From where did the germanic tribes came?
I addressed the general origin of the Germanic peoples in this post here, so I wanted to use your question and expand more on an individual level for the various tribes! The Germanic people in general, according to most scholars, originated in Jutland/Southern Scandinavia and from there expanded outwards.
Here’s about the best map that I could find in regards to some specific tribes. Keep in mind that tribes are really difficult to track, and they also moved quite frequently! The Germanic tribes themselves originated across the northern half of Europe, as far west as the Rhine and as far east as the Dnieper.
*Heruli: I put their origins in Central Europe, but it could be either Jutland like on the map or Central Europe. In the material that I’ve read, the Heruli were active in Central Europe.**Goths/Ostrogoths: according to their legends they came from Scandinavia, but the ethnogenesis of their whole people didn’t occur until those first clans were in Eastern Europe.
Most of my characters are Central/Eastern European tribes, just because those are the ones that happened to interest me the most!
They also weren’t all born in the same century, either. Vandals and Ostrogoths are among my older characters (maybe ~100 BCE) , while Franks is younger (~200 CE). Unfortunately, since the Romans didn’t start writing on them until roughly the first century BCE, it’s hard to say exactly how old everyone is and exactly where they originated… I wouldn’t say that any of the tribes we know are older than 800 BCE at the very earliest considering that the Germanic peoples didn’t even start expanding enough to form those tribes until 800 BCE. I’d estimate that most of the groups that we know, save for the ones who began in Jutland (the origin place of the entire ethnolinguistic group) were probably formed more around 200 BCE-200 CE. The first Germanic people is a lot older, but the tribal groups that we’re familiar with aren’t that old. Thanks for the ask!