Interpretatio germanica

Interpretatio Germanica is a really fancy sounding term that means when people from a long time ago wanted to understand or explain things they didn't know, they used words and ideas that they were already familiar with.

For example, imagine you live a long time ago and have never seen a lion before. But someone comes to your village and tells you about a big, scary animal with a mane and sharp teeth that can roar really loud. Even though you don't know what a lion is, you might say, "Oh, like a bear with a really big hairy neck!" because you *do* know what a bear looks like.

The same thing happened with language and ideas in the past. When some people from long ago wanted to talk about gods or important concepts, they would look at other cultures and see if there was anything similar to what they wanted to say. For example, if they wanted to talk about a god of thunder, they might look at the gods of other people and think, "Well, the Vikings have a god named Thor who can control the weather. Maybe we can talk about our own god, and call him Thor too!" or maybe they would call him something similar, like Donar or Thunor.

This was called Interpretatio Germanica because it was a lot of people from the Germanic tribes (who lived a long time ago and have different customs than we do now) who did this kind of thing. It was a way to make sense of the world and communicate with other people, just like how we still use words and ideas to connect with others today.