placeholder
The Goths were an East Germanic people whose origin tradition (Jordanes) places in Scandza – the north. From the lower Vistula they moved in the 2nd/3rd century to the Black Sea and split into Visigoths and Ostrogoths.
In the 4th century Bishop Wulfila translated the Bible into Gothic and created a script for it. The Codex Argenteus (the "Silver Bible", today in Uppsala) is the oldest extensive language monument of any Germanic tongue – a treasure of the first rank.
In AD 410 the Visigoth Alaric sacked Rome – a shock to the ancient world. The Visigoths founded a kingdom in Spain, the Ostrogoths under Theoderic one in Italy. Thus a migrating people became at once the heirs and destroyers of Rome.
"From this island of Scandza … the Goths are said once to have set out."after Jordanes, Getica (public domain, own translation)
The Goths belong to the great East Germanic wandering peoples – like the Heruli and Rugii. Continue with them.
The Heruli · The Rugii · The Lombards · The Marcomanni · Germanic Religion.
All History & Finds articles →
In 865 an army landed in England that did not want to raid and sail home, but to stay: the „Great Heathen Army". Two …
Read more →The name says it all: Gudme means „home of the gods". On the Danish island of Funen lay one of the richest cult and …
Read more →They are so small and so thin that you can barely hold one without creasing it: the guldgubber, “gold men,” tiny …
Read more →In 1891 peat-cutters in a bog near Gundestrup in Jutland struck something metallic: a dismantled cauldron of pure …
Read more →