Thoughts on Galicia?

[ELY]

It's a slippery slope. They're not really Celtic, the whole region being fully Romanised 2000 odd years ago. It'd be like England claiming it was Celtic because of scraps of culture that survived into the modern age.
For a couple of centuries there was a Briton community in the north of Spain. When the Saxons invaded southern Britain creating places like Wessex, Britons who could, fled. The largest group went to Gaul where they established Brittany. A smaller group went to Spain where they established Britonia. This was around the 6th century ad. It was too small to survive and was soon absorbed into the local population.

Galicians probably have pipes for the same reason the Scots have them. The tradition didn't die out because of the remoteness of these places. Bagpipes were once common across Europe. The highland ones come from Ireland where they'd been developed as war pipes but Ireland was likely introduced to the pipes some time during the middle ages through contact with Europe or even the English Pale settlements.

If they want to consider themselves Celts then that's up to them, but given they speak a Romance language they should at least try to resurrect a Celtic cant there.
Tartan like cloth is something that appears to be common to the ancient Celts and scraps of it have been found in ancient salt mines, suggesting that even low class workers wore it. More intact examples exist amongst the Tarim mummies and there are bog bodies from Ireland wearing tartan clothing. Not to mention the Romans record the Gauls as wearing striped clothing and clothes covered in squares and there are statues showing clothing that appears to be checked.
Tartan like cloth also appears in various places in Europe during the middle ages worn by both males and females as patterned cloth but otherwise in normal fashion for the time.

I live in Spain, and have Galician relatives. They cherish their Celtic roots and are very proud of their heritage. The earliest (to date) historical depiction of a kilt (skirtlike garment with plaid design) are several Celtic warrior statues from the Castro culture (1st or 2nd century B.C.)


As you have said, centuries of external influence have managed to water down their pre-Roman and pre-Catholic roots, but some things have survived.

There are many words in the Galician language that have Celtic origins. I am including a link to one of many pages that researches the Galician/Celtic people.
http://www.celtiberia.net/es/biblioteca/?id=698

There are many cherry blond blue eyed Galicians. That trait has managed to survive.

So, whether the chicken came first, or if it was the egg, I don't know. But there are Celts in Galicia.

[Damion]

Those statues are interesting and it would be great to know what they originally represented.
They're similar in style to the warriors on the Bormio stele from Lombardy which dates to the 5th century BC.

[kingandrew]

This is all rather complicated. We are dealing with a rather vague and modern idea of "Celticness" that arose in the Romantic period and applying it backwards to ages when no one would have claimed such an identity. Then we use a few very limited scraps of information as evidence to support a much more sweeping claim.

As noted above, the idea of "Celts" comes from Roman sources applying names to the various "barbarian" (i.e. not Roman) groups they encountered in their march of conquest. There is little doubt that members of these tribes are among the ancestors of todays Scots, Irish, Galicians and so on. But there is little doubt that many others have also left their cultural and genetic heritage in these places over the years, especially the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and the Vikings, among many others.

And of course the intermarriage and cultural influences went the other way, too. So ideas and spouses from one area would move to other places. The Vikings were especially widely-traveled, trading and settling in places as widespread as Iceland, Sicily, Russian, the Byzantine Empire (in today's Turkey), and briefly in America. So scattered examples of some of their traits (blue eyes, light hair, artistic styles) are found widely across these areas.

Language creates group identity more powerfully than most other cultural ties. And the fact that the Scots, Irish, Welsh, and others were at the far edge of Europe made it easier for their distinct languages to survive into the modern era. This is not unique, as there are odd language survivals in other parts of Europe, too, such as Basque, Romansch, or Sami.

In the Romantic Era, beginning in the late 1700s, there was a renewed interest in folk traditions and the idea that language groups constituted "nations." During the 19th and 20th centuries, these ideas often translated into political and military efforts to provide these nations with geographic political independence from their neighboring language nations. Since there had been much trade, intermarriage, and movement of individuals over the centuries, such efforts were always messy and groups were well mixed regardless of where borders might be drawn. We are still seeing this process at work in the various Balkan conflicts of the 1990s and the ongoing independence movements of the Basque and Catalans in Spain.

