[gothic-l] Re: Goths and Scandinavia

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "finnestorp" <martin.skoglund at s...> 
wrote:
> The connection between Goths, Götar and Gutar can not be decided by 
> historians. 



These are names - ethnonyms! Only historians and philologists can 
decide on a connection between ethnic groups, because artefacts don't 
usually carry names. Archaeologists can tell us which material 
cultures had contacts, moved to which places or took influences from 
which other cultures. But they cannot say that Goths and Goetar and 
Gutar have anything to do with each other. 

Hence, this problem was studied by historians and philologists mostly 
and the latest work in this line is A. S. Christensen's book on 
Jordanes and Cassiodorus, and Christensen showed that Gutar/Goetar 
and Gothi have basically nothing in common, thus confirming the 
archaeological evidence regarding the respective material cultures 
involved.

Francisc said a few important things in an earlier message. There are 
always those people who want to connect themselves, their country 
their people their history to the glorious past of a seemingly heroic 
people like the Goths. Hence, we had Scandinavians for centuries 
claiming that they are the Goths or that they are decendents of the 
Goths or at least that the Goths are Scandinavians. Some people even 
said that the Goths were the brethren or kinsmen of the 
Scandinavians. And now we have even some Indians making similar 
claims. All of this is wrong and a distortion of history. It 
completely disregards what we know about ethnic dynamics in those 
periods. 

The actual ethnic people of the Gothi was created just north of the 
Black Sea sometime around 200AD. The most eminent scholars like 
Wolfram, Schwarcs, Heather, Pohl, Goffart and others would all agree 
on this. The history of the Goths is a fractured history consisting 
of multipe ethnogeneses. The straight migration lines of old text 
books are a thing of the past. The ethnogenesis at the Black Sea 
involved various groups, of which the Germanic component was clearly 
the most dominante. We can only assume that the Gotones of the first 
century were involved, but we cannot deduct this from the Getica. 
Instead, we must use archaeology and first/second century 
historiography to presume this link. 

This ethnogenesis took place in a geographical region which was bound 
to the Germania proper for centuries, by trade links etc. as A. 
Kaliff and others have shown. Other Germanic groups, like the Sciri 
and Basternae had also moved from the Oder river to the lower Danube 
along the same routes which people had used for centuries as finds 
like the Vedersfelder fish show. Clearly, Scandinavia was certainly a 
part of this trade and exchange nexus. Groups of Scandinavians will 
at practically all times have settled on the continent, and 
archaeological evidence seems to point to a movement of 
Scandinavians, especially from the broad aread Funen to the Black 
Sea, which may be linked to the movement of Heruls from 200AD.

However, all this is different from claims that the Goths were 
Scandinavians, that the Goths had come from Scandinavia etc. The 
Goths emerged only aroud 200AD in an area far removed from 
Scandinavia. The material culture on which their ethnogenesis was 
based has never been in Scandinavia or derived from Scandinavia (let 
alone India, but his goes without saying). Their Germanic language 
was not closer to North Germanic than to any other Germanic dialect. 
Tracing a Gothic history to the Vistula is already questionable, as 
Christensen has demonstrated, but trying to push their history back 
to the period BC is simply not permissable. 


Cheers,
Dirk 







Having spoken to leading Swedish archeologists and some 
> polish i belive that this short summary from Kaliff gives you an 
> indication on where science stand in this issue today. Kaliff, 
> Anders. 2001. Gothic Connections. Contacts between eastern 
> Scandinavia and the southern Baltic coast 1000 BC – 500 AD. 
> Occational Papers in Archaeology 26. Uppsala.
> Different finds from archaeological investigations in eastern 
Sweden 
> show evidence of close contacts with the Baltic coastal area on the 
> continent, and further towards the south-east. This is visible in 
the 
> find material from the Bronze Age onwards. Swedish rescue 
excavations 
> in the past few years have contributed with material for the study 
of 
> such contacts. From the Bronze Age onwards, there are signs of 
> contacts between eastern Sweden and areas in modern Poland and 
> eastern Germany and also with areas in the Baltic states. This is 
> evident in material from several sites in eastern Sweden. Pottery 
as 
> well as special house types and graves show contacts with the 
> Lusatian culture, but also with more distant areas. These cultural 
> elements fit well into a pattern of long-distance cultural contacts 
> during the Bronze Age, probably maintained by an élite in society. 
> These contact routes across the Baltic sea seem to have continued 
in 
> a similar way during the Early Iron Age. During this period, some 
> grave structures and objects demonstrate cultural contacts between 
> Scandinavia and the Wielbark culture in Poland. Such finds have 
> traditionally been connected with Jordanes´ Getica, and its account 
> of a migration of Gothic people from Scandinavia. In modern 
research, 
> the theory of a massive migration has generally been abandoned. The 
> Wielbark culture is generally believed to have developed from 
earlier 
> cultures in the same area. Research of recent years have more often 
> focused on questions regarding a Gothic identification with a 
Nordic 
> origin, as possibly invented during the 4th century or as a genuine 
> tradition in the form of a myth. However, this does not explain 
> archaeological evidence for contacts during earlier periods. A 
> reasonable explanation for similarities in the material cultures 
can 
> be that they are products of long-term contacts, perhaps 
originating 
> in connections between the Lusatian culture and other urnfield 
groups 
> on the continent and eastern Scandinavia already during the Late 
> Bronze Age – Early Iron Age. Regular contacts between high ranking 
> groups in different geographic areas could eventually have 
developed 
> into a close relationship between certain groups of the Wielbark 
> culture and groups of people in Scandinavia, visible in 
similarities 
> in material culture, language and burial customs. The 
archaeological 
> record could indicate that Jordanes´ history concerning the origin 
of 
> the Goths was based on an oral tradition with some sort of real 
> background.


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