[gothic-l] Re: Jordanes and the Scandinavian Eruli

[Troels Brandt <trbrandt@post9.tele.dk>]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh at y...> wrote:
>
> --- "Troels Brandt <trbrandt at p...>"
> <trbrandt at p...> wrote:
> > >  This could even
> > > > be an event
> > > > connected with the escape of Roduulf to the
> > court of
> > > > Theodorich -
> > > > making it very relevant to be mentioned in this
> > way
> > > > and in this
> > > > chapter of Getica - with Roduulf as the source
> > > > before 519 AD.
> > >
> > > GK: Jordanes: "sunt quamquam et horum
> > positura
> > > Grannii, Augandxi, Eunixi, Taetel, Rugi, Arochi,
> > > Rauii, quibus non ante multos annos Roduulf rex
> > fuit,
> > > qui contempto proprio regno ad Theodorici Gothorum
> > > regis gremio convolavit et, ut desiderabat,
> > invenit,
> > > hae itaque gentes, Germanis corpore et animo
> > > grandiores, pugnabant beluina saevitia."  How
> > would
> > > you relate the departure of Roduulf from his
> > kingdom
> > > with the expulsion of the Eruli by the Dani?
> >
> > The scholars do not agree which people he ruled but
> > most of these
> > people have been placed as small groups in the
> > borderareas of the
> > Goetes. ONE possibility is that the Danish attack on
> > the Heruls
> > changed the balance in the region, and made him a
> > looser.
>
> *****GK: I was under the impression that these were
> Western Scandinavian peoples, and that this Roduulf
> ruled somewhere in today's Norway. Has this been
> firmly overturned in favour of an Eastern venue?******

I have never seen any convincing explanations about the localisation
of these small people - especially the people only mentioned once. We
can compare their names with geographical names and we can study the
order they are mentioned. But the Romans did not know how to spell
the names and they did not know the Scandinavian geography. Even
the "wellknown" people as the Rugi (if they are identical with the
southern Rugi), the Gauts and the Svear give us troubles. I am just
reading a new Scandinavian doctoral thesis about Jordanes/Cassiodorus
giving no new answers about this either.

It is surprising that a Nordic king with the same name as the
defeated Herulian king went south to the Goths in the same period as
the defeated Heruls went north to the Gauts in a distant region where
some Heruls or Goths possibly had stayed 50 years earlier and these
Gauts maybe were regarded as ancestors by the Goths and the Heruls
(if they regarded themselves as Goths) - but we have to realise that
everything in this long foggy sentence and the similarity in names
above could be coincidences.

Troels


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