Goths
This article is about the Germanic tribes. For the late 20th century subculture, see Goth subculture. For other uses of Gothic, see Gothic (disambiguation). |
Invasion of the Goths: a late 19th century painting by O. Fritsche portrays the Goths as cavalrymen. |
The
Goths (
Gothic:
,
Gutans) were an
East Germanic tribe who from the
2nd century settled
Scythia,
Dacia and
Pannonia. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, they harried
Byzantium and later adopted
Arianism. In the 5th and 6th centuries, split into the
Visigoths and the
Ostrogoths, they established powerful follower-states of the
Roman Empire in
Iberia and
Italy.
The only source for early Gothic history is
Jordanes'
Getica (published 551), a condensation of the lost twelve-volume history of the Goths written in Italy by
Cassiodorus around 530. Jordanes may not even have had the work at hand to consult from, and this early information should be treated with caution. Cassiodorus was well placed to write of Goths, for he was an essential minister of
Theodoric the Great, who apparently had heard some of the Gothic songs that told of their traditional origins. Another source is
Procopius'
de bello gothico, describing the
Gothic War of AD 535-552.
The Goths possibly originated in
Scandinavia (more particularly,
Gotland or
Götaland; Jordanes'
Scandza). They would have become separated from related tribes, the
Gutar (
Gotlanders) and the
Götar (
Geats), which are sometimes included in the term
Goths[E.g. Microsoft Encarta (on Swedish history), translations from Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon or Latin and the Primary Chronicle and modern scholarly works on Germanic tribes.] in about the
1st century BC (but the
Gutasaga leaves open the possibility of prolonged contact). They migrated south-east along the
Vistula during the 1st century (Jordanes'
Gothiscandza; see
Wielbark culture), settling in
Scythia, which they called
Oium "waterlands", from the 2nd century (see
Chernyakhov culture). According to legendary accounts, the capital of this kingdom was
Arheim, at the
Dniepr.
Though many of the fighting nomads who followed them were to prove more bloody, the Goths were feared because the captives they took in battle were sacrificed to their god of war,
Tyz,
[The one-Handed Tyr] and the captured arms hung in trees as a token-offering. Their kings and priests came from a separate aristocracy
[According to Cassiodorus/Jordanes.] and their mythic kings of ancient times were honored as gods. Their mythic lawgiver, named
Deceneus, traditionally dated about the 1st century BC, ordered their laws, which they possessed by the 6th century in written form and called
belagines.
In the 3rd century, the Goths split into two groups, the Tervingi or
Visigoths ("West Goths"), and the Greuthungi or
Ostrogoths ("East Goths"). The Visigoths launched one of the first major "
barbarian" invasions of the Roman Empire from 263, sacking
Byzantium in 267.
[Hermannus Contractus, quoting Eusebius, has "263: Macedonia, Graecia, Pontus, Asia et aliae provinciae depopulantur per Gothos".] A year later, they suffered a devastating defeat at the
Battle of Naissus and were driven back across the
Danube River by 271. This group then settled north of the Danube and established an independent kingdom centered on the abandoned Roman province of
Dacia.
Both the Ostrogoths and Visigoths became heavily Romanized during the 4th century by the influence of trade with the Byzantines, and by their membership in a military covenant centered in Byzantium to assist each other militarily. They converted to
Arianism during this time.
Hun domination of the Ostrogoth kingdom began in the 370s, and under pressure of the Huns, Visigothic king
Fritigern in
376 asked
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, probably at the fortress of
Durostorum, but following a famine the
Gothic War (377â€"382) erupted, and Valens was killed at the
Battle of Adrianople.
The Visigoths under
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,
Theoderic 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.
The Ostrogothic kingdom persisted until
553 under
Teia, when Italy briefly fell back under Byzantine control, until the conquest of the
Langobards in
572. The Visigothic kingdom lasted longer, until
711 under
Roderic, when it had to yield to the
Umayyad invasion of
Andalusia.
