Lofoten Islands as Germanic Homeland.

We all do need to understand 'stockfish'. This is codfish, as fished
off the Lofoten Islands in Norway. We are also to understand how
*rich* it used to be. Nowadays, the Canadian Navy mostly spends it
time chasing off fishermen from the Grand Banks -- which are fished
dry of cod.

Before the cod got fished dry from the sea, the Lofoten Islands were
as rich (but more nasty in climate terms) than were the Grand Banks.

The Lofoten Islands give us 'stockfish'. This is freeze-dried cod,
which keeps (in rather nasty summers) for about two years. It's
enough to keep you and yours, the king, and the people down south you
trade with. Gee. Foodstuffs that keep for two years, even thru a hot
humid summer.

To do stockfish, you need to freeze your butt off at the far-western
coast of northern Europe. In olden days, the cod just leapt into your
hands, much like cod usta leap into your hands on the Grand Banks.
You really could keep your and yours, the king, and people far to the
south in good protein, without working *that* hard.

So. I've seen maps that put the Corded Ware Horizen in the Lofoten
Islands (and perhaps, depending on how you interpret that dot, as far
as the North Cape).

Now. There is a whole 'nother story about stockfish, one the relates
to Christian Europe before Marty Luther said you could eat beef on
Friday or during Lent. It was a VAST industry in stockfish, sent south
(remember, freeze dried cod could keep up to two years), all the way
down to southern Portugal (Henry the Navigator's territory).

I do remember reading how Portuguese fishermen are recorded as doing
the Grand Banks at an obscenely early date after Columbus' 1492 and
all that. It's as if the Portuguese knew about the Grand Banks before
that (and they pro'lly did).

So. As a private theory, I toss out the idea that Germanic developed
WAY in the north.