Veleda, Celt or Teuton?

The seeress Veleda, was she a Celt or a Teuton? Rudolf Simek in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology makes it clear that she lived in the first century CE and was a member of the Bructeri, a Germanic tribe and according to Tacitus she was worshiped as a Goddess by her people. She resided in a high tower near the river Lippe and and a specially chosen relative acted as a messenger between her and the people. She had considerable prophetic powers and was held in high esteem also by the Romans. Apparently she was eventually taken prisoner by the Romans and spent the rest of her life in a temple in southern Italy. Simek does state however:

Although the name Veleda reminds us phonetically of ON volva `seeress`, it should more likely be linked with Celtic fili[d] `poet, scholar`; it is however not very likely that Veleda should be considered as a a term for her profession rather than a name.

However I recently encountered this passage in a book by Peter Berresford Ellis, The Celts:

Dio Cassius mentions Veleda, a `virgin prophetess among the Celts` during the reign of Vespasian. Veleda is clearly a Celtic name deriving from the root gwel, to see, a title rather than a name and meaning `Seeress`.

Whilst I respect the scholarship of Ellis he is without a doubt very Celto-centric and this shows through all his works, especially Celt and Saxon. The Struggle for Britain. One useful aspect of his work is that he places ancient Celtic history and religion in an Indo-European perspective and as Wodenists and Aryanists we can learn much from his work. Ellis does not seem to take into consideration that the area of Germany where Veleda lived was a Germanic speaking area by the time of the first century CE, not Celtic. However although the Bructeri were a Germanic tribe they would have lived in close proximity to the Celts and we know that in the Celtic and Germanic borderland there was a lot interaction between the two peoples, some tribes appearing to be a mix of the two, Celto-Germanic in other words. I believe that Veleda is closely cognate with the Teutonic name Velda which is derived from Valda, meaning `power, rule`. Any Celtic associations may be coincidental or possibly an indication of a shared Celto-Germanic or even a Proto-Indo-European origin. It is possible of course that Veleda was of noble extraction. Velda/Veleda suggests nobility and nobility of blood was closely associated with gifts of prophecy in the ancient Germanic world. There is a lesson for us here: if we wish to recover our atrophied psychic abilities we must strive for blood purity as a people.