[gothic-l] Re: Goths, Eruli in the East

[andreas.schwarcz at UNIVIE.AC.AT]

Dear Einar,
I agree that there is not much that we know about the religion of the
Goths, but we do know something about it. You will find some
evidence for this in Wolfram's book on the Goths and in my article
about cult and religion of the Tervingi in The Visigoths (ed.Peter
Heather). We know nothing of the gods of the Gothones of the 1st
century A.D. The Greuthungi seem to have worshipped (according
to Jordanes) a gothic version of Mars, i.e. a war god. The Tervingi
brought sacrifices to the river gods before their conversion to
Christianity and worshipped wooden idols which they are said to
have brought over the Danube into the empire (by Eunapius). No
source whatever mentions a mother goddess or gives the name of
Freya or Freyr in connection with any group of the Goths. But we
know from the archeological sources that all Gothic groups from
Wielbark till the cemeteries of the Visigoths in Spain have in
common  that they buried their male dead without weapons (cf.
Bierbrauer and Kazanski). In this respect Wielbark f.i. was totally
different to all contemporary neighbouring cultures and to the
situation in Scandinavia at the same time, one of the strongest
arguments. by the way, against a Scandinavian origin of the Goths,
together with the total difference in house forms analysed by
settlement archeology (cf. f.i. the publications of Kmiecinski in
Peregrinatio Gothica). We know from Paulus Diaconus that the
Longobards worshipped Freya and then chandeg to Woden.
Nothing of that kind of information is there for the Goths and their
archeology tells us that their ideas of the world of the dead differred
from other peoples' ideas.
Kind regards
                     Andreas
ao.Univ.Prof.Dr.Andreas Schwarcz
Institut fuer oesterreichische Geschichtsforschung
Universitaet Wien
Dr.Karl-Lueger-Ring 1
A 1010 Wien
Oesterreich
tel.0043/1/42-77/272-16
fax 0043/1/42-77/92-72
email andreas.schwarcz at univie.ac.at


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