Few people have had such a significant impact on the formation of European history as the Goths. It was with their invasion of Europe in the II-III centuries AD that the Great Migration of Peoples actually began. The Goths, under the command of the leader Alaric, were the first barbarians who dared to shake civilized Europe with their audacity and to conquer Rome in 410, the proud capital of the Latin Empire. As a result of the campaigns of conquest, the Goths took possession of lands throughout Europe, starting with the modern Caucasus, Crimea and Ukraine in the east - and including Italy and Spain in the south and west.
Goths and Slavs
In Eastern Europe, the Goths lived alongside the Slavs for several centuries. According to linguists, it was from the Gothic language through Old Slavonic that such common words as “bread” (hlaifs), “cauldron” (katils), “tempt” (kausjan), “camel” (ulbandus), “tax collector” (motareis), “Fasting” (fastan), “stable” (hlaiw), “reward” (mizdo), “dancing” (plinsjan), “fig” (smakka) and many others. Moreover, most likely, it was from the Crimean-Gothic wingart that the Russian word "grapes" originated.
Gothic architecture, font and modern "Goths"
Despite the fact that in western Europe the Goths ceased to exist as a people already in the 8th century AD, their name continued to be used after that. So, the bold architectural style invented in the XII century, with graceful pointed arches and bizarre pointed spiers, so radically different from the Romanesque architecture that preceded it, was called "Gothic" - and this despite the fact that the ethnic Goths did not have the slightest relations. The same "barbaric" Gothic style then dominated in sculpture, and in painting, and in poetry, and even in book miniatures: a special angular font, which is used to write almost all late medieval manuscripts, is also called "Gothic". In Germany, this typeface was used in typography until the end of World War II.
Finally, already in our days, we have witnessed the birth of a new youth subculture, which also uses the ethnonym "Goths" for its own purposes. That is how, "Goths", are called themselves the clinking weighty chains and dressed in all black fans of dark "gothic" music, a kind of heavy metal rock.
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The doom of European ready
The Goths ceased to exist as an ethnic group early enough. The Ostrogoths (Ostrogoths) who lived in Italy were almost completely assimilated by the local population after the bloody wars with the Byzantine commander Belisarius (535-554). The same happened to the Visigoths (Visigoths / Wezegoths) living in Spain after the Arab invasion of 711. According to some assumptions, the Spanish region of Catalonia - where the famous "Barcelona" plays today, bears in its name an echo of the historical confusion in this region in medieval times, the Goths and the Alans (ie "Gotalania").
The mystery of the Crimean Goths
And only in Crimea did the Goths continue to exist as a separate people at least until the 16th, and perhaps even up to the 17th-18th centuries. Penetrated into the Crimea in the III century A. D. Gothic tribes settle mainly in the south-western Crimea and, having adopted the Christian faith of the Byzantine model, begin to mix with the local Alanian population, at the same time adopting the language and culture of the Byzantine Greeks. Archaeological data indicate that in the 6th-7th centuries, Crimean-Gothic women wore a typical Germanic costume, which included precious brooches, earrings, bracelets and amazingly beautiful massive buckles with an image of an eagle's head (the so-called “eagle-headed "). Due to mixing with the Alans (the ancestors of modern Ossetians), medieval travelers and modern scientists call the Crimean Goths "Gotalans" or even "Alanogoths".
After the invasion of the Crimea by the Tatars in the 13th century, some of the Goths began to use Tatar in addition to Greek. Even in the second half of the 16th century (and according to some sources up to the end of the 18th century), the Gothic population of Crimea continued to use their native Germanic dialect as the language of home communication. This unique dialect is chronologically the latest relic of the East Germanic languages spoken by the European Goths.
In 1475, new conquerors - the Ottoman Turks - invaded Crimea. After that, the Greekized Gothic population begins to culturally (and possibly ethnically and religiously) “Tatarize” and lose its Gothic identity. Nevertheless, even in the 19th century, some ethnographers and historians considered the blue-eyed and fair-haired population of the Greek villages of Mariupol and the mountainous Crimea to be the descendants of the Goths. During the Second World War, Nazi ideologists tried to use the "Gothic theme", hatching plans to rename the Crimea to "Gotenland" and to populate the peninsula with ethnic Germans.
Last Goths
So where did the Crimean Goths disappear to? Scientists of the 19th century often wondered what, in fact, became of an entire people, which showed signs of life, according to some reports, as early as the end of the 18th century. The researchers quite rightly pointed out that the search for descendants of the Goths should have begun with the study of several ethnic groups with which they supposedly mixed and entered into marriage. Of these groups, the Tats and Urum, who were Christians who spoke Greek, and who were resettled from the Crimea to the Azov region in 1778, as well as the South Coast and Mountain Tatars of the Crimea who spoke Crimean Tatar, were usually distinguished from these groups. Indeed, in both, individuals with light or red hair, pale skin, and blue eyes can often be found.
So, when you see a smiling blue-eyed Tatar at the market in Bakhchisarai, you should know that in front of you, perhaps, a descendant of an ancient nation, whose warlike ancestors once began the Great Migration of Nations …
Mikhail Kizilov