The Aesti (also Aestii, Astui or Aests) were an ancient people first described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his treatise Germania (circa 98 AD). [1] According to Tacitus, the territory of Aesti was located somewhere east of the Suiones (Swedes).
Tacitus described the Aesti as having lived "upon the right of the Suevian Sea" [2] and had the same customs and attire as the Germanic Suevi. It has been suggested that the Aesti worshipped the mother of the gods, similar to the Nerthus cult among northern Germanic peoples. [3] Though they were most likely of Baltic origin, they had extensively intermingled with the neighbouring Gothic tribes. [4] [5]
Tacitus wrote that the Aesti were "the only people who collect amber—glaesum is their own word for it—in the shallows or even on the beach". [6] Glaesum, an apparently Latinised word for amber (in Latin, sucinum), is the only surviving example of the Aestian language. The word is quoted of being of Germanic origin, given its similarity to the Gothic word glas. [7] Tacitus, however, describes the language of the Aestii as closer to that spoken in Britain than those of other neighbouring tribes. [8]
The Old Prussian and modern Lithuanian names for the Vistula Lagoon, Aīstinmari and Aistmarės, respectively, appear to derive from Aesti and mari ("lagoon" or "fresh-water bay"), which suggests that the area around the lagoon had links with the Aesti. [9]
The writers of antiquity, beginning with Tacitus, who was the first Roman author to mention them in his Germania, provide very little information on the Aesti. [10] Although Tacitus never travelled to Magna Germania himself and only recorded information he had obtained from others, the short ethnographic excursus below is the most detailed ancient account of the Aesti that we have:
"Upon the right of the Suevian Sea the Aestian nations reside, who use the same customs and attire with the Suevians; their language more resembles that of Britain. They worship the Mother of the Gods. As the characteristic of their national superstition, they wear the images of wild boars. This alone serves them for arms, this is the safeguard of all, and by this every worshipper of the Goddess is secured even amidst his foes. Rare amongst them is the use of weapons of iron, but frequent that of clubs. In producing of grain and the other fruits of the earth, they labour with more assiduity and patience than is suitable to the usual laziness of Germans. Nay, they even search the deep, and of all the rest are the only people who gather amber. They call it glesum, and find it amongst the shallows and upon the very shore. But, according to the ordinary incuriosity and ignorance of Barbarians, they have neither learnt, nor do they inquire, what is its nature, or from what cause it is produced. In truth it lay long neglected amongst the other gross discharges of the sea; till from our luxury, it gained a name and value. To themselves it is of no use: they gather it rough, they expose it in pieces coarse and unpolished, and for it receive a price with wonder.
The placement of the Tacitean Aesti is based primarily on their association with amber, a popular luxury item during the life of Tacitus, with known sources at the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic amber trade, which appears to have extended to the Mediterranean Sea, has been traced by archaeologists back to the Nordic Bronze Age; its major center was in the region of Sambia.[ citation needed ]
This trade probably existed before the historical Trojan War in the 13th century BCE, as amber is one of the substances in which the palace of Menelaus at Sparta was said to be rich in Homer's Iliad . [11]
Cassiodorus' Variae, published in 537, contains a letter written by Cassiodorus in the name of Theodoric the Great, addressed to the Aesti:
It is gratifying to us to know that you have heard of our fame, and have sent ambassadors who have passed through so many strange nations to seek our friendship.
We have received the amber which you have sent us. You say that you gather this lightest of all substances from the shores of ocean, but how it comes thither you know not. But as an author named Cornelius (Tacitus) informs us, it is gathered in the innermost islands of the ocean, being formed originally of the juice of a tree (whence its name succinum), and gradually hardened by the heat of the sun. Thus it becomes an exuded metal, a transparent softness, sometimes blushing with the color of saffron, sometimes glowing with flame-like clearness. Then, gliding down to the margin of sea, and further purified by the rolling of the tides, it is at length transported to your shores to be cast upon them. We have thought it better to point this out to you, lest you should imagine that your supposed secrets have escaped our knowledge. We sent you some presents by our ambassadors, and shall be glad to receive further visits from you by the road which you have thus opened up, and to show you future favors.
The style of the letter proves that the nation was at that time independent, not ruled by the Ostrogoths. Apparently, Cassiodorus considered it politically essential to establish friendly relations with the Nordic region. The letter also implies that the Aesti were fully confident of the value of amber and had made out of it a trade secret. Sending presents and promising to show future favors were in ancient times a cordial way of giving de jure recognition to another power. [12]
The sixth-century historian Jordanes makes two references to the Aesti in his book, "The Origins and the Deeds of the Goths", which was a treatment of Cassiodorus' longer book (which no longer survives) on the history of the Goths. The first quote geographically places the Aestii beyond the Vidivarii, on the shore of the Baltic: "a subject race, likewise hold the shore of Ocean." The next quote concerns the subjugation of the Aesti by Hermanaric, king of the Gothic Greuthungi: "This ruler also subdued by his wisdom and might the race of the Aesti, who dwell on the farthest shore of the German Ocean".
In an 11th-century manuscript of King Alfred's account of the voyage from Hedeby to Truso by Wulfstan, held by the British Museum, includes ethnographic information on the medieval Aesti, [13] [14] in which the terms Esti, Est-mere and Eastland are used referring to Old Prussians.[ citation needed ] In the text, a summary description of the country and its riches is followed by a very detailed account of the people's funeral customs. [15] [16] It mentions the old trading port Truso of Old Prussians and also calls the land Witland - "the Vistula is a very large river, and near it lie Witland and Weonodland; and Witland belongs to the Esthonians ["belimpedh to Estum"]." [17]
During the 11th century, Adam of Bremen, citing Einhard (who in the Vita Caroli Magni states that "the Slavs and the Aisti live on the shores of the Eastern Sea"), mentions the coastal tribe as the Haisti, and refers to today's Estonia as Aestland. [18]
The Amber Road was an ancient trade route for the transfer of amber from coastal areas of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Prehistoric trade routes between Northern and Southern Europe were defined by the amber trade.