Explaining the origins of the Goths,
Jordanes recounted:
The same mighty sea has also in its arctic region, that is in the north, a great island named Scandza, from which my tale (by God's grace) shall take its beginning. For the race whose origin you ask to know burst forth like a swarm of bees from the midst of this island and came into the land of Europe. [...]
Now from this island of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long ago under their king, Berig by name. As soon as they disembarked from their ships and set foot on the land, they straightway gave their name to the place. And even to-day it is said to be called Gothiscandza. Soon they moved from here to the abodes of the Ulmerugi, who then dwelt on the shores of Ocean, where they pitched camp, joined battle with them and drove them from their homes.In the 1st century,
Tacitus[Germania, 43.] located the
Gothones south of the
Mare Suebicum (
Suevicum), the
Baltic Sea:
Beyond the Lygians dwell the Gothones, under the rule of a king; and thence held in subjection somewhat stricter than the other German[ic] nations, yet not so strict as to extinguish all their liberty. Immediately adjoining are the Rugians and Lemovians upon the coast of the ocean, and of these several nations the characteristics are a round shield, a short sword and kingly government.Pliny the Elder calls them the
Gutones. According to him, they were a major Germanic people, being one of five.
[Natural History, Book 4, Chapter 28] He also states
[Op. Cit. Book 37, Chapter 11] that the explorer,
Pytheas of
Massilia (4th century BC) encountered them in his northern expedition to an "estuary" we know to have been the Baltic from Pliny's reference to amber washed up on the beaches. A date earlier than the 1st century is thus supported.
Strabo also
[Geography, Book 7, Chapter 1, Section 3] mentions that
Marbod, after a pleasant sojourn with
Augustus, took command of nearly all the tribes in Germania, including the
Boutones.
[attested as Boutonas in the accusative case, and Latinized to Butones] which are generally interpreted as an error for
Goutones, Latinized to
Gutones. For the Scandinavian Goths, we have
Ptolemy, who mentions the
Goutai as living in the south of the island of Skandia.
Due to the central role that the Goths have played in history, their origins have been discussed for a long time. Although no alternative theory has been proposed for the appearance of
Germanic tribes in today's northern Poland, some historians have expressed doubts that the Goths originated in Scandinavia. This is due to the fact that, disregarding Jordanes, the earliest unambiguous
literary evidence for the Goths (
Tacitus and
Pliny the Elder) puts them at the
Vistula in 1st century. Some claim that there is no evidence for a migration at the time of Christ´s birth, and therefore claim that the origin in Scandinavia has to be taken as a
topos.
[cf. Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths, Copenhagen 2002.]On the other hand, the German scholar Wenskus has pointed out that if Jordanes had wanted to invent a fictive past for the Goths, he would have claimed that they were descended from a prestigious location such as
Troy or
Rome. He would not have placed their origins in the barbaric North. Moreover, he was writing for fellow Goths who were familiar with their traditions. Besides Jordanes' account, there is both linguistic and archaeological support for the Scandinavian origin.
Archaeology
In today's
Poland, the earliest material culture identified with the Goths is the Willenberg/Prussia , now
Wielbark Culture,
[The Goths in Greater Poland] which replaced the local Oxhoeft/Prussia , now
Oksywie culture in the 1st century. However, as early as the late
Nordic Bronze Age and early
Pre-Roman Iron Age (ca 1300 BC–ca 300 BC), this area had influences from southern Scandinavia.
[Gothic Connections] In fact, the Scandinavian influence on
Pomerania and today's northern Poland from ca 1300 BC (period III) and onwards was so considerable that this region is sometimes included in the Nordic Bronze Age culture.
[Dabrowski 1989:73] During the period ca 600 BC–ca 300 BC the warm and dry climate of southern Scandinavia (2-3 degrees warmer than today) deteriorated considerably, which not only dramatically changed the flora, but forced people to change their way of living and to leave settlements.
