According to a tale related by

Jordanes Jordanes (), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history ('' Romana'') a ...

in his ''

Getica ''De origine actibusque Getarum'' (''The Origin and Deeds of the Getae oths'), commonly abbreviated ''Getica'', written in Late Latin by Jordanes in or shortly after 551 AD, claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the o ...

'', Gothiscandza was the first settlement area of the

Goths The Goths ( got, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰, translit=''Gutþiuda''; la, Gothi, grc-gre, Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe ...

after their migration from Scandza during the first half of the 1st century CE. He claimed that the name was still in use in his own day (c. 551).

Jordanes' account

Jordanes relates that the

East Germanic East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the ...

tribe of Goths were led from Scandza by their king Berig. As soon as they had set foot in the land, they named the area ''Gothiscandza''. The slowest of the three ships carried the Gepids, who settled in the "province of Spesis on an island surrounded by the shallow waters of the

Vistula The Vistula (; pl, Wisła, ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest river in Europe, at in length. The drainage basin, reaching into three other nations, covers , of which is in Poland. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in ...

. This island they called, in the speech of their fathers, Gepedoios". They soon moved to the settlements of the

Rugians The Rugii, Rogi or Rugians ( grc, Ρογοί, Rogoi), were a Roman-era Germanic people. They were first clearly recorded by Tacitus, in his ''Germania'' who called them the ''Rugii'', and located them near the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Some ...

(''Ulmerugi'', a Germanic tribe which had arrived in the area already before the Goths), who lived on the coast, and they chased them away. Then they defeated their new neighbours, the

Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The Vandals migrated to the area betw ...

. After some time, when at least four generations of kings had passed after Berig, and

Filimer Filimer was an early Gothic king, according to Jordanes. He was the son of Gadareiks and the fifth generation since Berig settled with his people in Gothiscandza. When the Gothic nation had multiplied Filimer decided to move his people to Scythia ...

was the king of the Goths, their numbers had multiplied. Filimer decided that everyone was to leave Gothiscandza and move to a new region named

Oium Oium was a name for Scythia, or a fertile part of it, roughly in modern Ukraine, where the Goths, under a legendary King Filimer, settled after leaving Gothiscandza, according to the ''Getica'' by Jordanes, written around 551. It is generall ...

( Scythia). The reliability of Jordanes for early Gothic history has been called into question.

Etymology

One interpretation of Gothiscandza is that is a Latinised form of the Gothic ''gutisk-an a'', "Gothic end (or frontier)", since the Goths' territory extended to here. Another interpretation is that ''an a'' means "cape" so that the whole word means "gothic peninsula". It is also possible that the word is a product of conflation of the words ''gothic'' and ''Scandinavia''. Herwig Wolfram mentions "Gothic coast" and "Gothic Scandia" but prefers the latter, thinking that the former is "linguistically questionable".

Identification

History and linguistics

In the 1st century AD, the mouth of the

was indicated as the land of the ''Gutones'' (

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...

) or ''Gothones'' (

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...

): The names given by Pliny and Tacitus appear to be identical to *''Gutaniz'', the reconstructed

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...

form of ''Gutans'', the Goths' and the Gotlanders' name for themselves. The Gothiscandza theme was revived in German scholarship by Gustav Kossinna. Several archaeologists and historians have proposed the theory that the name Gothiscandza was evolved linguistically into Kashubian and other West Slavic languages' rendition of the various historical names of Gdańsk (german: Danzig).

Archaeology

In the 1st century a new culture appeared at the mouth of the Vistula, called the

Wielbark Culture The Wielbark culture (german: Wielbark-Willenberg-Kultur; pl, Kultura wielbarska) or East Pomeranian-Mazovian is an Iron Age archaeological complex which flourished on the territory of today's Poland from the 1st century AD to the 5th century AD. ...

replacing the local Oksywie culture. The most salient component of Scandinavian influence in the 1st century AD is the introduction of Scandinavian burial traditions such as

stone circles A stone circle is a ring of standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being built from 3000 BC. The b ...

and the

stelae A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

, showing that those who buried their dead preferred to do so according to Scandinavian traditions. However, there is also archaeological evidence of previous Scandinavian influence in the area during the

Nordic Bronze Age The Nordic Bronze Age (also Northern Bronze Age, or Scandinavian Bronze Age) is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from c. 2000/1750–500 BC. The Nordic Bronze Age culture emerged about 1750 BC as a continuation of the Battle Axe culture (th ...

and the

Pre-Roman Iron Age The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. The regio ...

, perhaps corresponding to the arrival of

and

. In the 3rd century AD, the Wielbark culture spread into Scythia, where it formed the Gothic

Chernyakhov culture The Chernyakhov culture, Cherniakhiv culture or Sântana de Mureș—Chernyakhov culture was an archaeological culture that flourished between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE in a wide area of Eastern Europe, specifically in what is now Ukraine, Rom ...

Norse mythology

Norse mythology presents at least two traditions that may be connected to Gothiscandza. The first one, the Gutasaga, may refer to the migration of the Goths and the second one, the legend of Dag the Wise, of raids from Scandza.

The Gutasaga

The Gutasaga relates that when the Gotlanders had multiplied so that the island ( Gotland, i.e. ''Goth-land'') no longer could support them, they drew lots so that one third of the island's inhabitants had to leave and settle in the south. They eventually settled in the land of the

Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and, to a lesser extent, oth ...

. :''over a long time, the people descended from these three multiplied so much that the land couldn't support them all. Then they draw lots, and every third person was picked to leave, and they could keep everything they owned and take it with them, except for their land. ... they went up the river Dvina, up through Russia. They went so far that they came to the land of the Greeks. ... they settled there, and live there still, and still have something of our language.''

Ynglingatal

The legend of Dag the Wise may convey traditions of attacks by the

Suiones The Swedes ( sv, svear; Old Norse: ''svíar'') (probably from the PIE reflexive pronominal root * s(w)e, "one's own ribesmen/kinsmen;Bandle, Oskar. 2002. The Nordic languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic lang ...

in the 2nd or 3rd century. In Scandinavian sources, the territory is called Reidgotaland, a name that followed the Goths during their migrations in the

Norse saga is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to the Pl ...

References

{{Reflist

External links

*Jordanes text in English https://archive.org/details/gothichistoryofj00jorduoft Goths Prehistoric Poland Historical regions