THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 099
The Expansion of the Teutons
7-01. The Expansion of the Teutons
The race which played the leading part in history after the break-up of the Roman Empire was the race known as the Teutons. Their early history is shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity which only begins to be lightened about the end of the second century of our era. Such information as we have we owe to Greeks and Romans; and what they give us is almost exclusively contemporary history, and the few fragmentary statements referring to earlier conditions, invaluable as they are to us, do not go far behind their own time. Archaeology alone enables us to penetrate further back. Without its aid it would be vain to think of attempting to answer the question of the origin and original distribution of the Germanic race.
The earliest home of the Teutons was in the countries surrounding the western extremity of the Baltic Sea, comprising what is now the south of Sweden, Jutland with Schleswig-Holstein, the German Baltic coast to about the Oder, and the islands with which the sea is studded as far as Gothland. This, not Asia, is the region which, with a certain extension south, as far, say, as the great mountain chain of central Germany, may be described as the cradle of the Indo-Germanic race. According to all appearance, this was the centre from which it impelled its successive waves of population towards the west, south, and south-east, to take possession, in the end, of all Europe and even of a part of Asia. A portion of the Indo-Germanic race, however, remained behind in the north, to emerge after the lapse of two thousand years into the light of history as a new people of wonderful homogeneity and remarkable uniformity of physical type, the people which we know as the Teutons. The expansion of the Indo-Germanic race and its division into various nations and groups of nations had in the main been completed during the Neolithic Period, so that in the Bronze Age — roughly, for the northern races, B.C. 1500-500 — the territories which we have indicated above belonged exclusively to the Teutons who formed a distinct race with its own special characteristics and language.
The distinctive feature of the civilisation of these prehistoric Teutons is the working of bronze. It is well known that in the North — a region where the Bronze Age was of long duration — a remarkable degree of skill was attained in this art. The Northern Teutonic Bronze Age forms therefore in every respect a striking phenomenon in the general history of human progress. On the other hand, the advance in culture which followed the introduction of the use of iron was not at first shared by the Northern peoples. It was only about B.C. 500, that is to say quite five hundred years later than in Greece and Italy, in the South of France and the upper part of the Danube basin, that the use of iron was introduced among the Teutons. The period of civilisation usually known as the Hallstatt period, of which the latter portion (from about B.C. 600 onwards) was not less brilliant than the Later Bronze Age, remained practically unknown to the Teutons.
The nearest neighbours of the Teutons in this earliest period were, to the south the Kelts, to the east the Baltic peoples (Letts, Lithuanians, Prussians) and the Slavs, in the extreme north the Finns. How far the Teutonic territories extended northward, it is difficult to say. The southern extremity of Scandinavia, that is to say the present Sweden up to about the lakes, certainly always belonged to them. This is put beyond doubt by archaeological discoveries. The Teutons therefore have as good a claim to be considered the original inhabitants of Scandinavia as their northern neighbours the great Finnish people. It is certain that even in the earliest times they were expanding in a northerly direction, and that they settled in the Swedish lake district, as far north as the Dal Elf, and the southern part of Norway, long before we have any historical information about these countries. Whether they found them unoccupied, or whether they drove the Finns steadily backward, cannot be certainly decided, although the latter is the more probable. The Sitones whom Tacitus mentions along with the Suiones as the nations dwelling furthest to the north were certainly Finns.
On the east, the Teutonic territory, which as we saw did not originally extend beyond the Oder, touched on that of the Baltic peoples who were later known collectively, by a name which is doubtless of Teutonic derivation, as Aists (Aestii in Tacitus, Germ. 45). To the south and east of these lay the numerous Slavonic tribes (called Venedi or Veneti by ancient writers) . The land between the Oder and the Vistula was therefore in the earliest times inhabited, in the north by peoples of the Letto-Lithuanian linguistic group, and southward by Slavs. On this side also the Teutons in quite early times forced their way beyond the boundaries of their original territory. In the sixth century B.C., as can be determined with considerable certainty from archaeological discoveries, the settlement of these territories by the Teutons was to a large extent accomplished, the Baltic peoples being forced to retire eastward, beyond the Vistula, and the Slavs towards the south-east. It is likely that the conquerors came from the north, from Scandinavia ; that they sought a new home on the south coast of the Baltic and towards the east and south-east. To this points also the fact (otherwise hard to explain) that the tribes which in historic times are settled in these districts, Goths, Gepidae, Rugii, Lemovii, Burgundii, Charini, Varini and Vandals, form a separate group, substantially distinguished in customs and speech from the Western Teutons, but shewing numerous points of affinity, especially in language and legal usage, to the Northern Teutons. When, further, a series of Eastern Teutonic names of peoples appear again in Scandinavia, those for instance of the Goths: Gauthigoth (Tavrot., Gautar, Gothland); Greutungi: Greotingi; Rugians: Rugi (Rygir, Rogaland); Burgundiones: Borgundarholmr; and when we find in Jordanes the legend of the Gothic migration asserting that this people came from Scandinavia (Scandza insula) as the officina gentium aid eerie velut vagina nationum the evidence in favour of a gradual settlement of eastern Germany by immigrants from the north seems irresistible.
By the year B.C. 400, at latest, the Teutons must have reached the northern base of the Sudetes. This is shewn by the name borrowed from the Keltic for the great central German range, the Hercynian Forest of the Greeks and Romans, called in Old High German Fergunna from the Teutonic Tergunjo from the Early Teutonic, Early Keltic Perkunia (borrowed, therefore, before the loss of the j-sound, which took place in Keltic at latest in the fifth century B.C., and before the Teutonic sound-shifting), and also by the name for the Kelts in general Wadchen or Walhas or Walhds from the Keltic Wolkoi (Lat. Volcae), borrowings which can only be explained by contact with the Kelts who lived on the southern skirts of the range.
It was only a step further to the settlement of the upper Vistula , and if the Bastarnae, the first Germanic tribe which comes into the light of history, had their seat here about B.C. 300, the settlement of the whole basin of the upper Vistula, right up to the Carpathians, must have been carried out by the Teutons in the course of the fourth century B.C..
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