Why should a History of early medieval German literature contain a collection of apparently disparate essays, only a few of which — and those toward the end of the volume — have anything directly to do with literature at all? Indeed, even in the later chapters, some of the literature described either is not literary (at least in the sense that the modern world might understand it), or not German (but rather from England or from Scandinavia). The aim of this volume is to provide some insights into aspects of the culture of the Germanic world from which German literature in the modern sense originated. However, several preliminary caveats are necessary in the pursuit of what onstitutes Germanic culture, and these derive partly from lessons that have been taught by the history of the last couple of centuries in particular.

It is, of course, simple enough to define German in terms of the modern language. However, what we now recognize as the German language is part of a far wider Germanic language family, sharing a common ancestry with other modern languages, such as Dutch, English, or Swedish, and also with earlier ones, either ancestors of those still spoken, such as Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse, or now extinct, such as Gothic. German is closer to all of these, however, than it is to other more distantly related languages throughout Europe. And thus, if we go back in philological history, we can, at least in theory, find some kind of common Germanic origin, get closer perhaps to the origins of that branch of the Indo-European language family whose speakers are known by the useful Roman name of Germani. The Germanic branch separated from the Indo-European parent language between the fifth and second century B.C. (it is datable with reference to borrowings from other languages) and demonstrates various features not shared by, say, the Romance, Slavic, or Celtic language groups. These features include — and this is, of course, a great simplification — the effects of what is known as the First or Germanic Sound Shift.