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vary, not available in all

1:01

states or situations. This is

1:03

Jen. And Jenny! From Ancient

1:05

History Fan Girl, and we're

1:07

here to tell you about

1:09

Jenny's scorching historical romanticity based

1:11

on Alaric of the Visigoths,

1:13

enemy of my dreams. Amanda

1:15

Boucher, best-selling author of the

1:17

Kingmaker Chronicle, says... Quote, this

1:19

book has everything, high stakes

1:21

action, grit, ferocity, and blazing

1:23

passion. Julia and Alaric are

1:26

colliding storms against a backdrop

1:28

of the brutal dangers of

1:30

ancient Rome. They'll do anything to

1:32

carve their peace out of this

1:34

treacherous world and not just survive,

1:36

but rule. Enemy of my dreams

1:39

is available wherever books are sold.

1:41

So from the vagina of nations,

1:43

the gods burst forth. Born

1:58

ready, give me the God.

2:00

I've got a fever of

2:02

gothic needs because I'm bone

2:04

ready. I'm Jenny Williamson. And

2:06

I'm singing about the Goths.

2:09

I mean Jen Mcmeny. And

2:11

this is ancient history fan

2:13

girl. What the fuck are

2:15

we doing addition? Oh

2:17

my goodness. This is we're finally

2:19

going to talk about all the

2:21

things. in the epic excruciating detail

2:24

that I have been experiencing them

2:26

in for the past eight years,

2:28

ten years, I believe, I believe

2:30

it's ten years, of knowing Jenny

2:32

and knowing about her obsession with

2:35

Alaric the Visigoths and this epic

2:37

book, books now that she's been

2:39

writing. So basically what happened was,

2:42

okay, I'm gonna justify myself here.

2:44

You don't need to justify yourself,

2:46

like it's exciting. You have a... We

2:48

all have our Roman Empire and yours just

2:51

so happens to be Alaric of the Visigoths

2:53

in the migration era. It's kind of hot.

2:55

Well mine happens to be the Roman

2:57

Empire during the migration era which includes the

2:59

Goths. My Roman Empire is the Roman Empire

3:02

as a matter of fact. But anyway I

3:04

am gonna, okay so you guys, so what

3:06

happened was that Jen, as we were

3:08

discussing things that we could do on the

3:10

podcast, you know, relative to the book coming

3:13

out, Jen was like why don't you, you,

3:15

you know. triangulate the goths like you did

3:17

with the gals and the pix and the

3:19

Scythians like why don't you just do that

3:21

and I was just like why don't I

3:24

just triangulate the goths why why and then

3:26

I went and cried and then I wrote

3:28

a lot of episodes about the goths because it turns

3:30

out that it's actually a lot more good than that.

3:32

And then I regretted asking her to do it and

3:34

then I was like, oh, this is like that time

3:36

I was like, I'll just do that one episode on

3:38

the Thrations and then proceeded to do three or four?

3:40

It's even worse than that Jen, because how many how

3:43

many episodes have I done on the Goths so far? Like

3:45

10 and I'm still going as of this recording. Sure, but

3:47

you're also writing a book and set in this like time

3:49

period, you're real steep in it, you're real steeped in it,

3:51

I just because I just because I just because I just

3:53

because I just because I was, just because I was, just

3:55

because I was, just because I was, just because I was,

3:57

just because I was, like I was, like, like, like, like,

3:59

like, The Sparta's arc was supposed to be

4:01

two episodes on the rebellion and it turned

4:03

out to be an entire season that I

4:06

carried most of it. So I was like,

4:08

but you need to know about all

4:10

the Thracian gods. Bendis is Bendis. I

4:12

have been avoiding triangulating the Goths for

4:14

a very long time on this podcast.

4:16

You may have noticed that I did

4:18

episodes on Alaric and Galliplicidia and Anoria

4:20

and Attila and then kind of didn't.

4:23

for a long time because I knew

4:25

it was just this really big giant

4:27

historical tangle and it would be really

4:29

hard to sort of pick through that. And

4:32

I kind of didn't want to do it

4:34

at that moment because I have been

4:36

reading about the gods and researching the

4:38

gods and trying to figure out what

4:40

they were doing and when at various

4:42

times to give my book, you know,

4:44

a kind of, you know, teensy patina

4:46

of historical accuracy for eight long years.

4:48

See, because I know, because I have peaked

4:51

into the rabbit hole, I knew what was down

4:53

there. The problems are myriad, and

4:55

one of them is that while we

4:57

have reams and reams and reams and

4:59

reams and reams of military history, mostly

5:01

about what battles were fought and when,

5:03

and all from the Roman enemy outsider-colonizer

5:06

perspective, we do not have a

5:08

lot of information by the Goths

5:10

themselves about who they were and

5:13

what their culture was like, except

5:15

for later sources who were culturally

5:17

Romanized. But we actually do have quite a bit

5:19

more than I would think. You just kind of

5:21

have to know where to look for it. And

5:23

you will see what I'm talking about. But anyway,

5:26

looking at the giant pile of history

5:28

was just so overwhelming to me that

5:30

eventually I just threw up my hands

5:32

and decided that fine, in my book

5:34

they're all just Proto-vikings and we're moving

5:36

on. So that's not exactly historically accurate,

5:38

but it's not inaccurate either. And I

5:41

went along that way writing a whole

5:43

book and starting a podcast based on

5:45

initial episodes, written on the lives of

5:47

key players of the migration era that

5:50

I was writing in, which would be

5:52

Atolf, Alaric, Galla Placidia, Anoria, Atila, the

5:54

Hun. And I started with that

5:56

sort of baseline knowledge, and it did carry

5:59

me a long way. Because it isn't,

6:01

you'll see how inaccurate or accurate it

6:03

is. You can go a long way

6:05

thinking Proto-Vikings, right? Yeah, I mean, as

6:08

being someone who is being educated at

6:10

the same time as you listeners in some

6:12

of this stuff, you can. And it's not

6:14

100% wrong. It's also not right either.

6:16

Like, it's a little more complicated. What

6:19

it does is it gives you a

6:21

patina of verisimilitude. I know you love

6:23

it when I say that word. Oh,

6:25

listener, she's saying verisimilitude. I mean, this

6:28

is definitely on our bingo card. Drink

6:30

every time you hear it, whatever you're

6:32

drinking. Hopefully, water, because we all need

6:35

to drink more water. Hopefully booze,

6:37

okay, because we all need booze to

6:39

get us through the end times. So,

6:41

the reality is that the Goths were

6:43

a hugely important group of people in

6:46

the ancient world, but untangling who they

6:48

were is difficult. You know, the work

6:50

that Jenny did is really work that's

6:52

worth doing, because the Goths were

6:55

important. They stormed the border of

6:57

Rome en masse, scored outsized victories,

6:59

that no one had won before,

7:01

killed two emperors, and raised up their

7:03

own, sacked the city of Rome

7:06

after a thousand inviolable years,

7:08

established their own kingdoms within

7:10

the decaying corpse of Rome, like

7:12

hagfish, colonizing a whale carcass. And

7:14

that is definitely a sentence genuine,

7:17

which I would never think of

7:19

that. It's fantastic. Yeah, that's a

7:22

patented Jenny Williamson extremely random

7:24

simile. A Jay, a Jay

7:26

Willie special. The Goths had

7:29

their own mythology, their own

7:31

language, their own literature, their

7:33

own literature, their own version

7:35

of Christianity. Their name has

7:38

inspired the names of architecture,

7:40

literature, and fashion into modern

7:42

day and you know, vampires. So

7:44

whenever you set the date of the

7:47

fall of Rome. There's no question

7:49

the Goths were instrumental in

7:51

felling it. So who were these people? Who

7:54

were the Goths? Who were the Goths? And

7:56

where did they come from? While the Goths

7:58

are generally under... today to

8:00

be a Germanic people, modern historians

8:02

today debate if Germanic was even

8:04

a thing in the ancient world

8:06

in terms of a culturally consistent

8:08

group of people allied in some

8:10

common political, you know, alliance or

8:12

cause or something. It's kind of

8:14

like the galls and the Celts,

8:17

right? And even if you can

8:19

say Germanic existed as a concept,

8:21

how closely Goth can be tracked

8:23

to Germanic is also debatable. The Romans

8:25

and Greeks themselves never

8:27

referred to the Goths as Germanic.

8:30

They did, however, use the

8:32

word Goth to refer to

8:34

any sort of wild, untamed,

8:37

non-Romanized, barbarian peoples early on,

8:39

before peoples known as the

8:41

Goths formed. Early on, they used

8:43

the word Goths interchangeably with Scythians.

