Oium

Last updated
.mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{}
Gotaland
Gotland
Wielbark culture in the early 3rd century
Chernyakhov culture in the early 4th century
Roman Empire Chernyakhov.PNG
   Götaland
   Gotland
   Wielbark culture in the early 3rd century
   Chernyakhov culture in the early 4th century
Chernyakhov culture, 4th c. 0375 Ukraine.png
  Chernyakhov culture, 4th c.

Oium was a name for Scythia, or a fertile part of it, roughly in modern Ukraine, where the Goths, under a legendary King Filimer, settled after leaving Gothiscandza, according to the Getica by Jordanes, written around 551. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

It is generally assumed that the story reproduced by Jordanes contains a historical core, although several scholars have suggested that parts of it are fictional. [4]

Name etymology

Jordanes does not give an etymology, but many scholars interpret this word as a dative plural to a noun, widespread in the Germanic languages, whose Proto-Germanic reconstruction is *awjō and which means 'well-watered meadow' or 'island'. [2] (The same noun is also found in Scatinauia, the Latinised name of an island in Northern Europe mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia, from which the names of Scandinavia and Scania originate.) This noun is generally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *ahwō 'water; stream, river' (whence Gothic aƕa 'river'), which is cognate with Latin aqua 'water'. [4] This is seen as consistent with the description Jordanes gave of the Goths delight in this region's fertility.

As mentioned for example by Dennis H. Green [2] Jordanes describes another place with a similar name — the place where the Goths' relatives the Gepids lived:

XVII (96) These Gepidae were then smitten by envy while they dwelt in the province of Spesis on an island surrounded by the shallow waters of the Vistula. This island they called, in the speech of their fathers, Gepedoios [emphasis added]; but it is now [in the 6th century] inhabited by the race of the Vividarii, since the Gepidae themselves have moved to better lands. The Vividarii are gathered from various races into this one asylum, if I may call it so, and thus they form a nation. (97) So then, as we were saying, Fastida, king of the Gepidae, stirred up his quiet people to enlarge their boundaries by war. He overwhelmed the Burgundians, almost annihilating them, and conquered a number of other races also.

Chronology

A problem with Jordanes' account is that he dates the arrival of the Goths in Oium well before 1000 BCE (approximately 5 generations after 1490). [5] Historians who accept Jordanes' account as partially reflecting real events do not accept this aspect.

Jordanes

Mierow's translation of the one short passage in Getica IV, which mentions Oium is as follows:

[...] But when the number of the people increased greatly and Filimer, son of Gadaric, reigned as king — about the fifth since Berig — he decided that the army of the Goths with their families should move from that region.
(27) In search of suitable homes and pleasant places they came to the land of Scythia, called Oium in that tongue. Here they were delighted with the great richness of the country, and it is said that when half the army had been brought over, the bridge whereby they had crossed the river fell in utter ruin, nor could anyone thereafter pass to or fro.
For the place is said to be surrounded by quaking bogs and an encircling abyss, so that by this double obstacle nature has made it inaccessible. And even to-day one may hear in that neighborhood the lowing of cattle and may find traces of men, if we are to believe the stories of travellers, although we must grant that they hear these things from afar.
(28) This part of the Goths, which is said to have crossed the river and entered with Filimer into the country of Oium, came into possession of the desired land, and there they soon came upon the race [ gens ] of the Spali, joined battle with them and won the victory. Thence the victors hastened to the farthest part of Scythia, which is near the sea of Pontus; for so the story is generally told in their early songs, in almost historic fashion. Ablabius also, a famous chronicler of the Gothic race, confirms this in his most trustworthy account.
(29) Some of the ancient writers also agree with the tale. [...] [6]

The place where they first arrived is thus described not as the whole of Scythia, which Jordanes describes in the subsequent chapter (V), but a remote and isolated part of it, where the Spali lived. The Goths coming from the Baltic crossed a bridge to get there, but when it broke, it became impossible to cross back and forth anymore. [7] Returning to his narrative, Jordanes described the area where Filimer subsequently moved his people and settled as being near the Sea of Azov, noting that there are verbal legends around about Gothic origins, but that he prefers to trust what he reads:

