Classical The name Irminones or Hermiones comes from
Tacitus's
Germania (AD 98), where he categorized them as one of the tribes that some people say were descended from
Mannus, and noted that they lived in the interior of
Germania. Other
Germanic groups of tribes were the
Ingvaeones, living on the coast, and
Istvaeones, who accounted for the rest. Tacitus also mentioned the
Suebi as a large grouping who included the
Semnones, the
Quadi, and the
Marcomanni, but he did not say precisely to which (if any) of the three nations they belonged.
Pomponius Mela, in his
Description of the World (III.3.31) described the Hermiones as the farthest people of
Germania, beyond both the
Cimbri and
Teutones who lived on the
Codanus sinus, which is understood today to have been his name for the
Baltic Sea and
Kattegat, although it was described by him as a very large bay filled with islands, east of the
Elbe river. Still farther east Mela describes the
Sarmatians whom he places west of the
Vistula, and then the
Scythians whom he places east of the Vistula.
Pliny's
Natural History (4.100) claimed that the Irminones included the
Suebi,
Hermunduri,
Chatti, and
Cherusci.
Medieval In the so-called
Frankish 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 the
Ostrogoths,
Visigoths,
Vandals,
Gepids, and
Saxons. In a variation on the table that appears in the
Historia Brittonum, the Vandals and Saxons have been replaced by the
Burgundians and
Langobards. They may have differentiated into the tribes
Alamanni,
Hermunduri,
Marcomanni,
Quadi, and
Suebi by the first century AD. By that time the Suebi, Marcomanni, and Quadi had moved southwest into the area of modern-day
Bavaria and
Swabia. In 8 BC, the Marcomanni and Quadi drove the
Boii out of
Bohemia. 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 name
Irmin, can be found in a number of places in the
Poetic Edda as a
by-name for
Odin. Some aspects of the Irminones culture and beliefs may be inferred from their relationships with the Roman Empire, from Widukind's confusion over whether Irmin
was comparable to
Mars or
Hermes, and from
Snorri Sturluson's allusions, at the beginning of the
Prose Edda, to Odin's cult having appeared first in Germany before spreading up into the Ingvaeonic North. == Notes ==