8:46

So you see a lot of

8:48

reference to Scythians in their earlier

8:50

records when what they mean is

8:52

Goths, would have been part of

8:55

the groups referred to as the

8:57

Goths in the ancient world or

8:59

not. Interestingly, according to the Goths'

9:01

own understanding of themselves, they may

9:04

in fact have been Scandinavian. It

9:06

turns out that the Goths did

9:08

have an origin story that they

9:10

told themselves as told by a

9:13

guy named Jordains. Jordains was

9:15

a mid-level government bureaucrat in

9:17

the Eastern Roman Empire in the

9:19

500s 80. At some point, he

9:21

was the secretary of a man

9:23

called... Guthangus Baza? Guthangus Baza. Like

9:25

the Goths had really great names

9:27

sometimes. They did have great names.

9:30

I'm going to name somebody that

9:32

in a book sometime. Just you

9:34

wait. The Thangus Baza, excellent name,

9:36

was the Magister Militum, a top-level

9:38

military title in the Roman

9:41

system in the Ostrogothic Kingdom

9:43

of Italy and a member

9:45

of the Amali dynastic ruling

9:47

family. And don't worry, Jenny is

9:49

going to tell us all about this in

9:51

due time. You're gonna wish I would shut

9:53

up about it by the end of this, let

9:55

me tell you what. Anyway, these people, I'm just

9:58

gonna tell you right now, they were all... Goths.

10:00

Jordanes was a goth. His

10:02

boss was a goth. His

10:04

kingdom were all goths. His

10:06

emperor was a goth. Everyone

10:08

was goths. Goths all the

10:10

way down. Goths all the

10:12

way down. Goths all the

10:14

way down. But they were

10:17

also heavily Romanized, Christianized goths,

10:19

ruling the Italian peninsula. And

10:21

they arguably considered themselves as

10:23

the real Romans now. Anyway,

10:25

Jordan's was the secretary to

10:27

the top military commander of

10:29

a prominent Gothic group that ruled

10:31

the Western Roman Empire at this point.

10:34

He was also a Christian, as most Goths

10:36

were by now. And there is a lot

10:38

of God talk in his work, if it

10:40

be the Lord's Will, you get a lot

10:43

of that? Yeah, I mean, that's pretty

10:45

standard for his time period as well,

10:47

right, with the rise of Christianity. I

10:49

mean, that's going to be standard in

10:51

a lot of writings for a long

10:54

time now. The Gettica, or The Origins

10:56

and Deeds of the Goths, roughly

10:58

around 551 AD, about 140 years

11:01

after Alaric sacked Rome. This work

11:03

is supposed to be only a summary

11:05

of a much longer multi-book

11:07

history of the Goths written

11:09

by a statesman called Cassiodorus

11:11

in the 520s AD, which

11:14

is now lost. In reality,

11:16

the Gettica probably doesn't follow

11:18

Cassiodorus' text very

11:20

closely. To ordaines himself

11:22

complains in his introduction that he has

11:25

no access to his books, that I

11:27

may follow his thought. He tells us

11:29

that someone lent him copies of

11:31

Casiodor's works, but only for three

11:33

days. And honestly, it takes me so long

11:35

to read things. I could not read all

11:37

of those works in three days. Jordan says

11:39

that he wrote the getica at the

11:42

request of an unnamed friend and described

11:44

it as quote, truly a hard command

11:46

and imposed by one who seems unwilling

11:48

to realize the burden of the task,

11:51

unquote. So somebody in his life asked

11:53

him to triangulate the gods. And he

11:55

was salty just like Jenny and was

11:57

like, excuse me, do you understand?

12:00

asking me to do and then proceeded to

12:02

do it and complain about it the whole

12:04

time. Oh wait, it's been going on since

12:06

the 500s AD. There has been some

12:08

speculation that friend who asked Jordain's to

12:10

triangulate the goss was Jen. We just

12:13

did it. We just speculated right now.

12:15

Absolutely. Listen, we all know I commune

12:17

with the past, so wouldn't surprise me.

12:19

A wizard did it. Or... Another candidate

12:22

is Totila, the last king of the

12:24

Ostrogats, who also has a pretty bitch

12:26

in name and who ruled at the

12:28

time. Although ruled is kind of a

12:30

little bit loosely defined here, they were

12:32

kind of in a civil war, I

12:34

guess you could say, some kind of

12:36

a war. They were in a war.

12:38

Or that the work the Gedika was

12:40

based on, like I said by Cassiadorus,

12:43

served the same purpose, that this was

12:45

an act of imperial myth-making in order

12:47

to establish the Ostrogothi kings, the Amalai,

12:49

and, um, Theodoric's family specifically, Theodoric, the

12:51

great, would have been the king and

12:53

Cassiadorus' time, to establish his family specifically,

12:55

as having an exalted history. I mean,

12:57

the Trojan war even shows up, and

12:59

when the Trojan war shows up, you

13:01

can be pretty sure, you can be

13:04

pretty sure. that war in some way.

13:06

So the reason I'm telling you all

13:08

this is so that you'll keep in

13:10

mind that this document may not be

13:12

intended as historical fact. To add to

13:14

all the potential imperialist myth making going

13:16

on here, Jordan's himself admits he doesn't

13:18

actually remember the words of Cassiadores' text

13:20

that well. His introduction is wild. He

13:23

just discredits himself right and left. However,

13:25

some historians believe he was relying heavily

13:27

on Gothic folk tales and oral histories

13:30

that are preserved nowhere else so we

13:32

cannot entirely discredit that. Yeah, which

13:34

is probably true. On the other hand, there is a

13:36

lot in the getica that is just

13:39

flat-out fantasy. For instance, Jardine's

13:41

names Zamoxis, a Thracian

13:43

demigod from Herodotus' histories, as

13:45

one of the Goths' ancestral kings.

13:47

That means, Jenny, that they are

13:49

all descendants of Aries, just telling

13:52

you. The idea that their Thracian

13:54

kills me, you know, they're all

13:56

descendant of these Thracian demigods and

13:58

go back to Troy, but whatever.

14:00

Jordanes tells us that the Goths

14:02

sacked Troy and Ilium, which I

14:04

think sometimes are used interchangeably, but

14:06

I'm not sure. Anyway, he... The

14:09

Goths sacked Troy just after the

14:11

Trojan War. What was left there

14:13

after the war? Who knows? They

14:15

met an Egyptian pharaoh in their

14:17

travels. The Soeses, who was a

14:19

made-up pharaoh, fought a war with

14:22

the Goths, so it was the

14:24

Goths versus the Egyptians. It's quite

14:26

questionable. You should take everything with...

14:28

You know, a giant salt lick,

14:30

but don't lick it because it's

14:32

the ancient world. Don't lick anything

14:35

in the ancient world, just don't.

14:37

Particularly Julia Caesar, no matter how

14:39

much he tries to trick you.

14:41

Oh, don't. He's covered in bacteria.

14:43

He is bacteria. But what Jordanains

14:45

tells us about the origins of

14:48

the Goths has been hotly debated,

14:50

and even maybe cooperated by archaeological

14:52

evidence. Although that is also debated,

14:54

it's so much debating. Anyway, let's

14:56

get into what exactly Jordan's tells

14:58

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Sierra, let's get moving. Yeah, so

16:20

this is the story of the

16:23

origin of the Goths according to

16:25

Jordaines. So the first thing that

16:27

Jordaines tells us, this is the

16:29

first thing I'm going to tell

16:31

you, is that the Goths came

16:33

from an island called Scamsa in

16:36

the far-off snowy north. This is

16:38

from Jordanes. The same mighty sea

16:40

had also in its Arctic region,

16:42

that is in the north, a

16:44

great island named Scanza, from which

16:46

my tale, by God's grace, shall

16:49

take its beginning. For the race

16:51

whose origin you asked to know,

16:53

burst forth like a swarm of

16:55

bees from the midst of this

16:57

island and came into the land

16:59

of Europe. This description is in

17:02

line with what the ancients thought

17:04

of Scandinavia at this time. So

17:06

there are, um... A lot of

17:08

historians who have thought in the

17:10

past that Scanza was Scandinavia. And

17:12

this description is in line with

17:15

what the ancients thought of Scandinavia

17:17

at the time, that it was

17:19

an island, basically, and this island

17:21

had to have been Arctic. Jordan

17:23

tells us that the northern reaches,

17:25

quote, are said to have continual

17:27

light in midsummer for 40 days

17:30

and nights, and who likewise have

17:32

no clear light in the winter

17:34

season for the same number of

17:36

days and nights. I find this

17:38

super fascinating particularly because like when

17:40

I was living in Europe like

17:43

the islands up in that region

17:45

are still quite you know remote

17:47

and If you go visit them

17:49

in the winter, they are really

17:51

beautiful and it is true they

17:53

don't have a lot of light.

