Our knowledge concerning the tribes inhabiting the British Isles, most especially the island of Great Britain itself comes primarily from the writings of Greek and Roman historians, and archaeology. Population genetics is also beginning to play a part in unfolding our knowledge of Bronze and Iron Age Britain.
A simplistic understanding of the ethnicity of the tribes present in the island at the time of the Roman Conquest in the years 43-87CE is that all of the tribes were 'Celtic'-speaking 'Britons' until the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon invasions and colonisation of present-day England in 449CE. This is not only highly simplistic but false. A mix of both Celtic and Germanic peoples was already present in these islands at the time of the Roman Conquest. Migration from continental Europe was a factor for thousands of years prior to this. Some of the tribes of the Roman province of Britannia (present-day England and Wales) were not Celtic at all but Germanic or Celto-Germanic. The better known of these were the Belgae, who migrated from Gaul during the late 2nd century or early first century BCE.
The Belgae were not a single tribe but a confederation of closely related tribes resident in northern Gaul, namely the Bellovaci, Ambiani, Atrebates and Veromandui. Ironically, modern maps showing the location of Iron Age tribes in Britain locate the Belgae to the west of the Atrebates but the latter were part of the Belgae confederation. The German or Germanic roots of the Belgae are confirmed by Caesar in Book II of his Bello Gallico:
'When Caesar inquired of them what states were in arms,
how powerful they were and what they could do, in war,
he received the following information:
that the greater part of the Belgae, were sprung from the Germans,
and that having crossed the Rhine at an early period,
they had settled there, on account of the fertility of the country,
and had driven out the Gauls who inhabited those regions;.....'
(Devitte translation)
Of the Belgae who migrated to Britain, we know that the Atrebates were among them, and possibly, the Ambiani (from Numismatics, the study of their coinage). In addition to the Belgae, it is now speculated that the Iceni of East Anglia also had Germanic or Celto-Germanic origins. The Cenimagni tribe, referred to by Caesar in Book V of Bello Gallico may very well have been a misspelling of ICENI and the name is suggestive of a Germanic root. The image of what appears to be Odin on Iceni coinage adds further weight to the hypothesis of Germanic origins.
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What should be pointed out however, is that mixed tribes on the continent or in these islands may be mixed in terms of language, culture, belief or ancestry or any combination of these features. Thus, when discussing the possible Germanic ancestral antecedents of the Iceni, the Belgae or any other tribe, it must be borne in mind that there is no evidence that they were necessarily Germanic-speaking.
Referring back to the continental home of the Belgae, Caeser referred to the German origins of these people but his precise words were: 'that the greater part of the Belgae, were sprung, from the Germans,....' The emphasis here is 'the greater part'; he did not state that they were all sprung from the Germans and neither did he say that those who were of German ancestry were not also descended from any Celtic peoples as well. By the time that Caesar wrote about the Belgae, they had already been settled in Gaul for a sufficient time for any mixing of blood, language, culture and religion to occur.
Tacitus, writing in his Germania, chapter two states:
'for that the people who first crossed the Rhine, and expelled
the Gauls, and are now called Tungri, were then named Germans;
which appellation of a particular tribe, not of a whole people,
gradually prevailed; so that the title of Germans, first assumed
by the victors in order to excite terror, was afterwards adopted
by the nation in general.'
The Tungri, it should be pointed out, were part of the Belgae tribal confederation.
More or less within the same time period that Caesar was writing his Bello Gallico, the Belgae who were already established in southern Britain were still ruled by the same king who governed the Belgae in Gaul, Diviciacus of the Belgic Suessiones tribe. It should be noted that the etymology of Suessiones appears to be Gallic in origin, not Germanic. This Diviciacus should not be confused with the druid of the same name who belonged to the Gallic Aedui tribe.
There is also speculation by scholars that the Regni or Regnenses in southeast England were also part of the Belgae confederation or at the very least they were influenced by them and may have had a Belgic leadership stratum. Gunivortus Goos (Gardenstone), a Dutch researcher and a long time resident of Germany (whose books I recommend) suggests in his excellent new work, Britain and Boudicca (2025) that other tribes such as the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes were or may have been of Belgic origin. Mr Goos provides a lot of interesting information on individual tribes in his aforesaid work with maps and coloured illustrations.
It would also appear that the Belgae were not restricted to just Gaul and modern-day England but were also present in Iron Age Ireland too. According to Professor Thomas Francis O'Rahilly (1882-1953), some of the Belgae settled in south-west Ireland in the fifth century BCE, becoming the Iverni (Erainn). He also was of the opinion that the memory of the Belgic settlers was preserved in Irish mythology in the name and people of the Fir Bolg. This latter theory is no longer acceptable to 'mainstream' historians (nothing to do with Irish republicanism then?).
What we do know from this patchwork of Celtic and Celto-Germanic tribes present in Iron Age England is that the accepted paradigm of a totally 'Celtic' Britain prior to the Anglo-Saxon colonisations from 449CE onwards is now no longer tenable!
