The Herules also claimed an origin in Scandinavia and that they had been driven out by the Danes. There is a province further south in Jutland called Hard-syssel.
The name Harald /Harold is a Herulian name and the first king of Norway and the second one of Denmark were called Harald.
That the Harii and the Heruli are basically synonymous is strongly evidenced by the fact that in the 500s when Silinga, daughter of the last Heruli king Rhodoulph (Honor-Wolf?), married Wacho, king of the Lombards (Wikipedia)
MY GOD! Again this Silinga = Salling!?
A sword with this inscription was also found in Nydam swamp in southeastern Jutland with this inscription: HARJILAZ AHTE (a Herule (=marauder) owned this).
The tradition of the harrying (Norwegian: herjende), marauding Herulians live on in the name HEREward the Wake (Marauder-guard the Watcher) in East Anglia during the Norman conquest of England.
Fredrik from Norway,
I'm guessing that you are a professional historian, or are you just an avid amateur?
In any case you add some very interesting posts to this forum.
Fredrik. Thanks for mentioning the inscription from Jutland even though it's only two words. Most inscriptions that have been found in languages like Dacian (Romania), Gallic (France, Germany, Italy), Etruscan ( Italy) and Punic (Carthaginian - N. Africa) are also very short but they still tell us a little bit about these languages which would otherwise be unknown.
I have heard of the Herulians before. A mysterious people. They penetrated the Roman empire and made an attack on Athens as early as 276 A.D. They were in Dacia (Present day Romania) for a couple of centuries after the Roman legions withdrew from there in 270 A.D. along with another Germanic tribe called the Gepids (Latin Gepidae). Back in 1970 I remember reading a couple of books on Iceland in which the author of one of them argued that Herulians chased out of Skone (southern Sweden) by the Danes formed the nucleus of the Icelandic colony although this hasn't been corroborated by other writers on Iceland which I have read.
You also mentioned the Vandals, another somewhat mysterious group. Most books I've read show them coming out of what is now Poland along with the Franks. They were the most primitive of the Germanic tribes, however, still practicing headhunting and even canibalism. They eventually wound up in Roman North Africa were they layed waste to the city of Volubilis in Morocco whose ruins can still be seen today.
The Goths lived in Spouth Sweden,but didn't they also live in North-West Poland and east Prussia,because the romanexploreres called this area "Locus Gothi" and the "capital" no,main city of this area was called " Vicus Gothi ?
Spouth = (ofcourse) South
The Goths later migrated from southern Sweden to the Vistula, in Poland and then down to the Balkans and even Asia Minor, Italy and Spain. Since the Teutonic peoples all probably originated in Poland anyway, the Goths would simply have been backtracking when they moved to the Vistula region.
=>The Goths later migrated from southern Sweden to the Vistula, in Poland and then down to the Balkans and even Asia Minor, Italy and Spain. Since the Teutonic peoples all probably originated in Poland anyway, the Goths would simply have been backtracking when they moved to the Vistula region. <=
Yes but from Roman writings we understand that Vicus Gothi a big town (ofcours nothing compared with rome) I don't understand that when your going to the south, why would you built a town on practically the first piece of land you see when you stept of the boats from sweden...
Kazoo:
Well, I am not a professional historian (only 22 years!). But I am taking some subjects of history in university now.
The Germanic migrations fascinate me, beacause they put our Scandinavian-Germanic heritage in a new and frightening light. We are used to view our ancient history as if the same people had always lived in this peaceful corner of Europe, without much contact with the rest of Europe. And although the Vikings were violent hordes, the sagas always portray them as individuals with names, ancestry and a home - shortly: so accurate that they might have been your neighbour, like:
This is the tale of Eirik Bjodaskalle at Obrestad on Jæren. He had to flee from Norway in the time of King Harald Fairhair, because of a murder. He fled to Iceland and there he got a son, Leif Eiriksson. But Eirik was a violent guy and commited another murder, so took his family to Greenland, which had just been found. His son Leif wanted to find the land that Bjarne Herjolfsson had seen further west, and thereby found America!
The sagas are a far cry from the anonymous, violent hordes that swarmed across Europe!
And I am very shocked when the idyllic world of the sagas are broken by finds of runic inscriptions as HARJILAZ AHTE, indicating the presence of anonymous, homosexual war-bands who tanned themselves black and went naked into battle!
<<I am taking some subjects of history in university now.>>
Well, I guess that explains why you seem so knowlegable on the subject of Germanic peoples. I'm also interested in how Germanic peoples are related and how those relationships came about, but I just read some things now and then.
Homosexual war-bands you say. . .
Kazoo:
From Wikipedia:
According to Procopius, bishop of Caesaria, the Heruli practiced a warrior-based, ritual homosexuality. In his De Bello Gothico, Prokopios is scandalized by the fact that "kai mixeis ouch hosias telousin, allas te kai andron" (Greek), or "and they have sex contrary to the ends of divine law, even with men" (VI. xiv. 36). Procopius does not elaborate upon this brief statement. However, he also noted that the young squires of the "Erouloi" (Greek for Heruli) go into battle without even a shield to protect themselves; once proven in battle, their Heruli masters then permitted them to carry one in battle, signifying their entrance into full manhood. Historian of homosexuality, David Greenberg, believes that in this passage, Prokopios implied that the homosexuality practiced by the Heruli was ritualistic and initiatory in nature, for "pederasty was practiced in connection with the transition from youth to manhood" in the early Germanic "men's societies (Männerbünder)" as well as being common to all Indo-European cultures. Again, this initiatory pederasty is identical to the practices of the closely-related Taifali, as reported by Ammianus Marcellinus (31.9.5). (See Greenberg's The Construction of Homosexuality, 1988, p. 243.)
Several of the names of Erilaz we know from runic inscriptions (see below) also have homosexual innuendo, such as Hrozaz ("Agile"), Muha ("Marsh", muck), Sa Wilag ("The Wily"), Wagigaz ("Audacious"), Wiwila ("Little Slave" or "Little Wiggler"), and Ubaz ("Mischievous"). In addition, one the inscribers notes that he is a thewaz, squire or boy-servant.
Why are you shocked? Wouldn't it be better to say you're surprised?
It is not the homosexuality that shocks me. It is the whole anonymous tribe thing that shocks me, because it is so different from the images of the sagas.