17:56

And I'm going to point this

17:58

out when I see them. There

18:00

are certain numbers that as soon

18:02

as I see them based on,

18:04

you know, having grown up indoctrinated

18:06

in a religion. Catholicism, spoiler. But

18:09

the Christian religion has a massive

18:11

influence on our culture, right? But

18:13

there's certain numbers in the Christian

18:15

religion. that are key numbers and

18:17

40 days and 40 nights goes

18:19

back to the great flood myth

18:22

I believe and it also in

18:24

particular goes to the Lent season

18:26

which is 40 days and 40

18:28

nights I believe that's when Jesus

18:30

was wandering in the desert and

18:32

the devil was tempting to him.

18:34

So when I see these numbers

18:37

there are certain ones I'm gonna

18:39

I'm gonna call them out because

18:41

it really helps us understand who

18:43

our sources are and I don't

18:45

know whether this is true or

18:47

not true, like the 40 days

18:50

and 40 nights being light or

18:52

dark, but it definitely has that

18:54

feeling of Christian monks showing, even

18:56

though Jordaines is not a Christian

18:58

monk. That's just our shorthand for

19:00

when something has been Christian washed.

19:03

Yeah, well, there is a Christian

19:05

gloss on this to an extent,

19:07

because Jordaines was a Christian, but

19:09

it's not the same Christian gloss

19:11

you're going to get when it's

19:13

the same agenda, which I find

19:16

really interesting. I don't know why

19:18

the 40 days and 40 nights

19:20

are here, but what it tells

19:22

me is that perhaps he's using

19:24

that phrasing to just make this

19:26

all sound more mythical and grand,

19:29

like an ancient text that you

19:31

might enroll that is telling you

19:33

some kind of an ancient truth.

19:35

Like he's giving it that gloss.

19:37

Yeah, he's giving it the sheen

19:39

of like an older ancient mythology.

19:41

Yeah. So, let's continue. Jordanes continues,

19:44

quote, now, from this land of

19:46

Scamsa, as from a hive of

19:48

races or a womb of nations,

19:50

Latin uses the word vagina, as

19:52

you do. So from the vagina

19:54

of nations, the gods burst forth.

19:57

Where do you think that word

19:59

came from? Like two-thirds of our

20:01

body parts are named for Latin.

20:03

in Latin words. I know, but

20:05

like it's just bad women's anatomy.

20:07

Like the womb and the vagina

20:10

are two different organs. Well, of

20:12

course they are, but you know.

20:14

Continuing this quote, the Goths are

20:16

said to have come forth long

20:18

ago under their king, Bering by

20:20

name. As soon as they disembarked

20:23

from their ships and set foot

20:25

on the land, a straightway gave

20:27

their name to the place. And

20:29

even today, it is said to

20:31

be called, the Scanza. So the

20:33

Goths originated on an island called

20:36

Skansa and crossed over to a

20:38

place called Gothaskansa, but they did

20:40

not stay in Gothoskansa long. From

20:42

there they moved on warring with

20:44

and displacing other tribes from multiple

20:46

generations of kings until coming to

20:49

rest in a place Jordan's calls

20:51

Oeum. The Romans called this place

20:53

Scythia. And this is a quote

20:55

again from Jordanes. In search of

20:57

suitable homes and pleasant places, they

20:59

came to the land of Scythia,

21:01

called Oeum, in that tongue. Here,

21:04

they were delighted by the great

21:06

richness of the country. And, it

21:08

is said, that when half the

21:10

army had been brought over, the

21:12

bridge whereby they had crossed the

21:14

river fell in utter ruin. Nor

21:17

could anyone thereafter pass to or

21:19

fro. for the places said to

21:21

be surrounded by quaking bogs and

21:23

an encircling abyss so that by

21:25

this double obstacle nature has made

21:27

it inaccessible. And even today, one

21:30

may hear in that neighborhood the

21:32

lowing of cattle and may find

21:34

traces of men if we are

21:36

to believe the stories of travelers,

21:38

although we must grant that they

21:40

hear these things from afar, probably

21:43

in the bogs or in the

21:45

abyss, unable to get home. The

21:47

Quaking Bog. For centuries historians and

21:49

gentlemen scholars all agreed that Scanza

21:51

was Scandinavia and Gotha Scanza, where

21:53

the Goths halted for a few

21:56

generations before moving on, was Poland.

21:58

This idea continued more or less

22:00

unchallenged up until the 1800s. or

22:02

so, or after the 1800s, and

22:04

the gods were thought of as

22:06

Proto-Vikings, who split off from the

22:08

same Nordic peoples who became the

22:11

Vikings maybe 2,000 years or so

22:13

before they actually came to be

22:15

called that. And to be fair,

22:17

there are some intriguing similarities between

22:19

Germanic cultures from Roman times and

22:21

the Vikings, such as the fact

22:24

that the Viking god Odin may

22:26

be related to what I've seen

22:28

described as the Germanic god woden,

22:30

although that's actually an old English

22:32

word woden, and scholars now heavily

22:34

debate debate. whether the Goths' chief

22:37

god was the equivalent of Odin

22:39

or not. This is actually based

22:41

on Tacitus' assertion that the Germanic

22:43

people worship Mercury and the scholars

22:45

making superficial connections between Mercury and

22:47

Odin, but I digress on that.

22:50

Yeah, which is fascinating because Mercury

22:52

is quite a trickster god. Odin

22:54

is also a trickster, but they're

22:56

quite different. They're super different, and

22:58

I am going to get into

23:00

the gods, the gods of the

23:03

Goths, and what various gods may

23:05

be, and stuff later. It's coming,

23:07

trust me. Trust me. So there's

23:09

also an intriguing saga from Gotland,

23:11

Sweden's largest island. It sits in

23:13

the Baltic Sea between Sweden and

23:15

Denmark, and the name Gotland has

23:18

been etymologically linked to the name

23:20

of the Goths. The saga in

23:22

question is called the Guttasaga, and

23:24

it tells the story of the

23:26

descendants of three brothers who grew

23:28

so numerous the land could no

23:31

longer support them. So they all

23:33

drew lots, and every third person

23:35

was sent away. Some have pointed

23:37

to parallels between this and Jordan's

23:39

story of migration, which began with

23:41

overpopulation in the home country. Some

23:44

historians today do see Jordan's account

23:46

as more or less accurate. Others

23:48

believe the Goths were more or

23:50

less accurate. Others believe the Goths

23:52

were more likely an indigenous people

23:54

who lived in and around the

23:57

Black Sea in Eastern Europe. Studying

23:59

the Goths and trying to determine

24:01

who they were is a deep

24:03

and winding rabbit hole. And it's

24:05

very hard to triangulate. picked. But

24:07

for Alaric I am going to

24:10

give it a try. And we'll

24:12

see how messy this gets. I

24:14

want to talk about the wild

24:16

bark and churnia-cov cultures. While it

24:18

was first recorded in Greek and

24:20

Roman sources in the 200s AD,

24:23

the name Goths is a Germanic

24:25

word. It comes from the Proto-Germanic

24:27

guttos, or Guttanese, Guttanese, Guttanese. which

24:29

is closely related to two tribal

24:31

names, the Geats of southern Sweden

24:33

and the Goots of Gotland. In

24:35

Greek and Roman sources, they were

24:38

often referred to as the Guttones

24:40

early on. This is before they

24:42

were even called Scythians, indicating people

24:44

who lived in the land of

24:46

the Vistula River, which is in

24:48

Poland, around the hundreds AD. The

24:51

word seems to have meant the

24:53

pours, or those who pour themselves

24:55

out. That's what the word that

24:57

the Goths is related to means,

24:59

like it had that connotation. What

25:01

does it mean exactly that these

25:04

people call themselves the pourers? I

25:06

have seen lots of suggestions from

25:08

an association with an important river,

25:10

the Danube, the nyub, the nyster,

25:12

the vistula, question mark, to the

25:14

concept of Gothic men being seed

25:17

pourers, basically spooging all over the

25:19

landscape? Ew! I don't know. I'm

25:21

serious. I have seen that suggested.

25:23

Meaning they just, they just, like,

25:25

like... tick wives and whatever far

25:27

and wide to like I don't

25:30

know have a lot of children

25:32

all over the place or they's

25:34

spooged everywhere that is what it

25:36

means is this a reference to

25:38

plunder and rape is this a

25:40

reference to just breeding a lot

25:42

like I genuinely do not know

25:45

all right let's get back on

25:47

some sort of track it's already

25:49

gotten messy I'm sorry I have

25:51

totally different view of Alaric now

25:53

there's one takeaway The whole series.

