[gothic-l] Re: Goths and Scandinavia

[faltin2001]

Hi Ingemar,

I read the recent posts with some concern about the standard to which 
this list is sinking (not yours, but I address this to you since I 
know you as a resonable person). There are people actually implying 
that continental scholars have 'hidden agendas' or are not expert 
enough on Scandinavia to be able to assess the problem of the origin 
of the Goths. 

Nobody in his right mind, can deny that people like V. Bierbrauer, 
Wolgakiewycs, K. Godlowski, A. Schwarcz, W. Pohl, H. Wolfram, P. 
Heather and others are (or in some cases were) 'the' leading experts 
on the Goths. Their research encompassed all available sources, 
primary and secondary. To suggest that there are  Scandinavian 
sources and 'secret' evidence to which only Scandinavian scholars 
have access is complete and utter non-sense (as you no doubt know). 
The above scholars have (to varyings degrees) shown (with ample 
evidence) that an Scandinavian origin of the Goths is not likely.  In 
purely scholarly terms, the burden of proof for a Scandinavian origin 
of the Goths has now shifted to those who still uphold those claims. 

I warmly recommend to you the latest book by Walter Pohl (Die 
Voelkerwanderung: Eroberung und Integration), Kohlhammer Verlag 2002. 
Pohl summarises the status quo of the research on this question and 
thus illustrated that a consensus of leading experts now rejects the 
theory of a Scandinavian origin of the Goths.



Below are some comments to your text:



--- In gothic-l at y..., Ingemar Nordgren <ingemar.nordgren at e...> wrote:
> 
> There has been some negative comments concerning connections Goths 
and 
> Scandinavia as answers to Al. In some cases Al evidently has 
> misunderstood the Goths activities, indeed, but there still remains 
a 
> lot of Scandinavian  traces. You simply can not regard the 
Scandinavian 
> hypothesis as obsolete even if some new Anglo Saxon and German 
books 
> claim that. 




Then you will have to provide the evidence for that and show that the 
volumes of evidence against a Scandinavian origin of the Goths are 
wrong.




Bertil has pointed out other alternatives ( I am not 
> referring to Musset) and I could add my own doctoral thesis from 
1999, 
> as revised book 2000, "The Well Spring of the Goths", still only in 
> Swedish,sorry to say, and also the Swedish archaeologist docent 
Anders 
> Kaliff with his Gothic Connections. Professor Erik Nylén of Gotland 
has 
> also written a lot about Scandinavian/Gotlandic Goths and even 
Hachmann 
> has agreed the Nordic peoples are Goths - not only the Vistula 
Goths. 



Hachmann wrote in the 1960s and could hardly belief his findings, 
when the evidence pointed away from a Scandinavian origin of the 
Goths. He therefore used a very careful language. 

Nowadays' we know that there was not one Gothic tribe, which moved 
through history in a single line, but many different Gothic 
ethnogeneses. The Goths of the south Russian steppe will likely have 
been a very different people from those at the Baltic coast. The 
various Balkan and Danubian Gothic groups were again very different 
groups, often comprising people who where not even of Germanic 
origin.  By far not all Goths followed Theoderich to Italy, instead 
he was accompanied by Alans, Rugians, Taifalians and probably many 
others who participated in yet another Gothic ethnogenesis.










> Yurij Knysch also had some good arguments for a Nordic connection. 
> Herwig Wolfram also sees the connection. 


But Wolfram regards this only as a tradition, not an actual migration 
of a people or tribe.





Another question is, of course, 
> if the Goths are a single folk or a number of different peoples as 
I 
> claim. 


Here we agree. If you read recent archaeological interpretations it 
becomes clear that a tribal identity meant much less than a social 
identity. The things that seem to define a 5th century Goths are in 
reality blurred. For example, many Romans were also Arians, even the 
head of the Arian church was a Roman and Theodric's mother was a 
Catholic. Being a Goth meant bearing weapons, and many whom we would 
identify now as Goth were perhaps Roman provincials or Alanic 
tribesmen.




I could not resist jumping into the debate but I have no time to 
>   continue now because I am still working on a paper  and   being 
busy 
> arranging the preparations for parttaking in an international 
conference 
> about Icelandic Sagas. I wish everybody a good summer already now 
> because I will just pop up now and then. 


A good summer to you too

Dirk


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