Nordic peoples

Nordic peoples

Total population
c. 545 million (2020)
Regions with significant populations
Acrea 189,900,000 Æþurheim 129,700,000 Shalum 100,000,000 Delkora 73,900,000 Northern States 15,760,000 Cacerta 13,100,000 Ossoria 9,000,000
Languages
Nordic Gothic Venetian Northian
Religion
Valstígr Vallyar Pontōis Wītōs

The Nordic peoples are a group of ethnicities in Tyran who trace their lineage back to the Nordic-speaking regions of Eracura. The wide array of different national ethnic groups within this label have caused some anthropologists to refer to the Nordic peoples as a "super-ethnic group". Although Nordic and its national and regional dialects are the predominant language for the greater majority of Nordic peoples, the group encompasses a variety of languages spoken including Nordic, Gothic, Venetian, and Northian and is not considered an ethnolinguistic group.

Modern Nordic peoples are descended from populations who originated in northeastern Eracura, in what is now modern-day Acrea and Nordkrusen, with the largest being the Acrean-Nordlander subgroup which spread to assimilate practically all other Nordic groups in the area, eventually spreading into Delkora. Various Nordic peoples practice a variety of religions, though almost all are formed from Old Nordic religion, with the largest being Valstígr and Vallyar.

Etymology

The term "Nordic" originates from the Old Nordic term Norður, simply meaning north, and was used in different forms meaning Northmen by other ethnolinguistic groups in Eracura to describe the peoples of North Acrea and Nordkrusen. This description was eventually co-opted by Nordic groups themselves, who adopted the label Norðmenn.

History

Origins

The Nordic peoples have a largely agreed-upon single ethnogenesis, in a region spanning across Northeastern Eracura around the Gulf of Åland. The proto-Nordic peoples are considered to be descendants of the Erani-Eracurans diffused amongst local populations.

Languages

Northian

Phylogeny of Nordic-Northian languages

The Nordic-Northian languages form a branch within the Erani-Eracuran language family, with multiple common innovations that solidly support their identification. The exact time and place where Proto-Nordic-Northian was spoken is hard to define, though most authorities place them in the 2nd millennium BCE in or near Acrea. It is thought that the unattested ancestor of Nordic-Northian languages split with that of Slavic-Baltic languages about 4,000 years ago, though the evidence for common innovations that confirm their affinity is scant. Around 3,500 years ago, dialects of Proto-Nordic-Northian separated into two groups, the Nordic languages (or True Nordic in some literature) languages identified with the Late Bronze Age in Acrea and the Northian languages identified with the Register Pottery Culture in Silua and Shalum.

The earliest attested form of the Nordic branch is Old Nordic, which is the common ancestor of all Nordic languages. Old Nordic became the official language of the Acrean Empire that arose in the 5th century BCE and came to spread its language to much of northern Eracura. During the Empire's domination, the Goths migrated from Acrea to Akashi, where their dialect became a separate language around the start of the Common Era. An evolved form, commonly called Late Old Nordic, continued to be spoken across the late Acrean Empire, though at that point dialectal differences had developed from the emergence of regional cultures. Proto-Shalumite was probably the first to split from Old Nordic, fostered by the Shalumite migration to the west of the continent. After the Shalumite split, other dialects of Old Nordic also became separate languages in the Acrean Empire, now conventionally called North Nordic, West Nordic, and East Nordic. Some speakers of these languages then migrated to Æþurheim, Nordkrussen, and Delkora, respectively, though others remained in Acrea. A petrified form of Old Nordic remains in ceremonial and liturgical use in modern Acrea.

The early history of the Northian languages is murky as the language did not enter the historical record until the 2nd century BCE. Northian developed from Proto-Nordic-Northian migrants who eventually settled in parts of Shalum and Silua. In the course of the Acrean Empire's expansion, Northian-speaking communities either assimilated to Acrean language and culture or migrated further north and west into the current territories of the Northern States by the 4th century BCE. Some Gales (hymns) have been dated to around 1500 BCE or, by some authorities, to earlier based on astronomical, geographic, and archaeological inferences, and they are noted by Acreas as "ancient songs that modern [Northian] tribesmen do not understand" even in the 2nd century BCE. Due to Acrean domination, Northian is attested through little more than its poetic and liturgical traditions, though scattered prose texts like contracts and testaments also exist. Though Old Nordic never fully displaced Northian as the mother tongue of provinces, its influence on Northian was enormous, and only in the 1200s did Northian replace Old Nordic as the language of politics.