25:55

So one interpretation that might make

25:58

the most sense is the idea

26:00

that the Goths were people who

26:02

poured out all over the landscape,

26:04

not with regard to their specifically.

26:06

But as migrants. It's not ruling

26:08

out the sperm. It doesn't have

26:11

to be mutually exclusive, okay? So

26:13

even before the migration era. Could

26:15

we move on? I need to

26:17

move on. I'm like, no, I

26:19

want to keep talking about this

26:21

sperm. I know you do, but

26:24

I'm like, I am just not

26:26

feeling that moment. I feel like

26:28

it's making this episode really sticky

26:30

and I just, I want to

26:32

lice all it. Moving on. I'm

26:34

11. That's what my sense of

26:37

humor is right now. It's all

26:39

right, we'll get a great review

26:41

about that. I'm a very serious

26:43

historical fiction author. Oh yeah, that's

26:45

what you're known for. You're serious

26:47

historical fiction with a patina of

26:49

truth. A verisimilitude. That's what we

26:52

call that. With a verisimilitude of

26:54

accuracy and a patina of truth.

26:56

Okay, so even before the migration

26:58

era, she says taking a calming

27:00

breath, the Goths were a people

27:02

who migrated. Migration is an important

27:05

thread running through their story. Visible

27:07

in their mythology, their archaeology, their

27:09

origin story and their history. They

27:11

were outsiders, newcomers, immigrants, wandering in

27:13

exile, searching for a homeland. And

27:15

when they did stand still, they

27:18

were often driven off or had

27:20

to fight for what they had

27:22

with bloody tooth and nail. And

27:24

that's been true ever since they

27:26

drew those lots in Skansa. So

27:28

let's look at their earliest history

27:31

before the migration era. before their

27:33

first mentions in Greek and Roman

27:35

sources. This would have been the

27:37

time mythologized in Jordan's account, and

27:39

potentially in other mythologies, such as

27:41

the Guttasaga. There are two cultures

27:44

in archaeology that have been linked

27:46

to the Goths. The Wheelbark and

27:48

Cherny cultures, the Wheelbark culture is

27:50

named for a village in Poland,

27:52

where gentlemen scholars discovered an enormous

27:54

cemetery in 1873. with over 3,000

27:57

graves. It was partially documented at

27:59

the time of its discovery, but

28:01

only properly... excavated in the 1970s.

28:03

So the cemetery was in use

28:05

for approximately 500 years from the

28:07

hundreds AD to roughly the 500s

28:09

AD. Studying it is kind of

28:12

a challenge because a lot of

28:14

the graves have been damaged from

28:16

antiquity as it seems many of

28:18

the earlier graves were disturbed in

28:20

the digging of later ones up

28:22

until World War II. But here

28:25

are some things we can glean

28:27

from evidence in the ground. At

28:29

first, these people burned their dead.

28:31

Most of the earliest burials consist

28:33

of a simple urn in a

28:35

pit, and they use special funerary

28:38

urns that were not waterproof, so

28:40

they had no other use besides

28:42

as funeral urns, theoretically. At some

28:44

point, the wheel bark or wild

28:46

bark culture, not sure which, started

28:48

to change. It started building large

28:51

barrow tombs, and including grave goods,

28:53

mostly costumes, ornamental relics, and spurs.

28:55

These were a horse culture, but

28:57

oddly, never weapons. Mostly their relics

28:59

were made of bronze. Silver, gold,

29:01

and iron were rare. One bronze

29:04

kettle was found depicting a man

29:06

wearing his hair in a swabian

29:08

knot. I kind of want to

29:10

do a patron on the swabian

29:12

knot. We'll see. I'm here for

29:14

that. I mean these barrows remind

29:16

me a lot of the Thracians

29:19

and their graves that have been

29:21

found. Yeah, but so many cultures

29:23

had barotumes, I mean you find

29:25

them in Ireland, right, in the

29:27

Neolithic era. They were much closer

29:29

to where they were, like the

29:32

Goths and the Thracians geographically were

29:34

closer, and also the things that

29:36

they found in there, like the

29:38

cultural things seemed similar to what

29:40

you would have found in a

29:42

Thracian barrow, but who knows? So

29:45

the Weilberg culture built mounds and

29:47

covered them with stone. They constructed

29:49

stone circles and solitary stelae. And

29:51

they used cobble cladding to create

29:53

flooring. They made ceramic bowls by

29:55

hand. Women were buried with an

29:58

ornate fibular broch on each shoulder.

30:00

Women's burials became more complex over

30:02

the years, suggesting rising social status

30:04

for women. They built Germanic long

30:06

houses similar to a Viking long...

30:08

and there has never been a

30:11

single weapon found in any of

30:13

their graves. The increasing complexity of

30:15

those graves, though, suggests perhaps the

30:17

culture was becoming wealthier and more

30:19

stratified, possibly due to trade with

30:21

Romans. The wild bark culture arose

30:23

around the time the Roman Empire

30:26

was beginning to make its presence

30:28

felt in Northern Europe. Prior to

30:30

then, from the Rhine, all the

30:32

way to the Vistula River in

30:34

Poland, A distance of over 621

30:36

miles, people perform their burials pretty

30:39

much the same, burning their dead

30:41

and burying their ashes in pits

30:43

with few grave goods. This may

30:45

suggest cultural continuity between Germanic cultures

30:47

in this vast area. All of

30:49

these changes that occurred in the

30:52

wild bark culture suggest a rising

30:54

social status compared to the other

30:56

cultures around them, including the lack

30:58

of weapons. If you look back

31:00

at the Halstadt culture among the

31:02

Celts, which we covered in Everything

31:05

belongs to the Brave, that's also

31:07

going on with them, right? They

31:09

did sometimes bury their dad with

31:11

these sort of ceremonial knives, but

31:13

they didn't really have like a

31:15

martial culture where they were burying

31:18

men with or women, you know,

31:20

people with a ton of weapons.

31:22

The cult seemed to have an

31:24

origin in a culture that became

31:26

wealthy due to contact with Rome

31:28

and at least at first were

31:31

probably wealthy merchants that were not

31:33

that martial. At least if you

31:35

look at what their graves say

31:37

about them. Anyway. The people here,

31:39

the wild bark culture, played a

31:41

part in the lucrative amber trade

31:43

in the ancient world. A writer

31:46

named Pythias, writing in the 330s

31:48

BC, mentions a group here called

31:50

the gutones, who may have been

31:52

the Goths, and how they collected

31:54

amber, quote, thrown up from the

31:56

sea. Amber was apparently so common

31:59

in this area that people burned

32:01

it for fuel. I didn't know,

32:03

Amber was flammable, but there you

32:05

are. But Amber was a highly

32:07

valued precious stone to the Romans

32:09

and the people of the Wildbark

32:12

culture had a lot of it.

32:14

An ancient trade route called the

32:16

Amber Road moved Amber from the

32:18

coastal settlements of the North and

32:20

Baltic seas to the Mediterranean world

32:22

as early as 2000 BC. A

32:25

complex system of bridges and causeways

32:27

in this area of Poland associated

32:29

with... with the wild bark culture

32:31

may have been connected to the

32:33

amber road. I think it was

32:35

in one of my last episodes

32:38

about about the Temple of Artemis

32:40

at Ephesus where I was talking

32:42

about the amber on the statue,

32:44

do you remember how important amber

32:46

was to them? And I think

32:48

they felt like it had like

32:50

this other world kind of like

32:53

lightning in a bottle like quality

32:55

to it. It was used a

32:57

lot in there in creating their

32:59

worship statues and temples and stuff

33:01

and I get that because amber

33:03

is like it's so beautiful. Apparently

33:06

they didn't have as much of

33:08

it where they were, so the

33:10

idea that this other culture has

33:12

it and is burning it for

33:14

fuel is wild. Her, in. Where

33:16

does she come from? What does

33:19

she want? When will she leave?

33:21

Today's the day. The Woman in

33:23

the Yard. Only in theaters, March

33:25

28th. We're so done with New

33:27

Year, New You. This year, it's

33:29

more You on Bumble. More of

33:32

you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that

33:34

one filled with show tunes. More

33:36

of you finding Jiminized because you

33:38

know you always like them. More

33:40

of you dating with intention because

33:42

you know what you want. And

33:45

you know what? We love that

33:47

for you. Someone else will too.

