DARK AGES KINGDOM OF THE GOTHS

DURING DARK AGES AFTER THE FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE
THE  KINGDOM OF THE GOTHS









The Goths were BARBARIANS during the Migration Period, which  in the third century in the areas SETTLED north of the Black Sea between the rivers Danube and Don. Except for frequent raids they invaded the Roman Empire first time in 268 AD, and later in 376 AD. The Western Goths settled a few years in the Garonne valley in France, until they conquered a kingdom, which included Spain and the South of France. In France they were displaced by the Franks after a few years, and Spain was in 711 AD conquered by Muslim invaders - but the Goths descendants took the country back in the Middle Ages. The Eastern Goths established a thriving kingdom in Italy, but after only 67 years, they were defeated by armies sent by the emperor in Constantinople




         When the first Goths arrived at the northern coast of the Black Sea about 170 AD, the climate was still influenced by the Roman Warm Period, which, however, ended about 400 AD. The Vandals crossed the frozen Rhine new year's eve 406 AD, thus commencing the Migration time and heralding the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. The fact that the Rhine was frozen, testifies to a rather cold climate. I do not recall the Rhine has been frozen in modern times. From then on, until the disaster at Guadalete in Spain in 711 AD, when the Western Goths were defeated by invading Muslims, the climate was cold with snowy winters in northern and central Europe.     

             Goths can be traced further back in history to today's northern Poland, and even in the distant past to their origins in Scandinavia and the Baltic area. Thus Jutland through thousand years was called Gotland.         

              Paul the Deacon tells about how the Langobards migrated from their original island in the ocean: "Now when the people living there had multiplied to such a number that they could no longer live together, they divided, it is told, their whole people into three parts and decided by casting lots, which of those, who were to leave the homeland and seek new places of residence." Dudo confirmed many years later that it was a traditional way of solving problems of overpopulation in Scandinavia      

           the Gotland Gute Saga says that some of the people were taken for emigration by casting lot: "After a long time the people were so increased that the country was not able to feed them all. So the land was distributed, on which every third tilled, each of these were allowed to keep and bring and take away everything, which he in his life had acquired."        

           Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) wrote: "Pytheas says that the Gutones, a people of Germania, inhabits the shores of an æstuary of the Ocean called Mentonomon, their territory extending a distance of six thousand stadia; that, at one day's sail from this territory, is the Isle of Abalus, upon the shores of which, amber is thrown up by the waves in spring, it being an excretion of the sea in a concrete form; as, also, that the inhabitants use this amber by way of fuel, and sell it to their neighbours, the Teutones."         

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