Thoughts on Galicia?

[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

[Damion]

There is no especial genetic link between Galicia and the British Isles, I believe that is between the British Isles and the Basques. There is a general link between the Isles and the western coast of Europe as would be expected.
The term Celtic, other than in the last couple of decades has always had a language component attached to it. The Boston Celtics is sort of an exception. They are named for an earlier team from New York called the Celtics and were named at a time when Boston was filled with Irish. The obvious Irish team named Celtic was the original Celtic FC in Glasgow which was founded by Irish immigrants who in the late 19th century would have still been Celtic speakers.
Incidentally, Henry McCarty aka Billy the Kid, spoke Irish as he was born into an Irish community in New York where the language was still strong and where the Celtic name for later basketball teams came from.