33:49

Be more you this year and

33:51

find them on Bumble. So

33:57

what do we know about the wild

33:59

bar culture? Let's recap. We know that

34:01

they lived in Poland, which historians have

34:04

associated with Gotha Scanza. Jordan's is a

34:06

landing place of ancestral Goths who emigrated

34:08

from Sweden or Scanza. When they arrived,

34:11

they may have plugged into the lucrative

34:13

amber trade, serving wealthy customers in Rome

34:15

and bringing riches to their community. Their

34:17

simple burials became more complex. We have

34:20

a sense that women had a high

34:22

status in these communities. Women were buried

34:24

with two elaborate fibular brooches, one on

34:27

each shoulder. Weapons were never buried in

34:29

graves. We don't know why, although one

34:31

possibility is that they were not very

34:33

martial, at least not yet. So I

34:36

have this theory that... Potentially, they didn't

34:38

bury their dead with weapons because the

34:40

weapons were incredibly valuable and were maybe

34:42

ancestrally passed down throughout the ages, potentially

34:45

because the raw materials to make those

34:47

weapons might not have been as handy

34:49

to them as they were in other

34:52

places. Therefore, to bury your sword with

34:54

someone else with your dad would mean

34:56

you didn't have a sword. Yeah, I

34:58

think that that's one possibility and we

35:01

are going to get later on the

35:03

kind of weapons the Goths had and

35:05

the availability of various metals. So you

35:08

might be on to something there. But

35:10

the first thing I thought when we

35:12

didn't see anything in the grave goods

35:14

was not that they weren't necessarily martial,

35:17

but that they might not have had

35:19

the same access to it and therefore

35:21

like they would keep that sword forever

35:24

passing it down the line. One of

35:26

the things that we'll talk about is

35:28

spears. And you know, spears require a

35:30

lot less metal, right. not as much

35:33

metal as a sword or an axe.

35:35

And we do know they had a

35:37

lot of trees, so it would be

35:39

much easier to create a spear. This

35:42

is one of those things where like

35:44

if they're big like exports where maybe

35:46

like silver gold and like amber, those

35:49

things are not good for making weapons.

35:51

Like they're great for decorating things, but

35:53

not weapons. Anyway, we know from the

35:55

archaeology that these people bred and raised

35:58

horses and lived in long houses, long

36:00

narrow communal houses, where multiple generations of

36:02

families and their animals lived together. under

36:05

one roof. Was it like the interconnected

36:07

sex houses at Scarborough? You would have

36:09

had more privacy in the internet connected

36:11

sex houses. Even with the guy sitting

36:14

in the chair at the fireside watching

36:16

you? Well maybe not. It's actually kind

36:18

of confusing because what was it like

36:20

18 people slept in these two tiny

36:23

stone beds? Like what was that? Maybe

36:25

more privacy is wrong but like I

36:27

think it was you had more space

36:30

right? Like these would have been like

36:32

large public halls and I've seen different,

36:34

you know... questions about like how these

36:36

would have been set up, you know,

36:39

in biking times where there would have

36:41

been dividers, so there would have been

36:43

like potentially rooms where people had privacy,

36:46

you know, I'm not 100% sure, but

36:48

that's one theory. Yeah, because even in

36:50

biking times they're, they're like, yeah, because

36:52

even in biking times, they're like, I

36:55

really don't want to watch Grandma and

36:57

Grandpa screwing. Like, I guess, you know,

36:59

in those times, privacy was just staying

37:01

alive through warmth that you had to

37:04

spoon your family. as they boned, like

37:06

that's how everyone stayed alive. You know

37:08

what? I'm really glad I live in

37:11

modern times. As much of a shit

37:13

show is we're in right now. Anyway,

37:15

kind of move on. I'm going to

37:17

continue to drink. You know what? I'm

37:20

going to get some wine because I

37:22

feel like I've hit that point of

37:24

this recording. Fair. I'm going to read

37:27

this paragraph. They farmed the land. But,

37:29

key fact, they were not very good

37:31

at farming. Their farming techniques leachedged the

37:33

land of nutrients. One reason why the

37:36

Goths were so known for migrating. Settlements

37:38

tended not to last more than a

37:40

few hundred years at most before they

37:43

had to move on. So, these were

37:45

horse people and incompetent farmers who lived

37:47

communally in long houses and saw their

37:49

fortunes improve early in their history as

37:52

compared with their neighbors, probably due to

37:54

the amber trade with Rome. Not long

37:56

after this culture appeared in the archaeological

37:58

record in the first century AD, The

38:01

evidence in the ground shows that their

38:03

population density increased possibly due to all

38:05

that amber wealth. However, the soil oil

38:08

became depleted in the area, making these

38:10

farming communities unable to support so many

38:12

people. So the people began to expand

38:14

southward, displacing some cultures and absorbing others.

38:17

By the two hunters AD, they started

38:19

showing up in Roman writing. It's possible

38:21

somewhere recruited into the Roman army. And

38:24

it's here that the Roman writers start

38:26

referring to them not as Gothones, but

38:28

as Scythians. Which is one of the

38:30

things that makes it tough to track

38:33

this history, right? Because sometimes what you're

38:35

looking at is that they're writing about

38:37

this battle where they just called... these

38:39

people, Scythians, but they're actually talking about

38:42

the Goths, but they're not calling them

38:44

the Goths, right? And there are a

38:46

lot of different people that they call

38:49

Scythians. And also I think that name

38:51

tells you what their relationship to these

38:53

people were, because the Scythians were people

38:55

they had a martial relationship with, either

38:58

as, you know, adversaries, or sometimes they

39:00

had them as federati, right, but they

39:02

had a martial relationship with the Scythians

39:05

for the most part. It seems to

39:07

us that the earliest names in the

39:09

ancient sources were those like the Gothones,

39:11

which refer to the Goths still in

39:14

Scansa and Gotha Scansa. Although that name,

39:16

like it changes, you know, it could

39:18

be Gattones or like, and there are

39:21

different sort of Goth like words that

39:23

appear in certain ancient sources that I

39:25

have seen historians point to and say

39:27

those were the Goths. Like that's who

39:30

they're talking about now, but that isn't

39:32

necessarily a hundred percent agreed on. Sure,

39:34

because you're talking about like a period

39:36

of time where one of the things

39:39

that the Romans and the Greeks and

39:41

Egyptians were pretty good at was like

39:43

centralizing their language and keeping a consistent

39:46

spelling of things across different places, but

39:48

regionally or dialectically it could have been

39:50

different places. It could have been different

39:52

in different places, and when you see

39:55

that it does get confusing of like

39:57

which one is this, is this right?

39:59

And sometimes it might be, it might

40:02

be someone encountering a culture, they haven't

40:04

encountered before, who are calling them some

40:06

things, and they don't realize that that

40:08

that that that that that that that

40:11

that that is. this other name and

40:13

so it gets confused. Now you see

40:15

like part of my, you know, why,

40:17

I was like crying when you're like,

40:20

try and kill it at the Goths,

40:22

Jenny. I mean, sorry, not sorry. So,

40:24

once the Goths arrived in OEM, their

40:27

homeland by the Black Sea, the Romans

40:29

and Greeks started calling these people Scythians,

40:31

right? That makes sense. That's where the

40:33

Scythians, they think, came from, in theory.

40:36

That is, you know, geographically close to

40:38

other people that were called Scythians, and

40:40

also it shows that they were starting

40:43

to have, you know, come up against

40:45

these people in more of a, like

40:47

they were starting to rub shoulders in

40:49

a way that turned out to be

40:52

martial. Exactly. The Greeks and Romans used

40:54

the name Scythians to differentiate Gothic groups

40:56

from other Germanic groups. There are other

40:59

Germanic tribes that they don't call Scythians.

41:01

They call them Germanicians. They call them

41:03

Germanicists, right? considered to be Germanic people

41:05

and that name was not Goths, right?

41:08

It was dramatic. Yeah, they didn't equate

41:10

the two at the time. So... This

41:12

is true until around 238 when the

41:14

word Goths started appearing in the ancient

41:17

sources. So not everyone agrees that the

41:19

Wildbark culture was in fact the Goths

41:21

as described by the ancient sources. While

41:24

some historians see the journey of the

41:26

Wildbark culture as proof of Jordain's account,

41:28

others say that that's just projecting a

41:30

myth onto a migrating culture that had

41:33

nothing to do with that myth. We

41:35

don't know what the truth is, and

41:37

we always have to go back. Barry

41:40

Strauss is my lodestar here, where he's

41:42

just like, you know, don't, don't, established

41:44

story and try to paste it on

41:46

history because like it's not always true.

41:49

And that's kind of what is happening

41:51

here when we take the Jordan's story

41:53

of migration and try to paste it

41:55

onto this archaeological occurrence where it does

41:58

seem like there was a culture that

42:00

migrated from this place to that place

42:02

in a way that looks, to be

42:05

honest, extremely, like basically identical to what

42:07

Jordan says. But it's true, it is

42:09

true, that the people of the Wildbark

42:11

culture expanded from or moved from Poland

42:14

south and east into Roman territory. And

42:16

it's here that the Scythians and then

42:18

the Goths start showing up in Roman

42:21

writings. And that is where I ask,

42:23

coincidence. I think not. Or do I?

