The village Gothic it is intimately related to the history of Europe and also of the Iberian Peninsula. They first channeled the Roman crisis during the fall of rome, but they will also face the Byzantine Empire after the fall of the West. The division between ostrogoths Y visigoths will cause different kingdoms to be established in Europe, one in Hispaniathe other in Italy.
The Godos kings, we all know the typical story that our grandparents have told us at some time about the memory challenge that their teachers made them pass during their brief period of schooling. They all had to memorize the long list of Gothic kings who once ruled the Visigothic kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula. Well, this town, which ruled from the center of the Iberian Peninsula, has a certainly curious and distant origin.
The Goths, a people of Germanic origin, who dominated the territory between the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Rhine and Don Rivers. As you can see a town of a large land area. That is why I must point out that it is difficult to pinpoint its exact origin and we can only conjecture. It is true that most historians agree or at least share the origin hypothesis that they come from Götaland. But, before developing hypotheses or presupposing the origin of this people, let’s talk about the importance of the Goths and why it is important to know their birth.
The Goths were a “Barbarian” people, that is, what the Romans understood as foreigners and uncivilized. They shook the foundations of Rome and walked like Peter through his house throughout the Roman Empire, even sacking Rome itself. They were one of the causes of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, although coincidentally they also promoted the Romanesque culture in the territories that settled, it is likely that due to their low number, the cultural assimilation of the majority of the population was easier. They were also Christians, although from the branch of Arianism, and they spread Christianity throughout the occupied areas.
As I have said before, this town comes from what would be the current Romania, Poland and Belarus where two towns of the same origin but completely different were forged. On one side we have the Ostrogoths and on the other the Visigoths. First the Visigoths; a town that ruled the Iberian Peninsula from the center of it, from present-day Toledo. While the Ostrogoths ruled in Dacia and later formed the Ostrogothic kingdom of the Italian peninsula, which with the passing of time returned to the ancestral union between Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Goths became a single people again under the reign of Thedoric the great.
Well before all the comings and goings, these peoples must have had an origin and did not magically appear in the middle of the Danube plains. According to academic history the Goths come from a much earlier people in southern Sweden, a territory known as Götaland. Although for some historians the origin is much closer to the Ostrogothic and Visigothic settlements. They believe that the Goths are the alliance between two peoples who were settled on both sides of the Danube, the Tervingi and the Greutungi. Already in 291 AD Claudio Mamertino speaks of the alliance between two peoples, Tervingi pars alia Gothorum, who joined forces to face the Vandal people. Although technically these two hypotheses are valid and even continued one from the other. Well, back in the second century AD, the entire area of present-day Poland received large groups of populations. Jordanes, the Byzantine historian, comments that they came from an island in a region called Scandza, but it is believed that it would be the southern region of Sweden known as Götaland.
Therefore we have two basic ideas, one that they came from the south of Sweden and probably migrated due to inclement weather to much more benevolent places and therefore settled throughout the area of the Danube plains and another that this town ended up separating into two because of a geographical situation that would later cause each of these two peoples to take different territories of Europe.
Bibliography
Sanz Serrano, R. (2009). History of the Goths. Madrid: The sphere of books.