Goths

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Archaeological records - Chernyakhov culture

The Willenberg/Wielbark culture shifted south-eastwards towards the Black Sea area from the mid-2nd century. It was the oldest part of the Wielbark culture, located west of the Vistula and which had Scandinavian burial traditions, that pulled up its stakes and moved.[25] In Ukraine, they imposed themselves as the rulers of the local Zarubintsy culture forming the new Chernyakhov Culture (ca 200–ca 400). They were ultimately assimilated into the local population.

There is archaeological and historic evidence of continued contacts between the Goths and southern Sweden during their migrations, into the 6th century.[31][32]

Chernyakhov settlements cluster in open ground in river valleys. The houses include sunken-floored dwellings, surface dwellings, and stall-houses. The largest known settlement (Budesty) is 35 hectares.[33] Most settlements are open and unfortified; some forts are also known.

Chernyakhov cemeteries include both cremation and inhumation burials; among the latter the head is to the north. Some graves were left empty. Grave goods often include pottery, bone combs, and iron tools, but almost never any weapons.[34]

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Within the Roman Empire

Major sources for Gothic history include Ammianus Marcellinus' Res gestae, mentioning Gothic involvement in the civil war between emperors Procopius and Valens of 365 and recounting the Gothic refugee crisis and revolt of 376-382 and Procopius' de bello gothico, describing the Gothic War of 535-552.

In the 3rd century, there were at least two groups of Goths, the Thervingi, and the Greuthungi. The Thervingi launched one of the first major "barbarian" invasions of the Roman Empire from 262, sailing up to the Aegean and laying waste to the islands and the countryside in 267, although they were unable to take any fortified cities.[35] A year later, they suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Naissus. By 271 the force was destroyed, and some of the survivors were resettled within the empire, while another part was incorporated in the Roman army.

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Later an independent kingdom centred on the abandoned Roman province of Dacia was established. In 332 Constantine, in order to enforce the Roman Empire border, helped the Sarmatians to settle on the north banks of the Danube to defend against the Goths' attacks. 100,000 Goths were killed in battle, and Ariaricus, the son of the King of the Goths, was captured. In 334 Constantine evacuated 300,000 Sarmatians from the north bank of the Danube (after a local revolt of the Sarmatians' slaves). In 335-336 Constantine, continuing his Danube campaign, defeated many Gothic tribes. [36][37][38] Both the Greuthungi and Thervingi became heavily Romanized during the 4th century by the influence of trade with the Byzantines, and by their membership of a military covenant centred in Byzantium to assist each other militarily. They converted to Arianism during this time. Hunnic domination of the Gothic kingdom in Scythia began in the 370s,[citation needed] and under pressure of the Huns, the king of the Thervingi,[citation needed] Fritigern in 376 asked the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens to be allowed to settle with his people on the south bank of the Danube. Valens permitted this, and even helped the Goths cross the river,[citation needed] probably at the fortress of Durostorum, but following a famine the Gothic War (376-382) took place, and Goths and local Thracians rebelled. The Roman Emperor Valens was killed at the Battle of Adrianople.

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The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, (the Ostrogoths being the other) during the fifth century. Together these tribes were among the Germanic peoples who disturbed the late Roman Empire during the Migration Period. A Visigothic force led by Alaric I sacked Rome in 410. Honorius granted the Visigoths Aquitania, where they defeated the Vandals and by 475 ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula.

The Ostrogoths in the meantime freed themselves of government of the Huns following the Battle of Nedao in 454. At the behest of emperor Zeno, Theodoric the Great from 488 conquered all of Italy. The Goths were briefly reunited under one crown in the early sixth century under Theodoric the Great, who became regent of the Visigothic kingdom following the death of Alaric II at the Battle of Vouillé in 507. Procopius, writing at this time, interpreted the name Visigoth to mean "western Goths", and the name Ostrogoth as "eastern Goth" which corresponded to the current distribution of the Gothic realms.

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The Ostrogothic kingdom persisted until 553 under Teia, when Italy briefly fell back under Byzantine control, until the conquest of the Langobards in 568. The Visigothic kingdom lasted longer, until 711 under Roderic, when it had to yield to the Muslim Umayyad invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andaluz).

