Saturday, December 6, 2014

The Barbarians - The Vandals - Full documentary



The Vandals, art: Vandalic goldfoil jewellery from the 3rd or 4th century



Ranging far from their roots in Germany, these power-hungry pagans swept through Spain, then across North Africa, and eventually to the gates of Rome itself.


The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe, or group of tribes, who were first heard of in southern Poland, but later moved around Europe establishing kingdoms in Spain and later North Africa in the 5th century.

The Vandals are believed to have migrated from southern Scandinavia to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers during the 2nd century BC and to have settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. They are associated with the Przeworsk culture, and were possibly the same people as the Lugii. Expanding into Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars and to Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission to settle by Constantine the Great. Around 400 the Vandals were pushed westwards again, this time by the Huns, crossing the Rhine into Gaul along with other tribes in 406. In 409, the Vandals crossed the Pyrenees into Iberia, where their main groups, the Hasdingi and the Silingi, settled in Galicia and Baetica respectively. After the Visigothic invasion of Iberia, the Sarmatian Alans and Silingi Vandals voluntarily subjected to the rule Hasdingian leader Gunderic, who was pushed from Galicia to Baetica by a Roman-Suebi coalition in 419. In 429, under king Genseric, the Vandals entered North Africa. By 439 they established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearics. They fended off several Roman attempts to recapture the province, and sacked the city of Rome in 455. Their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which Justinian I managed to reconquer the Africa province for the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.  
Credits: Wikipedia

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