The Angles were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name, which probably derives from the Angeln peninsula, is the root of the name England, as well as ultimately the word English for its people and language. According to Tacitus, writing around 100 AD, a people known as Angles (Anglii) lived beyond the Lombards and Semnones, who lived near the River Elbe.
The Balts or Baltic peoples are a group of peoples inhabiting the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea who speak Baltic languages. Among the Baltic peoples are modern-day Lithuanians and Latvians — all East Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Curonians, Sudovians, Skalvians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the West Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct.
The Suebi were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names such as the Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones, and Lombards. New groupings formed later, such as the Alamanni and Bavarians, and two kingdoms in the Migration Period were simply referred to as Suebian.
Truso was a Viking Age port of trade (emporium) set up by the Scandinavians at the banks of the Nogat delta branch of the Vistula River, close to a bay, where it emptied into the shallow and brackish Vistula Lagoon. This sizeable lagoon is separated from the Gdańsk Bay by the Vistula Spit at the southern Baltic Sea coast. In the 9th century, the merchant Wulfstan of Hedeby travelled to Truso in the service of the English King Alfred the Great and wrote his account of the place at a prominent location of the Amber Road, which attracted merchants from central and southern Europe, who supplied the markets in the Mediterranean and the Middle East with the highly valued commodity.
Wulfstan of Hedeby was a late ninth-century traveller and trader. His travel accounts, as well as those of another trader, Ohthere of Hålogaland, were included in the Old English Orosius. It is unclear if Wulfstan was English or indeed if he was from Hedeby, in what is now northern Germany near the city of Schleswig but in the 9th century was Danish.
The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a large group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe watershed and by the first century AD expanding into Bavaria, Swabia, and Bohemia. Notably this included the large sub-group of the Suevi, that itself contained many different tribal groups, but the Irminones also included for example the Chatti.
Germania, also more specifically called Magna Germania, Germania Libera, or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman provinces of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, was a historical region in north-central Europe during the Roman era, which was associated by Roman authors with the Germanic peoples. According to Roman geographers, this region stretched roughly from the Rhine in the west to the Vistula in the east, and to the Upper Danube in the south, and the known parts of southern Scandinavia in the north. Archaeologically, these people correspond roughly to the Roman Iron Age of those regions.
The Vistula Veneti, also called Baltic Veneti, Venedi or Venethi, were an Indo-European people that inhabited the lands of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the Bay of Gdańsk. Ancient Roman geographers first mentioned Venedi in the 1st century AD, differentiating a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from those of the neighbouring Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine historians described the Veneti as the ancestors of the Slavs who, during the second phase of the Migration Period, crossed the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire.
Old Prussians, Baltic Prussians or simply Prussians were a Baltic people that inhabited the region of Prussia, on the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula Lagoon to the west and the Curonian Lagoon to the east. As Balts, they spoke an Indo-European language of the Baltic branch now known as Old Prussian and worshipped pre-Christian deities. Their ethnonym was later adopted by predominantly Low German-speaking inhabitants of the region.
The Germania, written by the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus around 98 AD and originally entitled On the Origin and Situation of the Germans, is a historical and ethnographic work on the Germanic peoples outside the Roman Empire.
The Fenni were an ancient people of northeastern Europe, first described by Cornelius Tacitus in Germania in AD 98.
Drużno is a body of water historically considered a lake in northern Poland on the east side of the Vistula delta, near the city of Elbląg. As it is currently not deep enough to qualify as a lake hydrologically and receives some periodic inflow of sea water from the Vistula Lagoon along the Elbląg River, some suggest that it be termed an estuary reservoir. A village of recent origin also called Drużno is situated near the lake.
The Lemovii were a Germanic tribe, only once named by Tacitus in the late 1st century. He noted that they lived near the Rugii and both lived east of the Gutones, who are lived in the delta of the Vistula river. All three of these peoples they had short swords and round shields.
The Varini, Warni or Warini were one or more Germanic peoples who originally lived in what is now northeastern Germany, near the Baltic Sea.
The Gutones were a Germanic people who were reported by Roman era writers in the 1st and 2nd centuries to have lived in what is now Poland. The most accurate description of their location, by the geographer Ptolemy, placed them east of the Vistula River.
Ancient Estonia refers to a period covering History of Estonia from the middle of the 8th millennium BC until the conquest and subjugation of the local Finnic tribes in the first quarter of the 13th century during the Teutonic and Danish Northern Crusades.
The Vistula Lagoon is a brackish water lagoon on the Baltic Sea roughly 56 miles (90 km) long, 6 to 15 miles wide, and up to 17 feet (5 m) deep, separated from the Gdańsk Bay by the Vistula Spit.
The name of the Goths is one of the most discussed topics in Germanic philology. It is first recorded by Greco-Roman writers in the 3rd century AD, although names that are probably related appear earlier. Derived from Proto-Germanic *Gutōz ~ *Gutaniz, it is closely related to and probably means the same as the names of both the Geats of southern Sweden and Gutes of Gotland. The implications of these similarities, and the actual meaning of the Gothic name, are disputed in scholarship.
Witland is a seldom-used name for a historical region in the south-east Baltic region inhabited by Prussians (Aestii), called Estum in the text of Wulfstan. The name appears in King Alfred's adapted version of Orosius, in which the traveller Wulfstan's accounts were incorporated.