The Goths are believed to have crossed the
Baltic Sea sometime between the end of this period, ca 300 BC, and 100, and in the traditional province of
Ostrogothia, in Sweden, archaeological evidence shows that there was a general depopulation during this period. The settlement in today's Poland probably corresponds to the introduction of Scandinavian burial traditions, such as the
stone circles and the
stelae, which indicates that the early Goths preferred to bury their dead according to Scandinavian traditions. The Polish archaeologist Tomasz Skorupka states that a migration from Scandinavia is regarded as a matter of certainty:
 |
The stone circle was one of the Scandinavian burial traditions used by the Goths in Pomerania |
Despite many controversial hypotheses regarding the location of Scandia (for example, in the island of Gotlandia and the provinces of Västergotland and Östergotland), the fact that the Goths arrived on today's Polish land from the North after crossing the Baltic Sea by boats is certain.[Jewellery of the Goths]However, the Gothic culture also appears to have had continuity from earlier cultures in the area,
[The Goths in Greater Poland] suggesting that the immigrants mixed with earlier populations, perhaps providing their separate aristocracy. The Oxford scholar Heather suggests that it was a relatively small migration from Scandinavia.
[Heather 1996:25.] This scenario would make their migration across the Baltic similar to many other population movements in history, such as the
Anglo-Saxon Invasion, where migrants have imposed their own culture and language on an indigenous one. 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.
[Jewellery of the Goths] In
Ukraine , they imposed themselves as the rulers of the local, probably Slavic,
Zarubintsy culture forming the new
Chernyakhov Culture (ca 200–ca 400).
There is archaeological and historical evidence of continued contacts between the Goths and the Scandinavians during their migrations.
Linguistics
According to at least one theory, there are closer linguistic connections between
Gothic and
Old Norse 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 and remained in Scandinavia, the Gotlanders and the Geats, and these tribes were considered to be Goths by Jordanes (see
Scandza).
The names
Geats,
Goths and
Gutar (Gotlanders) are three versions of the same tribal name.
Geat was originally
Proto-Germanic Gautoz (plural
Gautaz) and
Goths and
Gutar were
Gutaniz.
Gautoz and
Gutaniz are two
ablaut grades of a Proto-Germanic word (
geutan) with the meaning "to pour" (modern Swedish
gjuta, modern German
giessen, Gothic
giutan) designating the tribes as "pourers of semen", i.e. "men, people".
[Andersson (1996).] Gapt, the earliest Gothic hero, recorded by Jordanes, is generally regarded as a corruption of
Gaut.
A second but perhaps less strong theory connects the people with the name of the river flowing through their homeland, the
Göta älv, which drains Lake
Vänern into the
Kattegat. In prehistoric times it had a stronger flow than now. The "man" interpretation, however, fits a general Indo-european naming analogy; e.g., Dutch, Deutsch, man, human, etc., and was preferred by Jordanes, who viewed the Goths as pouring forth from Scandinavia. The Wolfram source below also contains a discussion.
The
Indo-european root of the
pour derivation would be
*gheu-d- as it is listed in the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD). *gheud-is a
centum form. The AHD relies on
Julius Pokorny for the same root (p. 447).
At some time in prehistory, consonant changes according to
Grimm's Law created a *g from the *gh and a *t from the *d. This same law more or less rules out
*ghedh-, root of English good in the sense of goodman, as has been suggested by some. The *dh in that case would become a *d instead of a *t. When and where the ancestors of the Goths assigned this name to themselves and whether they used it in
Indo-european or
proto-Germanic times remain unsolved questions of historical linguistics and prehistoric archaeology.
According the rules of
Indo-European ablaut, the full grade, *gheud-, might be replaced with the zero-grade, *ghud-, or the o-grade, *ghoud-, accounting for the various forms of the name. The use of all three grades suggests that the name derives from an Indo-european stage; otherwise, it would be from a line descending from one grade.
A compound name,
Gut-þiuda, the "Gothic people", appears in the
Gothic Calendar (
aikklesjons fullaizos ana gutþiudai gabrannidai). Besides the Goths, this way of naming a tribe is only found in Sweden.
