Roman History Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

To understand the history of Gotland, the home of the Varangians, one must fully realize that Gotland was an independent Merchant Farmers’ Republic, and the hub of the Baltic Sea region, which from time immemorial had its relations mainly east and south. The Gotlandic history is misleading and difficult to understand if it is bundled with the Swedish history, which so far has been done. They both have their separate history.
There are some deadlocks in Swedish history which have blocked the view for a broader perspective. I here think of the Roman sources about the Baltic Sea region. In the 1600s when Sweden was a super- power they had to give it a story that matched its position in the world and when they in the Roman sources found peoples and places that started with an ‘S’ they immediately concluded that it must be ‘Svear’ and the ‘Scandinavian peninsula’.
The Roman name for the Scandinavian peninsula was, however, still in the 500s THULE. This historical picture was created by Johannes Magnus, and continued by Olof Rudbeck in ‘Atlantica’. Still today many writers without thought are copying these old delusions that the Roman writers would have written about some mighty Svear at the beginning of our era.
Let us look at the archaeological evidences and take such a simple example as the 7500 Roman coins from Tacitus time and there about, denarius, found in present day Sweden. 6500 of these are from Gotland. Only 80 are from the Lake Mälar area. Or take the quantity of bronze bowls from the Capuan factory outside Naples found on Gotland.
How can Swedish scholars with this quantity of finds on Gotland from the Roman Imperial time pretend that Gotland did not exist?
Tacitus wrote about Suionum Civitate. He accordingly tells about the people who lived in Mare Suebicum (the Baltic Sea), i.e. the Gotlanders, who already then had reached a high cultural level and had trade relations all over Europe, including the Roman Empire.
He continues: “Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage. Here end the territories of the Suevians.” The Sithones lived in the Lake Mälar area and are what we later call Svear.
From the archaeological findings we can accordingly establish that trade relations between Gotland and the Roman Empire were intense.
No Svea kingdom as such existed yet at that time. Tacitus says that the people in the Lake Mälar area were ruled by a woman. Still in the Beowulf epos, probably written down in the 700s, the people in the Lake Mälar area are not known as Svear but as Skilfings.
It is quite clear that historical observations can not only be based on name similarities, but one must first look at the map, the archaeological finds and the chronological development and only secondarily try to match the names that different peoples have had in different areas at different times, and when these names first appear in written sources.
The early history is a piece of myth, oral tradition and fragmentary records. From all this can suddenly emerge a pattern, the outline of a process that may not be scientifically inviolable, which it never really can be. Yet it is nearer the truth than you could ever reach with ‘scientific accuracy’.
If you take the Guta Saga, written down about 1220, and the Beowulf Epos, written down in the 700s, as serious as Snorri Sturluson’s ‘Nordiska kungasagor’, written down about 1220, has been honored - i.e. as evidence in lack of better sources, there will open up a new, breathtaking perspective regarding Gotlandic, Swedish and Scandinavian history during the Roman time of the emperors and the Migration Period. Yes also that of Europe.
Already in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age there are signs of Gotlandic trading Emporiums on the east coast of the Baltic Sea and all the way to the river Volga.
Trade, especially amber trade, experiences in the Bronze Age a large bloom. The Gotlanders seem to have controlled the amber trade with trading Emporiums in the Vistula area. The extensive trade relations convey influences from outside. From southern cultural centers, Egypt, Crete, Mycenae, spiritual impulses stretched their effects also to the Baltic Sea region and Gotland.
The immigration of the Herul Royal family (Svear) to the Lake Mälar area in the early 500s, when they bring a new ruling dynasty and a new religion to the area (what we today know as the Ynglinga dynasty and the Æsir religion), is mentioned in several sources. Their entrance on the stage changes the situation in the Baltic Sea region. The wars between the Skilfings (Svear) and the Gotlanders are mentioned in the Beowulf epos.
The Guta Saga tells that the Gotlanders always kept the victory and their right: “Many kings fought against Gutland while it was heathen; the Gotlanders, however, always held the victory and constantly protected their rights. Later the Gotlanders sent a large number of messengers to ‘suiarikis’ (Svear), but none of them could make peace before Avair Strabain of Alva parish. He made the first peace with the ‘suja kunung’ (king of the Svear).”
The Trade Treaty between the Gotlanders and the Svear, probably from second half of the 500s, means that the Gotlanders could freely trade on the new kingdom in the Lake Mälar area and its conquered lands east of the Baltic Sea. There were large Gotlandic trading Emporiums, i. a. in Grobina (Latvia) ca 650-850 CE, an area at that time conquered by the Svear. Helgö and Birka would be trading places with large Gotlandic influence. E.g., writes Adam of Bremen in his story, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, that “Birka is a Gotlandic (Gothia) town located in the middle of the country of the Sveoner.”
A new way of burial appears in the Lake Mälar area in the 500s, as well as the introduction of the Roman calendar. If we accept that the Heruli settle in the Lake Mälar area at this time, as mentioned by Procopius, it explains a lot. Actually this in fact explains the rise of the Vendel era, which in the Lake Mälar area starts first half of the 500s and continues until the beginning of the Middle Ages. On Gotland it starts about 50 years earlier and is explained by the Gotlanders’ close contacts with Theoderic’s Gothic kingdom.
The first writer to mention some people on the Scandinavian peninsula (THULE), except Tacitus Sitonens in the Lake Mälar area, is Prokopios who wrote in the 500s. With the discovery that the Beowulf epos is about the Gotlanders in combination with the Heruls immigration to the Lake Mälar area we have been able to shed new light on the Gotlandic history. Indeed the history of the whole Baltic Sea region has come in a whole new light. We now have a link between the Beowulf epos, Guta Saga and the archaeological finds from the 400s and 500s.
Roman gold coins known as solidi have been found on the three Baltic Sea islands: Bornholm, 150, Öland 298, Gotland 270 + 47 on the market place Helgö in Mälaren. The latter have been intended as raw material and are according to the researchers most likely derived from Gotland. It is obvious here to see Helgö and then Birka as Gotlandic trading venues, as implied by the archaeological sources. Gotland’s importance for trade and culture in the Baltic Sea region during the first millennium can also be illustrated by the coin finds.
From the 500s until the 1000s the Gotlanders have, according to Swedish researchers, been considered to rarely be mentioned in ancient sources. They are, however, well known in Arabic and Byzantine sources as al-Rus’ and Varangian merchants. The word Varangian was used by Arabs, Greeks and Kievan Rus’ for the merchants from the island in the Baltic Sea region (the Gotlanders). It probably came from the old Norse word ‘vár’, which means ‘union through promise’, and was used by a group of men to keep them together in an association, and under oath observe certain obligations to support each other in good faith and to share the resulting profits. It was a common word, when trading adventures were undertaken by Gotlandic tradesmen on the Russian rivers. They closed a business contract with each other and pledged to defend each other. Another meaning of the word was for the Gotlanders who acted as mercenary soldiers to the rulers of Khazaria, Miklagarðr (Constantinople) and Garðaríki (Kievan Rus’).
The Gotlandic Varangian Guard was an elite unit of the Byzantine army formed under emperor Basil II in 988. .