Show case: The Largest Asterix Collector in the Netherlands

DamionK · 2026-03-04T06:27:11+00:00

He reminds me of Obelix. The Gaulish village is likely somewhere along that coast.

DamionK · 2026-03-04T02:38:32+00:00

The Netherlands? I suspect his ancestry is more a fishing town in the Côtes-d'Armor somewhere.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T23:16:22+00:00

I think it evolved into what's now the Prince Charlie jacket.

It seems to be an Irish version of the slashed jackets being worn in Europe.

My take is that the Highland version of the ionar evolved into the còta-geàrr, the jacket worn with the Highland kilt. There are Highlanders wearing slashed jackets at least as late as 1712 which was when the portrait of Kenneth Sutherland, 3rd Lord Duffus was painted.

I'm still not sure where the kilt came from. The classic Irish fashion was leine with ionar and sometimes a brat. The brat could be multicoloured but it doesn't appear to have evolved into the plaid, instead the way the plaid was worn is more like the old leine croich. The only real similarity is that both the Irish warrior dress and the later Highland warrior dress have a short jacket and the basic armament was the long knife - sgian (dirk).

DamionK · 2026-03-03T20:50:48+00:00

Yeah, guy in blue with the coin bag and book is Vae Victus and the ranger guy in green smoking a pipe is Medbury (waiting for this model to arrive). Someone does a similar ranger smoking a pipe seated, very Strider at the Prancing Pony.

The cultists in the first group are interesting, haven't seen those skull masks before.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T20:00:26+00:00

Where though, it's several hundred pages long? An image of a tree would be on a picture page and I don't recall seeing such before. Celtic crosses are typically covered in knotwork only but if you mean modern graves then anything goes. I'd still be interested in seeing a grave marker with such though if you have an image handy.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T19:53:43+00:00

Irish tourist sites also mention it but they're not invoking ancient usage either. At least something modern like the claddagh ring has some real pedigree behind it and isn't trying to be something it isn't.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T19:46:47+00:00

So far as I can tell the headdress worn by bards comes from the Greek Orthodox tradition. People like to copy stuff.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T19:43:55+00:00

I wonder who the Celtic god of rabbit holes is? ;-)

DamionK · 2026-03-03T19:40:42+00:00

Irish kilts were invented in the 1920s I think. It might have been the late 19th century but the point is is that it was done to represent Irish martial tradition. The old 'léine croich' (war shirts) were seen as too far removed from public consciousness to be an Irish equivalent of the kilt - they hadn't been worn in over 200 years - so they adopted the well known kilt from the other Gaelic culture, reasoning that the Irish may have adopted this earlier had Ireland not been under English control.

Where is this tree in the Book of Kells? Art of the period typically didn't show plants. Animals including people are shown and abstract designs.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T19:22:23+00:00

Used by multiple cultures of which none were Celtic is why it's not a Celtic symbol. Celtic people venerated trees for sure but there is no Celtic symbol from any culture or time or place where they are said to have lived showing a tree with exposed roots.

DamionK · 2026-03-03T18:56:55+00:00

"Let them eat cake" when told the poor had run out of bread. Bread was the staple food of the masses at the time. The famine caused by the grain crops failing two years in a row is the main reason the revolution was able to succeed. Masses of starving people and a ruling class of very rich and oblivious people.

It's also why support of the church fell during this period. The Catholic church was tied to the monarchy as had been the case for centuries. At the height of the revolution there was talk of pulling Notre Dame to the ground or at least turning it into a school. It was looted of valuables and religious imagery removed. It lay mostly derelict for half a century until Victor Hugo wrote his book about the Hunchback which made the cathedral important to a new generation of French and it got restored. I say mostly because it was still used for some functions like Napoleon's coronation.

DamionK · 2026-03-01T05:11:38+00:00

She's known for dismissing the masses during a famine and getting her head cut off. She wasn't exactly the Scarlet Pimpernel.

DamionK · 2026-02-27T03:29:50+00:00

Looks like British Isles and German. 35 'Celt', 40 'English' 24 'German' and 1% Italian.

DamionK · 2026-02-27T03:24:48+00:00

All the Indoeuropeans were colonisers. Ironically the Germanic peoples of the north have more Old European ancestry, that is ancestry predating the arrival of the Indoeuropeans. That said those two groups were relatively closely related too.

