[gothic-l] Re:Gothic religious ancestry

Sat Mar 16 00:50:23 UTC 2002

Okej dear Dirk,

It is evident you do not understand what I wrote. I intended to say that
the Gothic tribes in the present Scandinavian countries seem to have
began  to form about 500 BC breaking loose from a former cultic league.
This is all a hypothes NB. From the beginning, according to the
hypothese, Gaut was regarded as kind of divine origin for the people.
Later on the chieftains started to claim that their families had direct
ancestry from Gaut as a motivation for power in opposition to the former
chiefs claiming to be the reborn sungod.It all deals with motivating
political and sacral power. There was originally not a common burial
custom and never became. Emigration of small groups to the continent
from both  the mainland and Gotland are possible to indicate with a
certain probability from about 350 BC but, as I wrote, just small
groups. These groups may have been part of the cultures in
Wiechsel/Vistula area but have not dominated the neigbouring folks.Their
burial customs can be flat-ground graves with  'Urnenbrandgruben?or
'Brandgruben' like the Western but they also often have stone-deckings
and other constructions above ground. The Western graves are uniformly
flat-ground graves with nothing to see above earth. The Eastern graves
may contain weapons but the  Western never. The Western female graves
are in contrast to the males equipped with grave gifts and even knives
are included. The male almost never contain gifts and never weapons. I
connect this habit with the cultic warrior leauges whose members were
symbolically killed and then supposed to be living dead. Accordingly a
dead warrior was already dead and another just took his place. The body
did not matter. Females however died 'for real' and hence were honoured
with gifts. It is also probable  the weapons were needed for the dead
warriors successor or that weapons just were nessecary for the living
being expensive. It is not before about 200 AD or later that weapon
graves start occuring in number up here. The grave fields I talk about
ceased about 100-80 BC and start appearing in the Vistula area during
the 1th c. AD. Other fields up here were not ended but continued for
still a couple of hundred years till the weapon graves arrive. Your
statement the Ocsywie culture had exported  weapon-graves to us is
accordingly wrong. It all fits quite good with the new habit in
Wielbark. If later they switched to  inhumation is of no importance
since the graves still had no weapons. As I also stated before the
pottery in the flat-ground graves in both Östergötland and West
Scandinavia is remarkably like the pottery in the flat ground Weichsel
graves from the 1th century if  not quite identical. It is important to
note also that before that, the pottery in the Weichsel area was of a
much higher standard and it is now replaced by a cheaper kind. I am also
aware of a later Gotlandic connection and also of Okulics seeing
Scandinavians in the Elblag diggings in his zone C, and even earlier in
his zone B on both sides of the Vistula/Weichsel in e.g. Odry, Wesiory,
Grzybnica and close to Chelmno at Bledowo and in Trzebcz Szlachecki.

I still mean the new impetus around BC creating a uniform burial custom
among the Wielbark peoples originate from ideas  starting in
Scandinavia. I know you will disagree, of course, but I see no reason to
change my mind about that. Archaeology alone can not say with certainty
if or if not this is true. It depends among other things on the methods
and theories applied by the archaeologists. One generation almost  ever
as a standard dislike the former generations methods. The cultural
archaeology right now is out, but it does not mean those  older
archaeologists were totally wrong in everything. I try to evaluate
archaeologists from all generations and to that I add history,
lingvistics  and history of religion et c. But please understand that I
never talk about a great number of humans having performed one or
several mass-emigrations. Just small groups and the one that made the
most impact around BC might just have been an influential chieftain with
his followers spreading the new ideas and possibly achieving a high
leading position. That we may perhaps never know. Ablabius story
connecting Goths with Scandinavia can in any case not be disregarded
only because of some modern archaeologists not being able to confirm it.
All the peoples in Southern and South-Western Scandinavia (including
Jutland and Gotland)and possibly also in parts of the Southern and
definitely Southeast coast of the Baltic were Goths - id est Gothic
peoples. The stone circles you refer to date in Scandinavia to Pre-Roman
and Roman Iron Age and are confirmed from at least the 3rd c. BC.
Interestingly enough they start in Southwest Norway and go across
Gautland  diagonally over Sweden and Öland and straight over the Baltic
till the Vistula area. In Denmark they start at Bornholm and continue
between Oder and Elbe. In all these areas I have also the higest
concentration of Ring Names showing also a connection between Goths and
Burgundians. See my article in Migracijske Teme. I am well aware of
Kmiecinskis measuring of scullbones in the Polish stone circles, and
that is one of the reasons I claim that Goths have not a biological
ethnicity but a religious, meaning they claim ancestry for the people
and for their chieftains from the god Gaut.

I have developed this in detail in my book, which you have, and I hope
you can find somebody helping you translate it and I also hope to find a
publisher that it can be printed in English. Till then I can not rewrite
the whole book on the net. I will make no more effort to convince you
and will not have that much time to attend to lists either, because I am
working on a paper in Nordic history from the Viking Age that I will
lecture on later this year.

With the very best greetings
Ingemar

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