Emigration av Goths

[Wilhelm Otto]

Thanks a lot for all the answers to my question of gothic emigration from
Scandinavia. I have now read Kaliff’s book and have been pondering the
situation. One solution could be to run Heathers argument to the bottom line
and see if it stands firm or has to be adjusted.

 

Kaliff mentions a lot of contacts across the Baltic and takes up some very
interesting issues. But I find Heathers crucial question to be one of
timing. His argument runs as follows:

The Gotho-Gepidan culture was once identifiable on the basis of seven
elements. These were inhumation burial, a lack of weapons in graves, and the
use of stone circles and standing stones in cemeteries, pear shaped metal
pendants, serpent-headed bracelets, S-shaped clasps and a particular type of
pottery decoration, which combines roughening with polishing. (Heather page
14)

This Gotho-Gepidan culture was established both in Scandinavia as well as
south of the Baltic around the Vistula. This is taken to be supporting
Jordane’s history of emigration. But Heather claims that to do so, these
seven elements has to be older in Scandinavia than south of the Baltic. This
puts new demands on dating. Heather says that in the latest decennials a new
and better school has come forward. The argument runs as follows:

The appearance of more-developed types of an object can be reasonably
presumed to be subsequent to simpler, therefore earlier, forms. eaTHERS In
recent years, the systematic analysis of an ever-increasing body of material
has allowed the typologies of a whole series of objects to be defined with
much greater security. But any individual type of brooch or buckle might
have been adapted at different times in different areas, or, indeed, or
deliberately retained as antiques. Dating has come to rely, therefore, not
on individual objects but on groups of them. (Heather page 19)

Using this better system of dating Heather seems to be confident to claim
that all the elements defining the Gotho-Gepidan culture are later in
Scandinavia but one. The stone circles are older in Scandinavia. The
conclusion seems to be that there has been no emigration from Scandinavia to
the Vistula discharge into the Baltic.

 

Kaliff thinks that there has been a few boatloads going south. The
definition of a migration is not clear cut. There may well be old stories of
a few boatloads going south as Jordane’s history says. They do not seem to
be as important as to shape the Gothic culture. This raises the question:
What is the criterion for an emigration? 

This is at least a start.

Wilhelm

 

 

 

 

 

 

hE


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