[See Suiones and Suiþioð.]Etymologically, the name of the Goths identical to that of the
Gutar, the inhabitants of
Gotland, an island in the
Baltic Sea. The number of similarities that existed between the
Gothic language and
Old Gutnish, made the prominent linguist
Elias Wessén consider Old Gutnish to be a form of Gothic. The most famous example is that both
Gutnish and
Gothic used the word
lamb for both young and adult sheep. Still, some claim that
Gutnish is not closer to Gothic than any other Germanic dialect.
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 (see
Gothic language).
However, this does not exclude the possibility of the Goths, the Gotlanders 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.
The Gotlanders (
Gutar) 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.
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 de los godos" ("making himself to come from 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).
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 infected 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.
[Ergo 12-1996.]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. In Scandinavia, both Old Norse matters and the Goths' relationship to Sweden are ideologically very infected, and the stance that historians take in the issue is an ideological symbol.
*
Arheimar*
The Battle of the Goths and Huns *
Crimean Goths*
Gothic alphabet*
Gepidae*
Hervarar saga*
Jordanes*
King of the Geats*
List of Germanic peoples*
Migrations period*
Reidgotaland*
Sava the Goth*
Scandza*
Ulfilas;
Codex Argenteus*Andersson, Thorsten. (1996) "Göter, goter, gutar" in
Journal Namn och Bygd, Uppsala.
*Bell-Fialkoff, A.:
The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe, London: Macmillan, 2000.
*Bradley, Henry.
The Goths: from the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888.
*Dabrowski, J. (1989) Nordische Kreis un Kulturen Polnischer Gebiete.
Die Bronzezeit im Ostseegebiet. Ein Rapport der Kgl. Schwedischen Akademie der Literatur Geschichte und Alter unt Altertumsforschung über das Julita-Symposium 1986. Ed Ambrosiani, B. Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien. Konferenser 22. Stockholm.
*Findeisen, Joerg-Peter:
Schweden - Von den Anfaengen bis zur Gegenwart, Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1998.
*Graf E.C. Oxenstierna:
Die Urheimat der Goten. Leipzig, Mannus-Buecherei 73, 1945 (later printed in 1948).
*Heather, Peter:
The Goths (Blackwell, 1996)
*Hermodsson, Lars:
Goterna - ett krigafolk och dess bibel, Stockholm, Atlantis, 1993.
*Kaliff, Anders:
Gothic Connections. Contacts between eastern Scandinavia and the southern Baltic coast 1000 BC â€" 500 AD. 2001.
*Mastrelli, Carlo Alberto in Volker Bierbauer et al,
I Goti, Milan: Electa Lombardia, Elemond Editori Associati, 1994.
*Nordgren, I.:
Goterkällan - om goterna i Norden och på kontinenten, Skara: Vaestergoetlands museums skriftserie nr 30, 2000.
*Nordgren, I.:
The Well Spring of the Goths : About the Gothic peoples in the Nordic Countries and on the Continent (2004)
*Rodin, L. - Lindblom, V. - Klang, K.:
Gudaträd och västgötska skottkungar - Sveriges bysantiska arv, Göteborg: Tre böcker, 1994.
Schaetze der Ostgoten, Stuttgart: Theiss, 1995. Studia Gotica - Die eisenzeitlichen Verbindungen zwischen Schweden und Suedosteuropa - Vortraege beim Gotensymposion im Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm 1970.
*Tacitus:
Germania, (with introduction and commentary by J.B. Rives), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
*Wenskus, Reinhard:
Stammesbildung und Verfassung. Das Werden der Frühmittelalterlichen Gentes (Köln 1961).
*Wolfram, Herwig:
History of the Goths. New and completely revised from the second German edition. Translated by Thomas J. Dunlap. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988. LC number D137.W6213 1987 940.1.
*
"The Origins and Deeds of the Goths", by Jordanes, trans. Charles C. Mierow*
"The Goths in Greater Poland" by Tadeusz Makiewicz*
"Jewellery of the Goths", by Tomasz Skorupka, on a Polish museum site *
"The Germans" by Richard Hooker*
Summary of "Gothic Connections" by Anders Kaliff
