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Deservedly, in the beginning of the 19th Century, Germany also busied itself with German History and Literature. Thus, many Medieval manuscripts were not only discovered, but also published so that a more general public had them available. Among these were the Nibelungenlied, and old Norse Edda, which contained storied of the gods and Norse heroes. This introduced not only the courtly culture from the High Middle Ages, but also songs and magical incantations. All of this was brought together with the Germani culture. The ideas ‘German’ and ‘Germani’ remained closely bound together in all scientific progress. This is obviously the case for the term “Germanistic” which was used to identify the science of the German language and German literature. Jacob Grimm, and his brother Wilhelm, who became founding fathers, as it were, for the new direction in research, wrote an immense German mythology, which took up the Germani myths and religion.

The people of Iceland enjoyed great popularity in Germany, for they had preserved their tradition, which was supposedly German, for a long time. However, this identification is not accurate, no matter how much it might help to fantasize a Germani-German heathendom by way of the rich panoply of gods from the north. In the latter half of the 19th Century Richard Wagner saw to it that supposedly Germanic themes and motifs gained wider popularity by means of his operas. His Ring of Nibelung was especially based on medieval traditions. The composer and poet relied not only on texts from the middle high German Nibelungenlied, but also on old Norse texts, in order to provide his contemporary concerns with historical dress. And so, Walkuries, Nornen, and other creatures from Scandinavian mythology cavorted about the stage with the tragic hero Sigfrid. Even beyond the content of the opera, the staging and costuming leaned toward whatever was thought to hearken back to Viking times. The German public, however, ate all this up as an exemplary picture of what it means to be German. And so a further idea attached itself to the equation between the Germani and the Germans: Nordic as a sign for the North, and therefore the original home of the Germani. From then on, the equation became a harmony with three tones, Germani = German = Nordic, which was enthusiastically voiced, especially in national circles.

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