42:25

I don't know. According to Jordan's, the

42:27

Goths absorbed ward-with, defeated, and chased off

42:30

other groups they came in contact with.

42:32

This was not an entirely peaceful migration.

42:34

However, archaeologists believe their migration also included

42:37

women and children, and that's always been

42:39

true of the Goths and other Germanic

42:41

peoples, like they were always bringing women

42:43

and children along with their armies. Yeah,

42:46

which suggests either a nomadic existence or

42:48

the resources from where they came from

42:50

no longer were able to support them.

42:52

Therefore, there was nothing for them to

42:55

go back to. They didn't have a

42:57

place to leave these people. So, you

42:59

know, they didn't have a safe place

43:02

to leave their women and children, so

43:04

they had to come. In 238 AD,

43:06

the frontier town of Hystria, in what's

43:08

now Romania, was sacked by the Goths.

43:11

This is the first major altercation between

43:13

Goths and Romans that we're aware of.

43:15

So that puts the Goths or the

43:18

Wellbark culture on the shores of the

43:20

Black Sea by 238 AD, a journey

43:22

of over 1,128 miles. And this is

43:24

around when a group called the Chernyakov

43:27

culture settled on the north shore of

43:29

the Black Sea. According to the archaeology,

43:31

they started showing up in this area

43:33

between the 100s and 400s AD. And

43:36

they lived along the shores of the

43:38

Black Sea and across a large swath

43:40

of Eastern Europe. covering Ukraine, Moldova, Romania,

43:43

and Belarus, an area that the Romans

43:45

would come to refer to as Gothia.

43:47

In Jordan's account, after wandering and fighting

43:49

for multiple generations of kings, the Goths

43:52

arrived at O'em, a land of fresh,

43:54

rich meadows, lush grazing for cattle and

43:56

fertile soil for farming, and spooge. So

43:59

much spooge. Oh, it got so fertile.

44:01

O'am was so sticky! Chiridin's account says

44:03

that the Goths crossed a bridge over

44:05

a river which fell behind them, signifying

44:08

that there was no going back. But

44:10

another thing historians don't agree on is

44:12

whether the Chernyakov culture is just the

44:15

wild bark culture when it's settled down,

44:17

whether that's what it is or not,

44:19

we don't know. So the theory is

44:21

that the wild bark people settled down

44:24

in this area and became the Chernyakov

44:26

culture. And the two are quite similar.

44:28

Like the wild bark people, the Chernyakov

44:30

people were farmers. Lots of farm implements

44:33

have been found in their graves. They

44:35

raised cattle, lived in long houses, and

44:37

both buried their dead and burned them,

44:40

like the wild barks. A wealth of

44:42

grave goods has been found with their

44:44

dead. Belt buckles, ceramics, combs made of

44:46

bones, glass cups, and jewelry. They made

44:49

pottery using pottery using pottery. pottery wheels

44:51

and their hands. They traded with the

44:53

Romans, mainly for wine, and they did

44:56

not bury weapons in their graves. That

44:58

is actually the biggest clue here to

45:00

me that the Chernikov and wildbark cultures

45:02

were the same, is that this is

45:05

like a really defining feature. Or a

45:07

progression of one culture to the other.

45:09

Was it just cultural exchange that they

45:11

started doing a practice that their neighbors

45:14

did, or was it the same exact

45:16

people, right? We don't know. Another differentiating

45:18

fact. shoulders. One pin to each shoulder.

45:21

Now it does sound similar. So were

45:23

these people Goths? Were the Goths originally

45:25

Scandinavian? Were they Germanic? Or were they

45:27

as other historians believe an indigenous group

45:30

to this area? We don't know for

45:32

sure. There are all kinds of reasons

45:34

to doubt that you can track... The

45:37

Wellbark and the Chernikov cultures directly to

45:39

the migrating Goths and Jordines. Peter Heather

45:41

in his book The Goths talks extensively

45:43

about how problematic it is even dating

45:46

some of this material. Which would throw

45:48

the chronology of this migration in doubt.

45:50

Which just tells you, like, even the

45:52

basic facts of, like, when this migration

45:55

happened and what we can track it

45:57

to, it's, like, it's confusing. And so

45:59

it's easy for us to sit here

46:02

and just say, oh yeah, it looks

46:04

like the exact same thing, but that's

46:06

not necessarily true. Like, as humans, our

46:08

brains want to make a story out

46:11

of this that makes sense. It's like,

46:13

I can't remember if it's confirmation bias

46:15

or not. Yeah, it's kind of like

46:18

that, where you start to see patterns,

46:20

whether or not they're actually. true patterns

46:22

or just like your brain is trying

46:24

to make a pattern out of things

46:27

in order to make it make sense

46:29

to you. Right, or like, oh I

46:31

saw this in Jordaines, this must be

46:34

those people. Yeah, exactly. And it's a

46:36

lot of work to unpick and there's

46:38

certain things that we have now that

46:40

we didn't have during Jordaines's time, including

46:43

things like, you know, we can DNA

46:45

test and date things much clearer than

46:47

we could then. So, whether or not

46:49

the Goths... came from Poland or Scandinavia,

46:52

or if indeed they were indigenous to

46:54

this area, were pretty sure that there

46:56

were people living to the west and

46:59

north of the Black Sea by the

47:01

200s or 300s AD, and that these

47:03

people were called Goths. We know that

47:05

because the Romans and Greeks talked about

47:08

them. Yeah, we know that too, like

47:10

I said, because they had a lot

47:12

of interactions with the Temple of Artemis

47:15

at Ephesus, so that's another culture they

47:17

were touching on. They had a lot

47:19

of interactions with the Roman Empire and

47:21

you know the Greeks. Those are people

47:24

who tended to write things down like

47:26

in general. So that's when they start

47:28

showing up as Goths where we're 100%

47:30

sure these are Goths. So what I

47:33

suspect, this is just what I suspect,

47:35

is that the Goths were like the

47:37

picks. They were a coalition of people

47:40

bound together by hardship and pressure to

47:42

fight the Roman Empire. Essentially a group

47:44

created by the Romans. They did have

47:46

their own identity and culture. But the

47:49

goths as a people, like the picks

47:51

as a people, according to this theory,

47:53

would not have existed if Rome hadn't

47:56

existed. I can say to my new

47:58

Samsung Galaxy S-25 Ultra, hey, find a

48:00

keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to

48:02

Beth and Steve. And it does, without

48:05

me lifting a finger. So I can

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get in more squats anywhere I can.

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Offer valor through four two. Selection varies

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by location while supplies last. So we

49:22

can learn some things about the Goths

49:24

by looking at their language. Unlike with

49:27

other groups of people like the Gauls

49:29

or the Picks, we actually do have

49:31

a fair amount of Gothic language preserved

49:34

in writing, and it can tell us

49:36

some things about who the Goths were,

49:38

but it also leaves intact some mysteries.

49:40

Before the Goths were Christianized, they did

49:43

not write things down. Or if they

49:45

did, very few things have been found.

49:47

There have been a few scraps of

49:50

things that are found that are pre-Christian

49:52

Gothic writing, and it is fascinating. Dating

49:54

from as early as the 200s AD,

49:56

it seems that the Goths may have

49:59

used Elder Futhark for writing, and this

50:01

is the oldest Runic writing system ever

50:03

discovered. It is generally known for being

50:05

used by Northern Germanic peoples in the

50:08

area of like Sweden and nearby. Like

50:10

kind of like a Proto-Viking writing language,

50:12

right? It's a precursor to languages such

50:15

as Old Norse and Old Icelandic. In

50:17

those languages, Elder Futhark gave rise to

50:19

younger Futhark, which was broadly used in

50:21

Scandinavia during the Middle Ages. Anyway, Elder

50:24

Futhark dates from before the Northern and

50:26

Eastern Germanic peoples split up. At least,

50:28

that's what it looks like to us.

50:31

Yeah, I was trying to figure this

50:33

out. There's Eastern Germanic and Northern Germanic

50:35

languages, right? But that division happened, I

50:37

think, around the time the Wildbark culture

50:40

moved, which is super fascinating. or maybe

50:42

potentially afterwards. So like Elder Futhark was

50:44

writing the same language, those two languages

50:46

were basically the same language at this

50:49

point, is what I'm seeing, but I'm

50:51

not 100% sure. I'm just looking at

50:53

these two dates and making that assumption.

