Hildebrandslied in the context of Proto-Indo-European society

Germanic heroic legend (German: germanische Heldensage) is the heroic literary tradition of the Germanic-speaking peoples, most of which originates or is set in the Migration Period (4th-6th centuries AD). Stories from this time period, to which others were added later, were transmitted orally, traveled widely among the Germanic speaking peoples, and were known in many variants. These legends typically reworked historical events or personages in the manner of oral poetry, forming a heroic age. Heroes in these legends often display a heroic ethos emphasizing honor, glory, and loyalty above other concerns. Like Germanic mythology, heroic legend is a genre of Germanic folklore.

Heroic legends are attested in Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Scandinavia, and medieval Germany. Many take the form of Germanic heroic poetry (German: germanische Heldendichtung): shorter pieces are known as heroic lays, whereas longer pieces are called Germanic heroic epic (germanische Heldenepik). The early Middle Ages preserves only a small number of legends in writing, mostly from England, including the only surviving early medieval heroic epic in the vernacular, Beowulf. Probably the oldest surviving heroic poem is the Old High German Hildebrandslied (c. 800). There also survive numerous pictorial depictions from Viking Age Scandinavia and areas under Norse control in the British Isles. These often attest scenes known from later written versions of legends connected to the hero Sigurd. In the High and Late Middle Ages, heroic texts are written in great numbers in Scandinavia, particularly Iceland, and in southern Germany and Austria. Scandinavian legends are preserved both in the form of Eddic poetry and in prose sagas, particularly in the legendary sagas such as the Völsunga saga. German sources are made up of numerous heroic epics, of which the most famous is the Nibelungenlied (c. 1200).

German literature (German: Deutschsprachige Literatur) comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects (e.g. Alemannic).

Medieval German literature is literature written in Germany, stretching from the Carolingian dynasty; various dates have been given for the end of the German literary Middle Ages, the Reformation (1517) being the last possible cut-off point. The Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century; the most famous works are the Hildebrandslied and a heroic epic known as the Heliand. Middle High German starts in the 12th century; the key works include The Ring (c. 1410) and the poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein and Johannes von Tepl. The Baroque period (1600 to 1720) was one of the most fertile times in German literature. Modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment (such as Herder). The Sensibility movement of the 1750s–1770s ended with Goethe's best-selling The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism movements were led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Wynn or wyn (Ƿ ƿ; also spelled wen, win, ƿynn, ƿyn, ƿen, and ƿin), not to be confused with P, is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound /w/. It was a continued use of the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc runes. Futhorc was the native alphabet of Old English before the Latin alphabet was adopted, and it was a sibling alphabet to the Younger Futhark alphabet that Old Norse used. Both alphabets come from Elder Futhark.