[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Lutiferre

It is quite certain, that the Goths inhabited several areas of modern Sweden and the Baltic. No less certain than any academical assertion in the field of ethnology.

As a part of the XIXth century Romanticism, in Sweden a cultural movement called Gothicismus created a confusion between the Geats and the Goths, and tried to link the inhabitants of Götaland to these.

But there is no certainty whatsoever that the Goths came from modern Sweden. Probably from the area of the Baltic. Anyway, the legacy of the Goths (for better or for worse, as I said earlier) lies in Spain. Not in Sweden.

And, anyway, this question was already settled in the Council of Basel, in 1434.

Anyway, I dont know exactly the locations of the Gothic and Suebian kingdoms in parts of Iberia and modern France, but I know they existed for some time. Who influenced who does not change the ethnological circumstance that these peoples were Germanic and were absorbed as a component into the melting pot that today make up Spaniards.

Who influenced who does change everything.

If you are using "Germanic" as an ancient tribal type linked to an ancient culture, i.e. in terms of blood, and if you presume a Germanic influence in Spain because of it, then you will have to deny the degree of germanicity of many of the to-day so-called Germanics, in modern speak.

But Germanic in these contexts is nearly always and invariably used based on cultures and languages, which share an origin. So if they were influenced and assimilated, instead of being them who influenced and who assimilated, there is no room for such a claim.

And, whatever remains in the Spaniards of the Gothic character, it is distinctively Gothic and not generically Germanic.

Else, you would be pretending that all Germanic tribes were equal in character, which is too pretentious especially in this case where you would be comparing peoples from settlement societies, with a semi-nomadic people who after a long wandering are assumed by logics to have acquired and assimilated a wide cultural influence from other peoples who they encountered, and who had forged their character through their long trajectory.

Originally Posted by Vincent

In terms of culture or blood? I don't believe they were 'pure germanics', one way or another. I never thought seriously about this subject, but this what Mynydd said sounds logical to me:

I wasn't referring to that. More in the line of the terms of the discussion of the Council of Basel, and of the details discussed above.

But true, it would be extremely naïve to believe that after that long age of nomadism, they did not assimilate other peoples.

Take for example the Vandals. At the time when they arrived in Hispanis, they were accompanied by a smaller tribe which was Indo-Iranian, the Alans, who were federated to the Alans. And they later merged in a joint crown of Vandals and Alans, before crossing to North Africa.