50:56

seems fair to me, and it's possible

50:58

if we're going with Jordain's story that

51:00

the Goths carried it with them, this

51:02

language with them, when they emigrated. A

51:05

very tiny amount of elder Futhark has

51:07

been found in the Eastern Germanic territories,

51:09

territories associated with the Goths during this

51:12

time, that may have been used to

51:14

write in Gothic, and these include... The

51:16

Ring of Petrowasa. So this is a

51:18

golden torque founded Southeast Romania in 1837

51:21

dating to around... sometime between 250 and

51:23

400 AD. After its discovery, it was

51:25

stolen and cut in half by a

51:28

goldsmith in Bucharest. It was later recovered,

51:30

but the ruins were damaged. There were

51:32

15 ruins on the torque, and there

51:34

have been a lot of different translations

51:37

of these ruins that I've seen, and

51:39

they're varied. They're really different. One chunk

51:41

of interpretations that I've seen includes sacred

51:43

to the Gothic women, sacred to the

51:46

Jove of the Goths, sacred inheritance of

51:48

the Goths. dedicated to the Gothic female

51:50

warriors and dedicated to the temple of

51:53

the Goths. The word for Goths in

51:55

these rooms has been interpreted as gutanio.

51:57

The next one is the spearhead of

51:59

Kovell. This spearhead or landshead was found

52:02

in central Ukraine in the 1800s dating

52:04

to the early 200s 80. Around the

52:06

beginning of when the Goths started appearing

52:09

in Roman sources, what's funny is that

52:11

the translation is something like target writer.

52:13

It was stolen by the Nazis in

52:15

the 1930s and has since then been

52:18

lost. This may have been a name

52:20

which would be better translated as sure

52:22

hitter or something like that. Like they

52:24

name like ManKiller or something like it

52:27

could have been like this sort of

52:29

name that they gave this weapon. Or

52:31

it may have been a form of

52:34

siggledry. A magic that involves writing a

52:36

word or incantation on an object that

52:38

produces an outcome and controls how that

52:40

object behaves. Yeah and we've initially like

52:43

the first time we talked about this

52:45

was in that Vampire's episode and it

52:47

just makes me happy to see it.

52:50

popping up again and tying those cultures

52:52

together, right? Yeah, well I think this

52:54

was something that happened in the ancient

52:56

world in general, you know, writing was

52:59

seen as a form of magic in

53:01

some cultures. And if you wrote something

53:03

down on an object that might have,

53:06

you know, imbued that object with certain

53:08

magical qualities, like I don't think that

53:10

wasn't going on when people were writing

53:12

things on those sling bullets, right, later

53:15

on that said this is perful via

53:17

clit. Like, yes, it's just kind of

53:19

smack talk, but it also might have

53:21

a sort of tinge of sigaldricalgic magic

53:24

magic magic magic to it. Absolutely, and

53:26

I think like one of the things

53:28

to remember is a lot of us

53:31

now come from a highly literate society.

53:33

Many people were not as literate as

53:35

we are today. So if you knew

53:37

someone who could write, that was its

53:40

own form of magic, being able to

53:42

write down and preserve things and read

53:44

these things. And as someone who makes

53:47

their living mostly from writing, I love

53:49

the idea that the an the ancients

53:51

would be like your magic. And I'd

53:53

be like, well, thank you. that somebody

53:56

wrote down like 2,000 years ago and

53:58

they can still share their thoughts with

54:00

us. Like I do find that magical,

54:02

you know. There's something transformative to me

54:05

about reading like Medea, the ancient Greek

54:07

tragedy, and still connecting with that character

54:09

who was written thousands of years ago.

54:12

and finding the relevance in that story

54:14

into today's world, right? Like, that is

54:16

magic. I can be both in the

54:18

ancient times thinking about the context there

54:21

and also here and the heart-wrenching similes

54:23

we can draw from our modern world.

54:25

But like the storytelling of that, like

54:28

the fact that you can look at

54:30

some some scratchings on a paper and

54:32

get all of that... all of that

54:34

emotion and all of that storytelling out

54:37

of that is its own form of

54:39

magic. Just the act of reading that

54:41

and having these ideas transmitted to you

54:43

across such a gulf of time. which

54:46

isn't necessarily what Sigaldric magic is, but

54:48

it is what the magic of writing

54:50

is. And Sigaldric magic reminds me a

54:53

lot of what we're going to see

54:55

in some of the early Christianity stuff,

54:57

which we'll get to in other episodes.

54:59

Anyway, so there have been, as far

55:02

as I know, three other items with

55:04

Elder Futhark ruins in what may have

55:06

been Gothic, a spearhead in Germany, a

55:09

spindlehead found in Romania, and a belt

55:11

buckle bucklele found in Germany. And these

55:13

were just like... small enough, you know,

55:15

and hard enough to interpret that I

55:18

didn't necessarily include them, but there's very,

55:20

very, very little found in this time

55:22

period and area that can be said

55:25

to be elder-futharch and Germanic, but enough

55:27

that it's like significant. So the Goths

55:29

were Christianized fairly early. It happened in

55:31

the early 300s AD, or maybe even

55:34

like the 200 sometime, it's hard to

55:36

trace exactly when it happened. But this

55:38

is the earliest Christianization of a Germanic

55:40

people in history that I'm aware of.

55:43

One key player in this process was

55:45

a man named Ulfila. And I've seen

55:47

him called Ulfila or Ulfilis as well.

55:50

That name means Little Wolf, which I

55:52

think is great. He was born around

55:54

the year 300 AD in what is

55:56

now Romania, solidly in Chernyakov or Gothic

55:59

territory. He was born to a community

56:01

of Capidocian crissen. Christians, who had been

56:03

captured by Goths in a raid in

56:06

Sadagalthena, a city in Capidocian, was now

56:08

modern-day Turkey. Ulfila was either captured with

56:10

his mom as a baby or he

56:12

was born in captivity. Some believe his

56:15

dad was Gothic, but he may have

56:17

also been Capidocian. The general picture is

56:19

that Ulfila had some connection to both

56:21

the pagan Gothic and the Capidocian Christian

56:24

worlds, and he was raised Christian in

56:26

a pagan culture that was at least

56:28

partially hostile to his beliefs to his

56:31

beliefs. Uffila didn't convert the Goths wholesale.

56:33

The process had already begun. In fact,

56:35

the Goths in Crimea, a large island

56:37

in the Black Sea, that Russia should

56:40

get back, were putting crosses on their

56:42

coins in 311 AD, the year Uffila

56:44

was born. What Uffila did do was

56:47

eventually become a bishop, and he translated

56:49

the Bible into Gothic. Yeah, he was

56:51

one of those very early Christian figures,

56:53

and I get into him in more

56:56

detail later, but for now I'm just

56:58

talking about... this one topic. So this

57:00

is the Ulfila or Ulfilis or Ulfilis

57:03

Bible. Only fragments survive, not enough to

57:05

completely reconstruct the language. It's a translation

57:07

from Greek to Gothic, so we do

57:09

have a lot of written Gothic from

57:12

this Bible. We don't have any Gothic

57:14

writing like this outside of Bibles and

57:16

other religious texts. We have other Gothic

57:18

writings of other religious texts that are

57:21

not this Bible. Those are also even

57:23

more fragmentary. The only writing outside of

57:25

biblical context is the old futhar on

57:28

this very tiny handful of artifacts, which

57:30

researchers aren't even completely sure is Gothic.

57:32

Wilfila's invented his own script, which some

57:34

scholars say is derived from the Greek

57:37

alphabet. There are a few runic letters

57:39

he used to express sounds that didn't

57:41

exist in Greek, and while some scholars

57:44

believe that these were old Futhark, that

57:46

is not universally agreed upon. It would

57:48

seem that these ruins that he used

57:50

are kind of wonky. Some scholars believe

57:53

that Lufila just didn't know the ruins

57:55

that well. Others believe that he purposely

57:57

avoided using the real ruins because of

57:59

their pagan power. Their magical segaldic properties.

58:02

He was terrified of pagan magic getting

58:04

into this Bible and infesting it. He

58:06

did not want it possessed by demons.

58:09

That's the thing. Absolutely. And you know

58:11

what? I'm here for you, little wolf.

58:13

Like I get what you're doing. I

58:15

get that. Like having been indoctrinated early,

58:18

that would be a fear I would

58:20

have fear I would have. That seems

58:22

logical. It seems super logical and again,

58:25

like, you have to understand that there

58:27

are some things in early Christianity that

58:29

feel quite pagan and are quite scary.

58:31

Even today, the belief in transubstantiation, where

58:34

you have like this bit of bread

58:36

that becomes Jesus' body, right? And you've

58:38

got the wine that becomes the blood.

