This article is about the Germanic tribes. For the late 20th century youth subculture see Goth.

The Goths own tradition was they they had originated in Scandza which was separated by the Baltic sea from the mainland of Europe. They battled with, and temporarily subjugated, the ancestors of the Slavs (there were many Gothic loanwords in proto-Slavic), who lived between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea and ultimately settled in 'Scythia' a vast undefined region that includes modern Ukraine and Belarus. A united tribe until the third century, it was during that period that they split into the eastern Goths or Ostrogoths and the western Goths or Visigoths.

Though many of the fighting nomads who followed them were to prove more bloody, the Goths were feared because the captives they took in battle were sacrificed to their god of war, and the captured arms hung in trees as a token-offering. Their kings and priests came from a separate aristocracy, according to Cassiodorus/Jordanes, and their mythic kings of ancient times were honored as gods. Their mythic lawgiver, named Dicineus, traditionally dated about the 1st century BCE, ordered their laws, which they possessed by the 6th century in written form and called belagines.

A force of Goths launched one of the first major "barbarian" invasions of the Roman Empire in 267 CE. A year later, they suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Naissus and were driven back across the Danube River by 271. This group then settled on the other side of the Danube from Roman territory and established an independent kingdom centered on the abandoned Roman province of Dacia, as the Visigoths. In the meantime, the Goths still in the Ukraine established a vast and powerful kingdom along the Black Sea. This group became known as the Ostrogoths.

The Goths were briefly reunited under one crown in the early sixth century under the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great, who became regent of the Visigothic kingdom for nearly two decades. For the later history of the Goths, see Visigoths and Ostrogoths.

Origins

The question of where the Goths came from is a major historical and philological puzzle. The earliest evidence for the Goths puts them in Poland in the 2nd-century CE, with a consequent rapid movement to the Black Sea area. Jordanes, a Romanized 6th century Goth, reported their origin according to Gothic tradition and legend to be in Scandza; Scandinavia - or at least that's how he is used to be interpreted.

It is a matter of dispute whether the Geats, a people living in the Geatish lands in Sweden, did satisfy this alleged connection. The word "Geats" (Anglo-Saxon Geatas) and the Swedish word "Götar" (East Norse Gøtar) both represent the expected outcome of proto-Germanic *Gauta-. This is different from the reconstructed root *Gut- which seems to be the origin of "Goth," which appears earliest in forms such as "Gutthones" in Greek ethnography. Philologists have reconstructed *Gut-þiuda, the "Gothic people," as a likely original form of the name. The reconstructed root *Gut- is, however, identical to that of Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea. Besides linguistic connections between Gothic and Old Norse, there are also interesting correspondences between Gothic and Gutnish (the Swedish dialect of Gotland) such as "lamb" being the generic name for sheep.

It is not unlikely that warriors from Gotland took control of the amber-rich northern Poland and so paved the way for the development of the Goths as a historically identifiable people.

''See also: Gothic language, Gothic alphabet, Getae and Gepidae