(38) We read that on their first migration the Goths dwelt in the land of Scythia near Lake Maeotis [the Sea of Azov; the Latin calls it a marsh, not a sea or lake: paludem Meotidem]. On the second migration they went to Moesia, Thrace and Dacia, and after their third they dwelt again in Scythia, above the Sea of Pontus.
[...]
Of course if anyone in our city says that the Goths had an origin different from that I have related, let him object. For myself, I prefer to believe what I have read, rather than put trust in old wives' tales.
(39) To return, then, to my subject. The aforesaid race of which I speak is known to have had Filimer as king while they remained in their first home in Scythia near Maeotis. In their second home, that is in the countries of Dacia, Thrace and Moesia, Zalmoxes reigned, whom many writers of annals mention as a man of remarkable learning in philosophy.

According to Jordanes, the Goths left Oium in a second migration to Moesia, Dacia and Thrace, but they eventually returned, settling north of the Black Sea. Upon their return, they were divided under two ruling dynasties. The Visigoths were ruled by the Balþi and the Ostrogoths by the Amali.

The identified places

Jordanes himself understands Oium to be near the Sea of Azov, which was understood to be a marshy area in this period. Wolfram (p. 42) for example interprets Jordanes in a straightforward way to be referring to a place on the shore of the Sea of Azov.

The Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA) article on Oium, for example, proposes, based upon a proposal by Herwig Wolfram, that the uncrossable river with a broken bridge might be the Dnieper. The bridge story itself can not be taken literally as bridges crossing major rivers were not known in this area more than 1000 years BCE. It can therefore only refer to events in a much later period. [8] Both Herwig Wolfram and Walter Goffart see the bridge story as likely to be symbolic.

Based upon a proposal by Norbert Wagner, the RGA suggests that the marshes surrounding Oium could be the Pripyat or Rokitno marshes in the area of the modern border of Belarus and Ukraine. [4] This is to the west of the Dnieper, and not near Southern Russia where Wagner believed Oium was, and so Wagner saw this area, which contains the Pripyat River, as representing the "river" which needed to be crossed en route to Oium.

Jordanes' sources

As explained above, Jordanes represented his story as being consistent with history-like Gothic songs, and the lost work of Ablabius. He also specifically expressed his preference for written sources in defending this Oium account against legends he had encountered in Constantinople. Concerning the larger work where this story appears, the Getica, Jordanes also explained in his prefaces to it and his other surviving work, the Romana, that he had started the work with the aim of summarizing a far larger work written by Cassiodorus, which has not survived.

According to some historians, Jordanes' account of the Goths' history in Oium was constructed from his reading of earlier classical accounts and from oral tradition. [9] [10] According to other historians, Jordanes' narrative has little relation to Cassiodorus's, [11] [12] no relation to oral traditions [13] and little relation to actual history. [14]

Archaeology

Historians such as Peter Heather, Walter Goffart, Patrick Geary, A. S. Christensen and Michael Kulikowski have criticized the use of the Getica as a source for details about real Gothic origins. [14]

Archaeologically, the Chernyakhov culture, which is also called the Sântana de Mureș culture, contained parts of Ukraine, Moldova and Romania and corresponds with the extent of Gothic-influenced Scythia as known from 3rd and 4th century contemporaries. [15]

For archaeologists who subscribe to the proposal that Jordanes' account of migration from the Vistula can be seen in archaeological evidence, the Vistula archaeological culture which is proposed to represent the earlier Goths is the Wielbark culture. The account of Jordanes fits with the interpretation of the Wielbark and Chernyakhov cultures, in which Germanic peoples from the Vistula Basin, moved towards, influenced, and began to culturally dominate, peoples in the Ukraine. Some of the historians who agree with this scenario, such as Herwig Wolfram, propose that this did not require significant amounts of people to move. [16]