58:41

Like if you believe that that is

58:43

really happening, you know, it's not that

58:45

far of a cry for sigaldric magic,

58:47

right? Like if you write this room

58:50

down and this room means like the

58:52

demons, then maybe you're going to conjure

58:54

them and they're going to come out

58:56

of this Bible every time you read

58:59

it. Like, like, I get it. Old

59:01

Futhark is terrifyingly powerful in a way

59:03

that the writing that he was doing,

59:06

he was inventing a script that wouldn't

59:08

do that, potentially. This is my fan

59:10

fiction. This is my fan fiction. I

59:12

don't think you're wrong. I think that's

59:15

actually what he was doing. I think

59:17

he was very conscious of the beliefs

59:19

of his people coming up against this

59:22

new religion and where that power was

59:24

in language and what it could potentially

59:26

do. Yeah, because they would have had

59:28

a really different worldview from even modern,

59:31

you know, modern Christians or even medieval

59:33

Christians. And, you know, the Christian religion

59:35

has changed a lot over the centuries,

59:37

and I'm not schooled enough in early

59:40

Christianity to be able to tell you

59:42

how segaldric it was, but I suspect

59:44

there is some of that there, too,

59:47

you know, but anyway. So it's from

59:49

this Bible that we get the sense

59:51

that the Gothic language was an East

59:53

Germanic language, but Ufila's Bible. is not

59:56

as purely gothic as it seems. It's

59:58

full of borrowed Greek words and usages.

1:00:00

Linguists believe the syntax of the sentences

1:00:03

is often copied directly from Greek, so

1:00:05

it doesn't necessarily reflect Gothic as it

1:00:07

would have been naturally spoken. Sure, he's

1:00:09

doing kind of a direct one-for-one translation.

1:00:12

He's not prettying it up, which I

1:00:14

get having translated a lot of dead

1:00:16

languages. Like, you can do a real

1:00:19

nice translation that makes sense, or you

1:00:21

can just translate it word for word.

1:00:23

So, what can we glean about the

1:00:25

Goths from their language? We note that

1:00:28

Gothic was an Indo-European Germanic language. It

1:00:30

had three genders. Three genders. Suck it.

1:00:32

Suck it. It preserved many of the

1:00:34

ancient features of Indo-European that more current

1:00:37

Germanic languages have lost. But it had

1:00:39

three genders. Gothic was an eastern Germanic

1:00:41

language as we said and you think

1:00:44

that would tell us something about whether

1:00:46

the Goths were originally Scandinavian or not.

1:00:48

I don't know, maybe. I mean if

1:00:50

they were, would their language be a

1:00:53

north Germanic one like the languages of

1:00:55

Scandinavia? Well... North Germanic only split off

1:00:57

from East Germanic around 200 AD from

1:01:00

what I can tell, which is a

1:01:02

bit after the time the Weilberg culture

1:01:04

migrated from Poland. So not necessarily. It

1:01:06

just depends on when they migrated. These

1:01:09

are the little rabbit holes I can

1:01:11

go down where I'm having a flappy

1:01:13

panic over this for two hours trying

1:01:15

to figure out when this person migrated

1:01:18

from there. In the Ulfula Bible, the

1:01:20

word for Goths was gutans. Some scholars

1:01:22

believe it is related to words such

1:01:25

as goots, goots. potentially Geats and Gotland,

1:01:27

all words for ancient tribes and regions

1:01:29

in Sweden, but again this is more

1:01:31

or less conjecture. But what do we

1:01:34

know about who the Goths were as

1:01:36

a culture? We talked about their archaeology

1:01:38

a little bit, we talked about their

1:01:41

language a little bit, but like what

1:01:43

did these people like wake up and

1:01:45

do? Well, like everything else with the

1:01:47

Goths, we know a lot and a

1:01:50

little at the same time. And we

1:01:52

will tell you all about it in

1:01:54

the next episode. So we'll be back

1:01:56

in two weeks. In the meantime, find

1:01:59

us on social. We're mainly on Instagram

1:02:01

at... ancient history fan girl. We're on

1:02:03

threads. We also have a Blue Sky

1:02:06

account that we're trying to sort of

1:02:08

be more active on. Yeah, we're trying

1:02:10

to migrate off of meta, meta-owned platforms.

1:02:12

I would say we're still too active

1:02:15

on our Instagram account to leave, but

1:02:17

everything else, like we're not really on

1:02:19

Twitter anymore. We're not on Twitter any

1:02:22

longer. It's just a historical account of

1:02:24

us on there. So as the person

1:02:26

who does our social, we are on

1:02:28

Facebook. Post feed directly from our Instagram.

1:02:31

They're just linked together. Sometimes our threads

1:02:33

do the same. We're more active on

1:02:35

threads. We're going to try and be

1:02:38

more active on blue sky. Instagram is

1:02:40

still a more natural home for us.

1:02:42

When there is a viable alternative, we

1:02:44

will be leaving Instagram, I imagine. We

1:02:47

are also somewhat active on TikTok when

1:02:49

there's content to put up there. All

1:02:51

of these platforms are problematic right now,

1:02:53

so we don't know. You guys, where

1:02:56

are you? You tell us? Yeah, tell

1:02:58

us where you are. Like we said,

1:03:00

for now, we don't have real viable

1:03:03

alternatives, so we're staying where we are.

1:03:05

And we do love to hear from

1:03:07

you, so do say hi to us,

1:03:09

but at any point, when we have

1:03:12

better alternatives, we will probably be migrating

1:03:14

off those platforms. So anyway, you could

1:03:16

join our patron at patreon.com/ancient history fan

1:03:19

girl. Yeah, I will say our patron,

1:03:21

we are much more active on a

1:03:23

lot of the posts that we would

1:03:25

have normally just had on social. are

1:03:28

now on our patron. You can join

1:03:30

as a free member, although we do

1:03:32

prefer it if you join as a

1:03:34

paid member, but I try to put

1:03:37

all of our social posts open to

1:03:39

anyone who joins. Not our episodes, but

1:03:41

like things you would normally see on

1:03:44

Instagram or TikTok. You do get things

1:03:46

on the patron if you join as

1:03:48

a paid member that are worth joining

1:03:50

for like extra episodes. Jen and I

1:03:53

film videos, we do extra episodes, we

1:03:55

do all kinds of things for our

1:03:57

paid members. You get all the main

1:04:00

feed episodes a day early. and ad-free,

1:04:02

and you get at least two extra

1:04:04

episodes a month from us, usually on

1:04:06

different rabbit holes and deep dives. Sometimes

1:04:09

they're videos, sometimes they're audio. You know,

1:04:11

we say it all the time, but

1:04:13

the podcast does not pay enough for

1:04:16

the amount of work it is. is

1:04:18

really what keeps the lights on. And

1:04:20

it's what keeps us able to come

1:04:22

back to you every other week, sometimes

1:04:25

every week, and tell you these stories

1:04:27

and bring these people back to life.

1:04:29

And in a place where history is

1:04:31

being eroded, and we want to do

1:04:34

this work, I'm glad we're able to

1:04:36

do this work, and we want to

1:04:38

be able to continue doing it. And

1:04:41

if you want to help us, patrons

1:04:43

the place. Yeah, so anyway, we do

1:04:45

have some patrons to think. We hope

1:04:47

we don't. Nancy Pascarello, Ljola, Laura Muchenski,

1:04:50

Allison Ebersman, Jay Stringer, Natasha Richardson, Eric

1:04:52

Koonahome, Gina, Justina, is my name, Jeff.

1:04:54

That's a you question, Jeff. That is

1:04:57

a question, Jeff. Mave Healy, Linda Garvey,

1:04:59

Mary Kay von Develd, Kelsey Gooch, Maya,

1:05:01

just Maya, DC, Dc-B-W, Dikabu, Boronica-S, Voronica-L-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-L-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-

1:05:03

Myra Davos and Kitty! That's it for

1:05:06

us. We will see you whenever we

1:05:08

see you next. Probably in two weeks.

1:05:10

Thank you so much for listening. This

1:05:37

is Jen and Jenny from Ancient History Fangirl,

1:05:39

and we're here to tell you about Jenny's

1:05:41

scorching historical romanticist based on Alaric of the

1:05:44

Visigoths, enemy of my dreams. Amanda Boucher, best-selling

1:05:46

author of the Kingmaker Chronicle, says, quote, this

1:05:48

book has everything, high-stakes action, grit, ferocity, and

1:05:51

blazing. Julia and and are

1:05:53

colliding storms against a

1:05:55

backdrop of the brutal

1:05:57

dangers of ancient of

1:06:00

They'll do anything to

1:06:02

carve their peace out

1:06:04

of this treacherous world

1:06:07

and not just survive,

1:06:09

but rule. rule. Enemy of my

1:06:11

is available wherever books

1:06:13

are sold. are sold.