In the late 6th century, Goths were settled as foederati in parts of Asia Minor. Their descendants, forming the elite Optimatoi regiment, still lived there in the early 8th century, and albeit largely assimilated, their Gothic origin was still well-known: the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor calls them Gothograeci.

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A 19th century artist's rendition of campaigning Goths as described by their 3rd - 4th century Roman adversaries.

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Languages

Gothic is an archaic Germanic language with definite ties to the languages of North-Central Europe. It is the only well-recorded East Germanic language.

According to at least one theory[citation needed], there are closer linguistic connections between Gothic and Old Norse (especially the Old Gutnish dialect) than between Gothic and the West Germanic languages (see East Germanic languages and Gothic). Moreover, there were two tribes that probably are closely related to the Goths[39] and remained in Scandinavia, the Gutar (Gotlanders), whose name is identical to Goths, and the Geats. These tribes were considered to be Goths by Jordanes

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The fact is that virtually all of those phonetic and grammatical features that characterize the North Germanic languages as a separate branch of the Germanic language family (not to mention the features that distinguish various Norse dialects) seem to have evolved at a later stage than the one preserved in Gothic. Gothic in turn, while being an extremely archaic form of Germanic in most respects, has nevertheless developed a certain number of unique features that it shares with no other Germanic language.

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However, this does not exclude the possibility of the Goths, the Gutar and the Geats being related as tribes. Similarly, the Saxon dialects of Germany are hardly closer to Anglo-Saxon than any other West Germanic language that hasn't undergone the High German consonant shift (see Grimm's law), but the tribes themselves are definitely identical. The Jutes (Dan. jyder) of Jutland (Dan. Jylland, in Western Danmark) are at least etymologically identical to the Jutes that came from that region and invaded Britain together with the Angles and the Saxons in the 5th century AD. Nevertheless, there are no remaining written sources to associate the Jutes of Jutlandia with anything but North Germanic dialects, or the Jutes of Britain with anything but West Germanic dialects. Thus, language is not always the best criterion for tribal or ethnic tradition and continuity.

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Symbolic legacy

The Gutar (Gotlanders) themselves had oral traditions of a mass migration towards southern Europe, written down in the Gutasaga. If the facts are related, that would be a unique case of a tradition that survived in more than a thousand years and that actually pre-dates most of the major splits in the Germanic language family.

The Goths' relationship with Sweden became an important part of Swedish nationalism, and until the 19th century the view that the Swedes were the direct descendants of the Goths was common. Today Swedish scholars identify this as a cultural movement called Gothicismus, which included an enthusiasm for things Old Norse.

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Since 1278, when Magnus III of Sweden mounted the throne, it has been included in the title of the King of Sweden. "We N.N. by Gods Grace of the Swedes, the Goths and the Vends King". In 1973, with the death of King Gustaf VI Adolf, the title was changed to solely "King of Sweden"

In Medieval and Modern Spain, the Visigoths were thought to be the origin of the Spanish nobility (compare Gobineau for a similar French idea).

Somebody acting with arrogance would be said to be "haciéndose los godos" ("making himself to act like the Goths"). Because of this, in Chile, Argentina and the Canary Islands, godo was an ethnic slur used against European Spaniards, who in the early colony period would feel superior to the people born locally (criollos).

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This claim of Gothic origins led to a clash with the Swedish delegation at the Council of Basel, 1434. Before the assembled cardinals and delegations could undertake the theological discussions, they had to decide how to sit during the proceedings. The delegations from the more prominent nations were to sit closest to the Pope, and there were also disputes about who was to have the finest chairs and who was to have their chairs on mats. In some cases they compromised so that some would have half a chair leg on the rim of a mat. In this conflict, the bishop of Växjö, Nicolaus Ragvaldi claimed that the Swedes were the descendants of the great Goths, and that the people of Västergötland (Westrogothia in Latin) were the Visigoths and the people of Östergötland (Ostrogothia in Latin) were the Ostrogoths. The Spanish delegation then retorted that it was only the lazy and unenterprising Goths who had remained in Sweden, whereas the heroic Goths, on the other hand, had left Sweden, invaded the Roman empire and settled in Spain.[40][41]

