced to Småland and that after their defeat in North Africa the survivors made their
way back to Sweden, as evidenced by place names such as Vendel and Vendsyssel.
Dick Harrison, a well-known medievalist from the University of Lund, roundly
attacked these speculations in the leading daily newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet:
Why am I upset? Why am I criticising one of our country’s most respected
museum personalities in modern times? The answer is that I see a spectre
wandering through the book, and that spectre is Olof Rudbeck, the ghost of
Ancient Swedish Gothicism, a howling guest from the past which has once
again put on its blood-red sheet and rusty chains. The “true story” about the
origins of the Vandals seems to have sprung out of the Swedish rural romantic
past which I had fooled myself into believing we had left behind us long ago.
(Svenska Dagbladet, 7 Oct 2001)
10
Another historian, who is an expert of Old Norse, commented on the debate started by
Harrision:
Dick Harrison thought that the Rudbeck’s had played out his role but that is
unfortunately not the case. There are many notions in circulation about the
Goths and Vikings, originating in Rudbeck’s haunted castle, and not just in
Neo-Nazi circles but also in more respectable environments, which we are not
really aware of, both inside and outside the university. (Johansson 2001:
Humanetten, Nummer 9, Hösten 2001)
Interestingly enough, the Celts still have a role to play in this discourse of origins.
Their usefulness was highlighted by a two-part series on ethnic origins, presented and
written by the award-winning historian, Maja Hagerman, and shown repeatedly on
Swedish public service television in 2001 and 2002. Predictably, Hagerman
concentrated on just two ancient peoples, the Celts and the ancient Germans 5 .
While the first programme Germans, The Art of Inventing one’s Ancestors takes
viewers back to the golden age of Germanic culture in Sweden, and focuses initially on
the struggle between the ancient Germans and Romans, the second programme The
Celtic Riddle promotes the view that the Celtic heritage can be understood as a
generalized European identity rather than being specifically connected to any particular
ethnicity. As the British archaeologist, J D Hill, one of the experts interviewed in the
programme expresses it: “I suspect that all a Celt is…is actually a person who lived in
Western Europe.”
Hagerman traces the development of Germanic identity all the way from Tacitus to
Rudbeck, from Geijer and Herder to Wagner, until it reaches its final dissolution in
racism and Nazi terror in the 20th century. The Celtic heritage, meanwhile, flows
relatively harmlessly from Iron Age art and Celtic mythology into New Age religions
and fantasy fiction. In terms of its importance as a basis of national identity, the
programmes inform us that Celtic roots lead to the politically correct ‘good’
nationalism that brought Irish independence in the 1920s, while the Gothic heritage is
indelibly linked to the extremism of German militarism and genocide. Scotland is never
mentioned in The Celtic Riddle, but as the camera dwells on the bleak windswept cliffs
of Ireland’s Atlantic coast or Hagerman interviews modern-day druids, one can sense
the influence of Macpherson’s Ossianic universe.
In these programmes, the strange interweaving narrative of the Celts and the Goths
seems to have come full circle. Once again, just as in the 18th and 19th centuries, the
Celtic past seems to be functioning as an acceptable stand-in for the Gothic, providing
attractive narratives that are independent of the cultures of Latin and Mediterranean
Europe. Unlike the Goths, the Celts never became seriously tainted by the theories of
extreme nationalists or racists. The Celtic heritage can therefore be promoted as a sort
5
Unlike English, Swedish has two separate words to describe ‘Germans’ a) germaner, which describes
them as an ethnic/linguistic/historic group and b) tyskar, which defines the occupants of Germany.
11
of catch-all myth of origins for Western Europe, thus assisting Swedish efforts to
construct a new, less constricted sense of national identity.
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