Germanic religion is principally defined as the religious traditions of speakers of Germanic languages (the Germanic peoples). The term "religion" in this context is itself controversial, Bernhard Maier noting that it "implies a specifically modern point of view, which reflects the modern conceptual isolation of 'religion' from other aspects of culture". Never a unified or codified set of beliefs or practices, Germanic religion showed strong regional variations and Rudolf Simek writes that it is better to refer to "Germanic religions". In many contact areas (e.g. Rhineland and eastern and northern Scandinavia), Germanic paganism was similar to neighboring religions such as those of the Slavs, Celts, or Finnic peoples. The use of the qualifier "Germanic" (e.g. "Germanic religion" and its variants) remains common in German-language scholarship, but is less commonly used in English and other scholarly languages, where scholars usually specify which branch of paganism is meant (e.g. Norse paganism or Anglo-Saxon paganism). The term "Germanic religion" is sometimes applied to practices dating to as early as the Stone Age or Bronze Age, but its use is more generally restricted to the time period after the Germanic languages had become distinct from other Indo-European languages (early Iron Age). Germanic paganism covers a period of around one thousand years in terms of written sources, from the first reports in Roman sources to the final conversion to Christianity.