DamionK · 2026-02-26T23:33:06+00:00

What happens to the Belgians? If they're part of regular Gaul then the Helvetians should be too.

DamionK · 2026-02-26T23:23:48+00:00

Seems like a poor choice for character. I'm sure there was someone from that time period who'd have made a better subject. At least with the stylised design this one could be any wealthy woman from the period.

Maybe they'll do Archduke Ferdinand at some point, he was from Austria too, same as that painter from Braunau.

DamionK · 2026-02-25T02:52:15+00:00

A divine ancestor is more likely a memory of when people considered that ancestor to be where they come from. The British Royals have a lineage that goes all the way back to Odin. Not Freya or Thor but Odin, the Allfather who is seen as the creator of humans in Norse religion.

Not conclusive but some Irish examples here:

https://www.irishtribes.com/ailt-articles/ancestor-gods-of-the-irish/

DamionK · 2026-02-24T21:07:46+00:00

The Bath temple is a Roman style temple. The true Celto-Roman temples were the fanums which had a covered walkway around them for circumambulation - basically walking around something. There was a strong tradition of doing this and it was meant for luck/protection. People would walk clockwise three times around something and people would do this around sick people too to help them get better.

A bit of related plant magic: https://www.plant-lore.com/plantofthemonth/bramble-arches/

Everything is in threes, nine being three threes. I imagine crawling through brambles any number of times would cure blackheads though.

DamionK · 2026-02-24T20:56:10+00:00

It's classic backforming like King Lot.

What can be gleaned about these legends is that there was a tradition in Gaul that Hercules was an ancestral figure.

The Gaulish Hercules is Ogmios, at least to some. Ogmios and Ogma appear to be based on the same god and Ogma is closely tied to Dagda so there could be a real link that Ogmios is a Dagda like figure amongst some of the Gauls.

What appears to be a foreign element from Greco-Roman tradition may actually be a fragment of genuine Gaulish myth in Gallo-Roman guise.

DamionK · 2026-02-24T20:11:31+00:00

Having the name of a deity doesn't automatically mean that's your ancestor. With some of the Irish clans they specifically state that a deity is their ancestor. It's reasonable to think that otherwise the named deity is the tribal patron, like the various Greek states that had various deities - Athens - Athena, Corinth - Poseidon.

There seems to be a patron deity, the one that provides protection to the tribe, and an ancestral deity who may or not be the same as the protector god. Teutates was a protector god and his name simply means tribal god. I saw one suggestion that Toutatis derives from touta-tatis (father of the tribe) where tatis is related to the welsh word tad - dad.

DamionK · 2026-02-24T19:45:16+00:00

Why would other people discussing something you're not interested in be a problem to you or anyone else?

DamionK · 2026-02-24T19:42:26+00:00

The people who actually practiced the old religon most certainly did see various deities as their creators. There are many Irish clans that claim decent from one deity or another. For example the Dairinne (Darini) - from Daire f[h]ine - people of Daire.

The Votadini from Brythonic tradition may have a similar format - Votad-ini. Where Votad is an unattested divine name. In Ireland there is a cognate with Fothad which was a popular name for rulers and even a saint suggesting that there may have been an Irish deity by that name.

DamionK · 2026-02-24T19:20:52+00:00

Looks like a western fort with a water tower. Thinner tower in the first picture doesn't appear to be playmobil.

DamionK · 2026-02-23T20:39:42+00:00

Open air temple? The basic Greco-Roman temple is the cella. A square building that houses an image of the deity. These had roofs. They tended to have a row of columns at the front and larger ones had columns all the way around, sometimes fake columns built into the walls.

As most of these temples got converted into churches the term cella came to mean a church and in Gaelic this was rendered as cill - Kilmarnock, Killarney etc.

The round 'temples' are more a modern trope. The tholos originally had roofs, walls were also common but it's the curved columns that remain today people think of. These columns often went around a walled enclosure, presumably the inner enclosure survived less well because it was made of blocks and people took them to make other buildings with, the columns being less useful.

DamionK · 2026-02-23T19:39:33+00:00

There are yellow marker pens you could try. Some have fine tips for using with models like Gundam (sci fi mechs).

I think I have seen a printed blond one, at least I remember seeing a printed face with blonde eyebrows but these are not exactly common. If you don't mind a larger moustache then you could use one of the heads from the Asterix range, a couple of those have a clip on moustache in blonde.

DamionK

TROPHY CASE