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Footnotes


^ Bradley (1899) page 364.
^ Wolfram (1988) pages 19-35.
^ a b Lehmann, Winfred P.; Helen-Jo J. Hewitt (1986). A Gothic Etymological Dictionary. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 164. ISBN 9004081763, 9789004081765.  Guton- is apparent in Gutones, which appears "in Pytheas cited by Pliny."
^ Compare the modern Swedish gjuta, modern Dutch gieten, modern German gießen, Gothic giutan, old Scandinavian giota, old English geotan all cognate with Latin fondere "to pour" and old Greek cheo "I pour".
^ Page 447.
^ Andersson (1996).
^ Wolfram (1988) page 21.
^ a b Johannes Hoops, Herbert Jankuhn, Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer, Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd edition, Walter de Gruyter, 2004, pp.452ff, ISBN 3110177331
^ The Works of Tacitus: The Oxford Translation, Revised, With Notes, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008, p.836, ISBN 0559473354
^ J. B. Rives on Tacitus, Germania, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.311, ISBN 0198150504
^ Jordanes 25.
^ Jordanes 94.
^ Jordanes 26.
^ Jordanes 96.
^ Book 37, Chapter 11.
^ Tacitus, Cornelius; J.B. Rives, Translator and Commentator (1999). Germania. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 113. ISBN 0199240000, 9780199240005.  As Pytheas did mention the Teutones in the same passage it securely dates them to 300 BC.
^ Book 4, Chapter 13.
^ Book II, Chapter 10.
^ a b The Goths in Greater Poland
^ Andrzej Kokowski "Archäologie der Goten" 1999 (ISBN 83-907341-8-4)
^ Gothic Connections
^ Dabrowski 1989:73
^ Oxenstierna 1945
^ Kaliff 2001
^ a b Jewellery of the Goths
^ Heather 1996:25.
^ Jordanes 27.
^ Jordanes 28.
^ Jordanes 42.
^ Jordanes 82.
^ Arhenius, B. Connections between Scandinavia and the East Roman Empire in the Migration Period, in From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology, ed. by David Austin and Leslie Alcock (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 118-37 (pp. 119, 134).
^ Heather, Peter: The Goths (Blackwell, 1996), p. 27.
^ Heather, Peter & Matthews, John, 1991, The Goths in the Fourth Century, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, pp. 52-54.
^ Heather, Peter & Matthews, John, 1991, Goths in the Fourth Century, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, pp. 54-56.G
^ Hermannus Contractus, quoting Eusebius, has "263: Macedonia, Graecia, Pontus, Asia et aliae provinciae depopulantur per Gothos".
^ Origo Constantini 6.32 mention the actions
^ Eusebius Vita Constantini IV.6
^ Charles Manson Odahl Constantine and the Christian Empire chapter X
^ Stål, Harry. (1976). Ortnamn och ortnamnsforskning. Almquist & Wiksell, Uppsala. p.131.
^ Ergo 12-1996.
^ Söderberg, Werner. (1896). "Nicolaus Ragvaldis tal i Basel 1434", in Samlaren. p. 187-195.

[Trina Prior]

Gothic and Vandal warfare

The Goths, Gepids, Vandals, and Burgundians were East Germanic groups who appear in Roman records in Late Antiquity. At times these groups warred against or allied with the Roman Empire, the Huns, and various Germanic tribes.

The size and social composition of their armies remains controversial.

In the 3rd Century, some Germanic people of the Baltic Sea (associated with the Wielbark (Willenberg) culture) followed the Vistula, Bug, and Dnestr rivers and settled among the Dacians, Sarmatians, Bastarnae, and other peoples of the Black Sea steppes. These Germanic people brought their name and language to the Gothic people who emerged in the 3rd century (associated with the Chernyakhov Culture).

[Trina Prior]

Gothic and Vandal warfare

The Goths, Gepids, Vandals, and Burgundians were East Germanic groups who appear in Roman records in Late Antiquity. At times these groups warred against or allied with the Roman Empire, the Huns, and various Germanic tribes.

The size and social composition of their armies remains controversial.

In the 3rd Century, some Germanic people of the Baltic Sea (associated with the Wielbark (Willenberg) culture) followed the Vistula, Bug, and Dnestr rivers and settled among the Dacians, Sarmatians, Bastarnae, and other peoples of the Black Sea steppes. These Germanic people brought their name and language to the Gothic people who emerged in the 3rd century (associated with the Chernyakhov Culture).