[gothic-l] Goths in the Crimea

[george knysh]

Mahomedov devotes but one page to this group (actually
a few successive groups), and as far as I can see,
relies on the work of Pioro, Kazanski, Ajbabin, and
Toporov. Basically the first truly permanent and
significant Gothic settlements here date from the time
of the Huns. The last Gothic prince (Alexander) was
taken to Istanbul by the Turks after the fall of his
capital Mangup in 1475, but as mentioned earlier on
this list, the Gothic language survived in the
peninsula for a couple more centuries.== Lo and behold
there are some points about ... the Eruli! Basing
himself on Kazanski, Mahomedov states (p.117):
"cremations found on the south shores of the Crimea at
Ai-Todor and Chatyr-Dag have Scandinavian traits,
stone constructions, weaponry and scythes in the
inventory. It cannot be ruled out that these were left
by the Eruli who quitted Jutland in the mid-3rd c."
And referring to the Russian linguist Toporov,
Mahomedov adds (perhaps somewhat controversially):
"One might mention the opinion of linguists that the
ancestors of the Crimean Goths were a distinct
"Gothic" group while still in Scandinavia, that they
[the Crimean Goths] were constituted by the mixing of
Goths and Eruli, so that their language would have had
Erulian traits." Mahomedov obviously knows the current
theories about Gothic ethnogenesis in northern Poland,
but he does not reject the contribution of
Scandinavians to this process, and their continuing
contributions to the further evolution of the Gothic
ethnos further south.

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