Scholars, artists, and politicians of the early 19th century began to use the survival of the related languages of Scots and Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and the Breton speech of Brittany as a reason to clump these groups together as "Celts." Many factors helped to popularize this idea, but the huge popularity of Sir Walter Scot's novels and MacPherson's "Ossian" poems helped to popularize the idea of Celtic culture and heritage far and wide. The colorful Highland dress of the Scots and the distinctive styles of folk music and dance associated with these groups also made for an easily-identified cultural "package."

The importance of Scottish Enlightenment academics and authors, the political tensions in Ireland, and the widespread immigration of people from these areas to the Americas and various parts of the British Empire helped to make the elements of folk culture that survived into a focus for identity for people across the diaspora of these groups. Hence the existence of Highland games or Burns Suppers in places like Florida or Shanghai (where I have attended them).

As with the whole "clan tartan" idea, the fact that a tradition is "only" a coupe of centuries old (dating from the Romantic period) does not negate the fact it is a tradition. Obviously I enjoy these cultural expressions and am happy to see Galicians who feel similarly. I don't think anyone has exclusive claim on these elements. The Galicians have obviously maintained piping and other traditions that connect with Celtic culture and have just as much right to identify that way as Lowland Scots (or Americans like me) have to wear the kilt. I just tend to downplay claims of "ancient" or unique traditions, since we can see that various elements (bagpipes, "plaid" patterned fabric, men in skirt like garments) are quite widespread through history. I welcome any who wish to embrace some or all of these things.

Putting them together in the mix we recognize and enjoy today is a relatively recent development, but still one I happily participate in. I just think it's all too easy for some to begin concocting dangerous and unwarranted "blood and soil" type ideas from these cultural expressions, which I would strongly discourage. It is also too easy to create rigid lines in one's mind of what is or isn't "Celtic," an idea that projects a few romantic modern ideas onto a hazy and distant past where they don't really apply.

[Damion]

Nah, we're on fairly solid ground when it comes to recognising that there was a common culture that stretched from Britain, across France, southern Germany and into the Balkans. Same language, same culture. You can argue over what their collective name for themselves was, assuming they had one, but you can't say they didn't exist as a distinct people.

[kingandrew]

I agree that we can see similarities and consider them one group in many ways.

However, their conception would likely have been very different. Even a couple of centuries ago, the typical Scottish Highlander would not have considered himself (or herself) a "Celt" or seen any connection with the Irish or Bretons. In fact, they would likely have considered themselves members of Clan McX and considered themselves enemies of Clan McY, rather than embracing some kind of "pan-Celtic" identity.

It's also true that nobody in the Byzantine Empire called it that. They called it "Rome." Later historians created the term "Byzantine" to identify the Eastern Roman Empire that survived 1,000 years after the fall of Rome itself. Hindsight is 20/20, or at least different than the way things look while they are happening.

So it's find for us to look back and talk about elements of a Celtic cultural pattern that spread across many areas of Europe. But imagining that this was one "nation" of cultural or political unity is inaccurate and projecting 19th-20th century ideas onto a period thousands of years earlier with very different social structures, beliefs, and communication technologies.

But I am happy to see people embracing things that bring them together. "Man to man the world o'er/ Shall brothers be, for a' that" as Burns wrote.

Andrew

[Damion]

"But imagining that this was one "nation" of cultural or political unity"

As I don't know anyone who has ever said that they were unified politically and certainly not here, that's what's referred to as a strawman argument. As for culture, I'll go by how their neighbours grouped them and how archaeology has backed that up.

The Celts existed as a group of people.

People today don't define themselves as humans, we define ourselves by a myriad of identities, none of which stop us being human.

Or to put it using a modern example, gangs belong to a certain culture, they follow certain rules, believe in certain things, often dress in a particular way. Members don't define themselves as gangsters though, they define themselves by what gang they belong to. Having a local group identity doesn't preclude them from belonging to a meta identity of gangster, particularly for outsiders like ourselves judging them by our social norms.

Going back to modern Celtic identity then, there needs to be some common ground that joins these disparate groups together. So far the six nations of the Celtic League have done so based on having a Celtic language. I really don't know how much Celtic culture survives in Cornwall, or Manx for that matter which seems as much Norse as Celtic. The others though have a strong body of poetry, history and legend to link them to their Celtic past.
It's not like the term Celtic is copyrighted, though to have any semblance of meaning it should have minimum standards such as a group that maintains/promotes a Celtic language.
The English region of Cumbria was once a Celtic speaking area, there was even survival of some words into recent times, notably the yan tan tethera system of counting sheep. Cumbrians are not Celts though, they're Anglo-Saxons like the rest of England. Their ancestors were Celts (and Norse, and actual Angles) but today they are Germanic English with next to nothing remaining of the old Cumbrian culture. Had they not been anglicised, the Cumbrians today would have a similar culture to the Welsh but they were and they don't.