Norse mythology

In The origin of Rus', Omeljan Pritsak connects the Hervarar saga with its account of Gothic legendary history and of battles with the Huns, with historical place names in Ukraine from 150 to 450 AD, [17] This places the Goths' capital Árheimar , on the river Dniepr (Danpar). The connection to Oium was made by both Heinzel and Schütte. [18] However the attribution of places, people, and events in the saga is confused and uncertain, with multiple scholarly views on who, where, and what real things the legend refers to.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goths</span> Early Germanic people

The Goths were Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jordanes</span> 6th-century Byzantine writer; historian of ancient Romans and Goths

Jordanes, also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history (Romana) and the other on the Goths (Getica). The latter, along with Isidore of Seville's Historia Gothorum, is one of only two extant ancient works dealing with the early history of the Goths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ostrogoths</span> 5th–6th-century Germanic ethnic group

The Ostrogoths were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century, having crossed the Lower Danube. While the Visigoths had formed under the leadership of Alaric I, the new Ostrogothic political entity which came to rule Italy was formed in the Balkans under the influence of the Amal dynasty, the family of Theodoric the Great.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gepids</span> Germanic tribe

The Gepids were an East Germanic tribe who lived in the area of modern Romania, Hungary and Serbia, roughly between the Tisza, Sava and Carpathian Mountains. They were said to share the religion and language of the Goths and Vandals.

<i>Getica</i> Literary work by Jordanes on the origin and history of the Gothic people

De origine actibusque Getarum, commonly abbreviated Getica, written in Late Latin by Jordanes in or shortly after 551 AD, claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the origin and history of the Gothic people, which is now lost. However, the extent to which Jordanes actually used the work of Cassiodorus is unknown. It is significant as the only remaining contemporaneous resource that gives an extended account of the origin and history of the Goths, although to what extent it should be considered history or origin mythology is a matter of dispute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ermanaric</span> 4th-century king of the Goths

Ermanaric was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia inhabited by the Goths at the time. He is mentioned in two Roman sources: the contemporary writings of Ammianus Marcellinus, and in Getica by the sixth-century historian Jordanes. He also appears in a fictionalized form in later Germanic heroic legends.

According to a tale related by Jordanes in his Getica, Gothiscandza was the first settlement area of the Goths after their migration from Scandza during the first half of the 1st century CE. He claimed that the name was still in use in his own day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chernyakhov culture</span>

The Chernyakhov culture, Cherniakhiv culture or Sântana de Mureș—Chernyakhov culture was an archaeological culture that flourished between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE in a wide area of Eastern Europe, specifically in what is now Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and parts of Belarus. The culture is thought to be the result of a multiethnic cultural mix of the Geto-Dacian, Sarmatian, and Gothic populations of the area. "In the past, the association of this [Chernyakhov] culture with the Goths was highly contentious, but important methodological advances have made it irresistible."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filimer</span> Early Gothic king

Filimer was an early Gothic king, according to Jordanes. He was the son of Gadaric and the fifth generation since Berig settled with his people in Gothiscandza. When the Gothic nation had multiplied Filimer decided to move his people to Scythia where they defeated the Sarmatians. They then named their new territory Oium, meaning "in the waterlands". This migration would have allegedly taken place about 2030 years before Jordanes wrote his "Origin of the Goths".

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.

Peter John Heather is a British historian of late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Heather is Chair of the Medieval History Department and Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He specialises in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Goths, on which he for decades has been considered the world's leading authority.

The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi were a Gothic people of the plains north of the Lower Danube and west of the Dniester River in the 3rd and the 4th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greuthungi</span> 3rd-4th–century Gothic tribe of the Pontic steppe

The Greuthungi were a Gothic people who lived on the Pontic steppe between the Dniester and Don rivers in what is now Ukraine, in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. They had close contacts with the Tervingi, another Gothic people, who lived west of the Dniester River. To the east of the Greuthungi, living near the Don river, were the Alans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balamber</span> Hun chieftain

Balamber was ostensibly a chieftain of the Huns, mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica. Jordanes simply called him "king of the Huns" and writes the story of Balamber crushing the tribes of the Ostrogoths in the 370s; somewhere between 370 and more probably 376 AD.

