The Goths (Gothic: , Gutans) were East Germanic tribes who, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, harried the Roman Empire and later adopted Arianism (a form of Christianity). In the 5th and 6th centuries. As the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths they established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in Italy and on the Iberian peninsula (now Spain & Portugal), respectively.

History

Main article: Gothic and Vandal warfare

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

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, sacking Byzantium in 267.^[1] 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 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 centered in Byzantium to assist each other militarily. They converted to Arianism during this time. Hunnic domination of the Ostrogoth kingdom began in the 370s, and under pressure of the Huns, Therving king 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, probably at the fortress of Durostorum, but following a famine the Gothic War (376-382) 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 568. The Visigothic kingdom lasted longer, until 711 under Roderic, when it had to yield to the Umayyad invasion of Andalusia.

Archaeology

Main articles: Wielbark Culture and Chernyakhov Culture

In today's Poland, the earliest material culture identified with the Goths is the Wielbark Culture,^[2] which replaced the local Oksywie culture in the 1st century. This replacement happened when a Scandinavian settlement was established in a buffer zone between the Oksywie culture and the probably Vandal Przeworsk culture.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5]

During the period ca 600 BC–ca 300 BC the warm and dry climate of southern Scandinavia 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. According to earlier research, in the traditional Swedish province of Östergötland, archaeological evidence shows that there was a general depopulation during this period.^[6] However, this is not confirmed in the recent publications^[7] The settlement in today's Poland probably corresponds to the introduction of Scandinavian burial traditions, such as the stone circles and the stelae, especially common on the island of Gotland and other parts of southern Sweden, 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:

Despite many controversial hypotheses regarding the location of Scandia (for example, in the island of Gotlandia and the provinces of Västergötland and Östergötland), the fact that the Goths arrived on today's Polish land from the North after crossing the Baltic Sea by boats is certain.^[8]

However, the Gothic culture also appears to have had continuity from earlier cultures in the area,^[9] 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.^[10] 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.^[11] 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 historic evidence of continued contacts between the Goths and southern Sweden during their migrations, into the 6th century.^[12][13]

Settlement Pattern

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.^[14] Most settlements are open and unfortified; some forts are also known.

Burial Practices

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.^[15]

Religion

Main articles: Gothic Christianity and Germanic Christianity

The original religion of the Goths remains largely unknown.

Roman prisoners brought Christianity to the Goths. This spread fast enough that several Therving kings and their supporters persecuted the Christian Thervingi, many of whom fled to Moesia in the Roman Empire. Wulfila translated the Bible into Gothic during this exile.^[16]

Wulfila or Ulfilas was the son or grandson of Christian captives from Sadagolthina in Cappadocia. In 337 or 341, Wulfila became the first bishop of the (Christian) Goths. By 348, one of the (Pagan) Gothic kings (reikos) began persecuting the Christian Goths, and Wulfila and many other Christian Goths fled to Moesia Secunda in the Roman Empire.^[17][18] Other Christians, including Wereka, Batwin, and Saba, died in later persecutions.

Between 348 and 383, Wulfila translated the Bible into Gothic.^[19][20] Thus some Arian Christians in the west used the vernacular languages, in this case including Gothic and Latin, for services, as did Eastern Orthodox Christians, while Roman Catholic ones in the west only used Latin.

Languages

Main articles: Gothic language and East Germanic 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, 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^[21] and remained in Scandinavia, the Gutar (Gotlanders), whoes name is identical to Goths, and the Geats. These tribes were considered to be Goths by Jordanes (see Scandza).

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 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.

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.

Origin of the Name "Goth" (*Gut-)

The names Gutar (Gotlanders) and Goths are etymologically the same ethnonym. Related, but not the same is also the Scandinavian tribal name Geat. Goths and Gutar were *Gutaniz while Geat was originally Proto-Germanic *Gautoz (plural *Gautaz). *Gautoz and *Gutaniz are two ablaut grades of a Proto-Germanic word (*geutan) with the meaning "to pour" (modern Swedish gjuta, modern Dutch gieten, modern German gießen, Gothic giutan) while designating the tribes as "pourers of semen", i.e. "men, people".^[22] Gapt, the earliest Gothic hero, recorded by Jordanes, is generally regarded as a corruption of Gaut.

Interestingly Old Norse records do not separate the Goths from the Gutar (Gotlanders) and both are called Gotar in Old West Norse. The Old East Norse term for both Goths and Gotlanders seems to have been Gutar (for instance in the Gutasaga and in the runic inscription of the Rökstone). However the Geats are clearly distinguished from the Goths/Gutar in both Old Norse and Old English literature.

A second but perhaps less strong theory connects the people with the name of a river flowing through Västergötland in Sweden, 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). *gheu-d- 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-şiuda, the "Gothic people", appears in the Gothic Calendar (aikklesjons fullaizos ana gutşiudai gabrannidai). Besides the Goths, this way of naming a tribe is only found in Sweden.^[23]

As mentioned above the name of the Goths is 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.

Symbolic meaning

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.

Ever since the 1540s 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 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 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.^[24][25]

See also

• Arheimar
• The Battle of the Goths and Huns
• Crimean Goths
• Foederati
• Gothic alphabet
• Gepidae
• Gutar
• Hervarar saga
• Jordanes
• King of the Geats
• List of Germanic peoples
• Migrations period
• Reidgotaland
• Sabbas the Goth
• Scandza
• Ulfilas; Codex Argenteus

Notes

References

• 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.
• Oxenstierna, Graf E.C. : 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 – 500 AD. Occasional Papers in Archaeology (OPIA) 26. Uppsala 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.

External links

• "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