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Saga-Book of the Viking Society
of a secondary development or was it inherent from the
beginning in both races? We must leave this question for
the time being unanswered. 30 But we have pointed out
that in a very early period of intercourse between Celts
and Teutons the latter were subject to strong influences
from the former. The epic tradition about Siegfried
seems to be a clear case. At that early time motifs
wandered across the Rhine, perhaps even in both directions.
The tale of Arminius incorporated, during its stage on the
borders of the Lower Rhine, a number of literary themes
that had been known there from the La Tene period
onwards.
This is the first known instance of a Celtic influence on
the Germanic mind. To this day a current of Celtic
spirit has fructified again and again our West European
civilization. We seem entitled to say that the specific
kind of Celtic feeling, Celtic wit and humour, above all the
undaunted Celtic imagination, has often been the yeast
that has made our Germanic spiritual bread lighter and
more savoury.
30 In my recent book Kellen und Germane» (Bern and Munchen 1960) I have
stressed the great similarity between both races from the outset of their
history. But we must reckon with strong influences exercised by the
subjugated peoples in Gaul as well as in the British Isles, who belonged to
a much more primitive race than the Celts. After having written this paper,
a book by R. Hachmann, G. Kossack and H. Kuhn, Volker zwischen Germanen
und Kellen (1962), has proposed an altogether different theory about the
earliest history of the Germanic peoples. If their opinion should prove to be
correct, we shall have to reconsider many problems which have hitherto
found an almost generally accepted solution.