Perhaps the Galicians have legends that go back to their Celtic past, I have no idea, but the reality is that they speak a Latin based language and Celtic probably hasn't been spoken in the region (later British immigrants aside) for 2000 years.

Apparently the language spoken by the Galicians was a q-celtic language like Gaelic rather than Welsh which is p-celtic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallaecian_language

Perhaps the Galicians could adopt Gaelic as their language or even Modern Gaulish - a contrived language:

http://www.moderngaulish.com/

[kingandrew]

Damion,

I agree with what you are saying. And although the language was a defining element for many in the past, it seems less emphasized today. After all, most Scots or Irish people don't speak Gaelic as a mother tongue, but this does not change their identification with a Celtic cultural heritage. As a Scottish-American, I certainly don't speak Gaelic, either.

If one wishes to go back far enough, the whole island of Britain was populated by Celts. That's why it is called "Britain" after all. However, the arrivals of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings certainly encroached on them and led to our modern geographical distribution of Celts along the western coastal edges of Europe.

I just want people to recognize that the meaning of these term has shifted over time and that using an ancient statue of a man in a plaid-patterned skirt is of limited use in proving a direct connection to the modern kilt without some consistent evidence for the intervening centuries. But the Galicians seem to have as much appreciation and affinity for many of these traditions as any of us in the diaspora. So I see no reason to exclude them from any modern definition of Celtic culture groups.

Andrew

[DyerStraits]

I have long been fascinated by Galicia for both its pronounced Celtic heritage and its culinary traditions (one of my favorite winter warmers is a hot bowl of Caldo Gallego) and it is on my list of future destinations, as is Barga, Italy:

https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/t...taly-1-4238742

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40865981

Read a description of the Galician topography and/or the personality/character traits of its inhabitants--the similarities to Scotland and Ireland is extremely remarkable.

This is the one of the many reasons I'm so proud to be a Celt: they were seemingly everywhere in Europe and Britain looooong before anyone else was--including the Romans, who were scared to death of them.

[Damion]

Damion,

I agree with what you are saying. And although the language was a defining element for many in the past, it seems less emphasized today. After all, most Scots or Irish people don't speak Gaelic as a mother tongue, but this does not change their identification with a Celtic cultural heritage. As a Scottish-American, I certainly don't speak Gaelic, either.

Most Scots and Irish don't speak Gaelic which is why those countries are not Celtic (though they are home to Celtic cultures), particularly Scotland which has strong competing Germanic cultural elements. The language is less emphasized now because of the large number who don't speak it but feel an attachment.
Romantic feelings don't overcome pragmatic realities. People can pretend to be something but without all the necessary cultural cues they're just pretending. The reality is that without a community of Celtic speakers there are no Celts as materially and even culturally there is little difference between people living in English speaking countries. Things like religion and lifestyle have bigger impacts on cultural expression than ancestral ties.

[LKM]

While the term that became Celtic came from a Roman description of the tribes of Brittan as like the Celtae tribes of France, the idea of a Celtic identity is far more recent. The Idea of Celtic Nations did not show up until the 18th century. Some of the people groups that were identified as Celtic by people in the 18th and 19th centuries have only recently adopted the concept of Celtic Identity.

The term Celtic keeps changing, and now normally reefers to a language family. The term has also been used for the peoples, or families, whose ancestors spoke Celtic languages. Most of what is now Europe once spoke Celtic languages, including in Galicia, Spain. As different people define the work Celtic differently it is up for interpretation.

The Celtiberi tribes of Spain once spoke a language much like the ancient Irish and had a culture that many people today see as Celtic. A study of the pre-Roman culture of Galicia, Spain could go on for several decades or centuries. From what I understand there were in ancient times several cultural similarities and trade connections between what is now Galicia, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. DNA research has also shown a strong genetic connection between these peoples.

As for kilt-like garments, or tartan in traditional garments the discussion can go on for a long time. Kilt-like garments and tartan use spans most of the world, even back to ancient times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Celts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_tribes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_skirts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberians