Migration Period

During the 5th century, as the Roman Empire drew toward its end, numerous Germanic tribes, under pressure from invading Asian peoples and/or population growth and climate change, began migrating en masse in far and diverse directions, taking them to England and as far south through present day Continental Europe to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. Over time, this wandering meant intrusions into other tribal territories, and the ensuing wars for land escalated with the dwindling amount of unoccupied territory. Wandering tribes then began staking out permanent homes as a means of protection. Much of this resulted in fixed settlements from which many, under a powerful leader, expanded outwards. A defeat meant either scattering or merging with the dominant tribe, and this continued to be how nations were formed. In Denmark the Jutes merged with the Danes, in Sweden the Geats merged with the Swedes. In England, for example, we now most often refer to the Anglo-Saxons rather than the two separate tribes.

Role in the Fall of Rome

Some of the Germanic tribes are frequently blamed in popular depictions of the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century. Professional historians and archaeologists have since the 1950s shifted their interpretations in such a way that the Germanic peoples are no longer seen as invading a decaying empire but as being co-opted into helping defend territory the central government could no longer adequately administer. Individuals and small groups from Germanic tribes had long been recruited from the territories beyond the limes (i.e., the regions just outside the Roman Empire), and some of them had risen high in the command structure of the army. Then the Empire recruited entire tribal groups under their native leaders as officers. Assisting with defense eventually shifted into administration and then outright rule, as Roman of government passed into the hands of Germanic leaders. Odoacer, who deposed Romulus Augustulus, is the ultimate example.

The presence of successor states controlled by a nobility from one of the Germanic tribes is evident in the 6th century - even in Italy, the former heart of the Empire, where Odoacer was followed by Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, who was regarded by Roman citizens and Gothic settlers alike as legitimate successor to the rule of Rome and Italy.

Conversion to Christianity

The Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals were Christianized while they were still outside the bounds of the Empire; however, they converted to Arianism rather than to orthodox Catholicism, and were soon regarded as heretics. The one great written remnant of the Gothic language is a translation of portions of the Bible made by Ulfilas, the missionary who converted them. The Lombards were not converted until after their entrance into the Empire, but received Christianity from Arian Germanic groups.

The Franks were converted directly from paganism to Catholicism without an intervening time as Arians. Several centuries later, Anglo-Saxon and Frankish missionaries and warriors undertook the conversion of their Saxon neighbours. A key event was the felling of Thor's Oak near Fritzlar by Boniface, apostle of the Germans, in 723. Eventually, the conversion was forced by armed force, successfully completed by Charlemagne, in a series of campaigns (the Saxon Wars), that also brought Saxon lands into the Frankish empire.

Assimilation

"Germanic" as understood today is a linguistic term. For this reason, not all peoples that largely descend from the ancient Germanic peoples, genetically, are Germanic speakers today. Germanic peoples were often quick to assimilate into foreign cultures. Established examples include the Romanized Norsemen in Normandy, and the societal elite in medieval Russia among whom many were the descendants of Slavified Norsemen (a theory, however, contested by some Slavic scholars in the former Soviet Union, who name it the Normanist theory).

Great Britain is similarly considered an example of assimilation, where elements of the Germanic tribes called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes merged with Celts and French-speaking Norsemen.

Scotland is historically a country of mixed Germanic and Celtic culture and settlement; while the Scottish Highlands and Galloway were until recently more Celtic and akin to Celtic Ireland in its culture and Scottish Gaelic language, the Scottish Lowlands share their culture and language closely with its neighbour to the south and other Germanic peoples, speaking the Scots language. The Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands, though a part of Scotland, were historically Scandinavian in culture, though they no longer speak their native language Norn as an influx of Lallans speaking lowland Scots resulted in its displacement.

Ireland is also a country of mixed Germanic and Celtic culture, but for different reasons than Scotland. As with Scotland, Ireland had much Scandinavian settlement, both in Viking and Anglo-Norman colonies. Through centuries of British dominance, many parts of Ireland gradually developed a character that was more British than native Celtic, particularly in Ulster and Leinster.

France saw a great deal of Germanic settlement, and even its namesake the Franks were a Germanic people. Entire regions of France (such as Alsace, Burgundy and Normandy) were settled heavily by Germanic peoples, contributing to their unique regional cultures and dialects. But most of the languages spoken in France today are Romance languages, while the people have a heavy Gallic substratum that predates Latin and Germanic settlement.

Portugal and Spain also had a great measure of Germanic settlement, due to the Visigoths and the Suevi (Quadi and Marcomanni), who settled permanently. The Vandals (Silingi and Hasdingi) were also present, before moving on to North Africa, where they were absorbed into the local population. Many words in Spanish come from their genetically decents and other Germanic tribes also.

Italy, especially the area north of the city of Rome, has also had a history of heavy Germanic settlement. Germanic tribes such as the Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths had successfully invaded and sparsely settled Italy in the 5th century AD. Most notably, in the 6th century AD, the Germanic tribe known as the Lombards entered and settled primarily in the area known today as Lombardy. The Normans, a partially Germanic people, also conquered and ruled Sicily and parts of southern Italy for a time.

Migration Period

The Migration Period is a name given by historians to a human migration which occurred within the period AD 300–900 in the area which comprises Central Europe.

The migration included the Goths, Vandals, and Franks, among other Germanic and Slavic tribes. The migration may have been triggered by the incursions of the Huns, population pressures, or climate changes.

The modern account

Modern historians divide the migration movement into two phases. The first phase, between AD 300 and 500, largely seen from the Mediterranean perspective, saw the movement of Germanic and other tribes and resulted in putting Germanic peoples in control of most areas of the former Western Roman Empire. (See also: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Alans, Langobards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, Alamanni). The first to formally enter Roman territory were the Visigoths who are considered nowadays to have put an end to the last outliving form of Roman Empire. They were first called by the Roman Empire to defend its boundaries in exchange of fees, but they later occupied it. They were soon followed by the Ostrogoths led by Thiudareiks.

The second phase, between AD 500 and 900, saw Slavic, Turkish and other tribes on the move, re-settling in Eastern Europe and gradually making it predominantly Slavic, and affecting Anatolia and the Caucasus as the first Turkic peoples arrived. See also: Avars, Huns, Arabs, Varangians. The last phase of the migrations saw the coming of the Magyars to Pannonia and the expansion of the Vikings out of Scandinavia.

While other migrations have happened later in the history of Europe, generally they did not give rise to new states to the same extent, comprising mainly temporary invasions — with the notable exception of the Turkish invasion which started the Ottoman Empire.

Volkerwanderung

The German term Volkerwanderung  ("the migration of peoples"), is also used in English-language historiography as an alternate label for the Migration Period.

However, the term Volkerwanderung is also strongly associated with a certain romantic historical style which has strong roots in the German-speaking world of the 19th century, perhaps associated with the same cultural process which included the music of Wagner and the writings of Nietzsche and Goethe.

In Latin descendant countries these migrations are rather called "invasions" (e.g. Italian term "Invasioni Barbariche" meaning "barbarian invasions"). This is due to a widespread view of Northern people of that period as uncivillan and primitive, and often they are blamed for destroying the Roman Empire. This is an old way of thinking remnant from the Renaissance, common until Romanticism and still alive in France and Italy.

In this sense, the forced expansion of the Germanic tribes into France, England, Northern Italy and Iberia indicates the energy and dynamism of those so-called "barbarian" peoples. This analysis became associated with 19th century German Romantic nationalism and the Eastern expansion of Germany (Drang nach Osten, the urge to move East).

It is argued that this kind of analysis contributed to the Nazi folk ideology of Lebensraum, or "living space", the theory that the Germans had a mission to expand their population beyond the national borders of Germany.

Migration Period

In reaction to the above, 20th-century English-language historiography largely abandoned the German term, replacing it with "Migration Period", as in the series Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology or Gyula Laslo's The Art of the Migration Period.

The "invasions" of Romantic-generation historians have given way, too: scholars today hold that a great deal of the migration did not represent hostile invasion, but rather tribes taking the opportunity to enter and settle lands already thinly populated and weakly held by a divided Roman state whose economy was shrinking.

Frankish Empire

The Frankish Empire was the territory of the Franks, from the 5th to the 10th centuries, from 481 ruled by Clovis I of the Merovingian Dynasty, the first king of all the Franks. From 751, under the Carolingian Dynasty, it is known as the Carolingian Empire. After the Treaty of Verdun of 843 it was split into East, West and Middle Francia. East Francia gave rise to the Holy Roman Empire with Otto I the Great in 962.

Since the term "Empire" properly applies only to times after the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, and since the unified kingdom was repeatedly split and re-united, most historians prefer to use the term Frankish Kingdoms or Frankish Realm to refer to the entirety of Frankish rule from the 5th to the 9th century.

Origins

The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to Merovech (sometimes Latinized as Meroveus or Merovius), leader of the Salian Franks from about 447 to 457, and emerges into wider history with the victories of Childeric I (reigned about 457 - 481) against the Visigoths, Saxons and Alamanni.