The belagines were written laws which, according to Jordanes, were given to the Goths by Dicineus / Dekaineos, the Dacian-Getic legislator, Zalmoxian priest at the time of Burebista.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Name of the Goths</span> Topic in Germanic philology

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. Although the Goths have disappeared as a people, their name has survived in various appellations up to the present day.

Ablabius is thought to be either a historian, a geographer or ethnographer, who had written about the Goths, and whose work is cited by the influential 6th century historian of the Goths, Jordanes. Since Jordanes himself states that he based his own work on recollections of reading a work on Gothic history, now lost, composed by Cassiodorus, Ablabius has traditionally been thought of as a source also for the latter work, though this view has met with considerable scepticism.

There were several origin stories of the Gothic peoples recorded by Latin and Greek authors in late antiquity, and these are relevant not only to the study of literature, but also by historians seeking evidence of real historical events involving the Goths and other peoples mentioned in these stories.

Concerning the origin of the Goths before the 3rd century, there is no consensus among scholars. It was in the 3rd century that the Goths began to be described by Roman writers as an increasingly important people north of the lower Danube and Black Sea, in the area of modern Romania, Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine. They replaced other peoples who had been dominant in the region, such as especially the Carpi. However, while some scholars, such as Michael Kulikowski, believe there is insufficient evidence to come to strong conclusions about their earlier origins, the most commonly accepted proposal is that the Goths known to the Romans were a people whose traditions derived to some extent from the Gutones who lived near the delta of the Vistula in what is now Poland. More speculatively, the Gutones may have been culturally related to the similarly named Gutes of Gotland and the Geats of southern Scandinavia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haliurunas</span> Type of witch in Germanic paganism

Haliurunas, haljarunae, Haliurunnas, haliurunnae, etc., were Gothic "witches" who appear once in Getica, a 6th century work on Gothic history. The account tells that the early Goth king Filimer found witches among his people when they had settled north of the Black Sea, and that he banished them to exile. They were impregnated by unclean spirits and engendered the Huns, and the account is a precursor of later Christian traditions where wise women were alleged to have sexual intercourse and even orgies with demons and the Devil.

References

  1. Mierow 1908 , chapter IV (25)
  2. 1 2 3 Green 1998, p. 167.
  3. Merrills 2005 , p.120: "The term may, of course, have been a simple invention of Jordanes or Cassiodorus, intended to lend a witty verisimilitude to a knowingly derivative origin myth."
  4. 1 2 3 Günnewig 2003.
  5. Christensen 2002.
  6. Jordanes, Getica IV (27), translated by Mierow
  7. Merrills 2005
  8. Christensen 2002, p. 305.
  9. Merrills 2005 , p.120: "The influence of oral tradition in this passage [the passage introducing Oium] is palpable. Classical and scriptural parallels for the over-population motif, the Arcadian description of the Scythian Canaan and the broken bridge image do suggest that Gothic migration stories had not survived uncontaminated by contact with the Mediterranean world, but they remain recognizably the tropes of oral tradition", and p. 121: "Jerome and Orosius had identified the relatively unfamiliar Goths with the Scythian Getae of ancient historiography.... In the wake of this authority, the identification of Oium could be made with little comment".
  10. Wolfram, Herwig (2006). "Gothic history as historical ethnography" and Origo et religio: ethnic traditions and literature in early medieval texts". In From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms. Ed. Thomas F. X. Noble, Routledge, ISBN   0-415-32741-5, pp. 43-90.
  11. Amory 1997, pp. 36 & 292.
  12. Kulikowski 2006, pp. 50–51.
  13. Amory 1997, p. 295"It is a mistake to think that any of the material in the Getica comes from oral tradition."
  14. 1 2 Kulikowski 2006, p. 66.
  15. On the identification of Oium with the Sintana de Mures/Chernyakhov culture-area see Green (1998 , pp. 167–168), Heather & Matthews (1991 , pp. 50–52, 88–92), Kulikowski (2006 , pp. 62–63)
  16. Heather 1999, p. 16.
  17. Pritsak 1981, p. 214.
  18. Pritsak 1981, p. 209.

Sources