Heruli
The Heruli were one of the smaller Germanic peoples of Late Antiquity, known from records in the third to sixth centuries AD.
The best recorded group of Heruli established a kingdom north of the Middle Danube, probably including the area north of present day Vienna. This kingdom was a neighbour to several other small and short-lived kingdoms in the late 5th century and early 6th century, including those of the Sciri, Rugii, Danubian Suebi, and Gepids. After the conquest of this Heruli kingdom by the Lombards in 508, splinter groups moved to Sweden, Ostrogothic Italy, and present-day Serbia, which was under Eastern Roman control.
The Danubian Heruli are generally equated to the "Elouri" who lived near the Sea of Azov during the late 3rd or early 4th century, and are believed to have migrated westwards. In 267-270 these Elouri took part together with Goths and other eastern European peoples in two massive raids into Roman provinces in the Balkans and Aegean Sea, attacking not only by land, but notably also by sea. The equation of these "ELuRi" with the "ERuLi" was made by several Byzantine authors, and is still widely accepted although some scholars such as Ellegård consider this equation uncertain, and propose that the Heruli homeland lay elsewhere. For example, because a group of 6th century Heruli moved from the Danube to Scandinavia, some scholars believe that the Heruli had their earliest origins in Scandinavia. There are also proposals that there were Heruli kingdoms in several parts of Europe, already in the 3rd and 4th century, perhaps with common origins in the north. One proposal, based upon indirect evidence, is that there was a "Western Heruli" settlement based near the Lower Rhine, because in 286 AD, only a few years after the eastern raids, the Heruli were defeated in an attack on Roman Gaul.
Like their sometime allies the Goths, soon after first being noted in contemporary records as Eastern European raiders, Heruli also began entering the Roman empire and serving in its military, where they developed a particularly notable reputation already in the 4th century, at first mainly in the Western Roman Empire. A new Heruli unit was stationed in northern Italy. On the other hand, Heruli living near the Roman frontiers were also among the many groups which caused disruption to the empire in this period. The Heruli probably already settled north of the Danube in the 4th century. In 409 AD Heruli were among the "ferocious" nations, mostly from the Danubian area, that Saint Jerome described as occupying all of Roman Gaul. An important influence upon the movements of such peoples in this period was that the Huns were moving west. Eventually Attila's empire was based in the Danubian region. The Danubian Heruli kingdom known from later records probably already existed in some form within his empire, as did the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, Sciri, and Gepids.
After the death of Attila in 453, the Danubian Heruli fought in the Battle of Nedao in 454, although it is not certain which side they took among his various former allies. They also participated in successive conquests of Italy by Odoacer, Theoderic the Great, Narses, and probably also the Lombards. Under Roman command the Heruli played important military roles in Balkan, African, and Italian conflicts. With their last known kingdom in the Balkans eventually dominated by Rome however, and smaller groups integrated into larger political entities such as the Gepids and Lombards, the Heruli disappear from history around the time of the conquest of Italy by the Lombards. In this period the Middle Danube was coming under the control of the Pannonian Avars.
Classification
When first mentioned by Roman authors in the 3rd century AD, the "Elouri" were referred to as "Scythians", as were the Goths and other allied tribes. The use of this term for Heruli and Goths probably began as early as Dexippus, most of whose work is now lost. The use of this term does not give us any clear linguistic classification.In late antiquity, the Gepids, Vandals, Rugii, Sciri, the non-Germanic Alans, and not only the Goths themselves, were all classified by Roman ethnographers as "Gothic" peoples, and modern historians generally consider the Heruli to be one of these. While historians such as Walter Goffart have pointed out that the Herules are never included in the lists of "Gothic peoples" of Procopius, Mihail Zahariade has pointed out that Zonaras stated that the Heruli were of Gothic stock, and he suggests this might be why Latin authors did not distinguish the early Heruli from the Goths as carefully as Greek authors did.
None of these eastern peoples were considered "Germanic" by Roman ethnographers at the time. However, in modern scholarship the Heruli, like other peoples presumed to have spoken a Germanic language, are usually classified as a Germanic people. On account of having likely spoken an East Germanic language, such as Gothic, the Heruli are often more specifically classified as an East Germanic people.
Name
In English, the plural "Heruli" can also be spelled as Heruls, Herules, or Herulians. The name can be written without "h" in Greek, Latin, and English. Whether or not the h in the spelling represents an organic sound is uncertain.In the earliest mentions of them in 4th century records, they were called Eluri, with the "L" and "R" reversed compared to later records. This has led to doubts about whether these first "Erouli" from the Sea of Azov were the same people as the later Eruli from the Danube. Dexippus whose writings about these early "Eluri" only survive in fragments, gave their name a Greek etymology, claiming that they were named after the swamps of their Azov homeland.
According to modern scholars the etymology of the name is uncertain but it is thought to be Germanic. More speculatively, it is possibly related to the English word earl implying that it was an honorific military title.
There have been proposals which connected this etymology with Germanic words found in runic inscriptions in Scandinavia signifying a pronunciation erilaR, and there have also been proposals that the word is connected to Germanic words for werewolves and beings with magic powers. None of these proposals can be verified.
Language
The Heruli are believed to have spoken a Germanic language. Personal names are one of the only direct sources of evidence for this. Some attested Heruli names are almost certainly Germanic, and similar to Gothic names, but a large number are not easily attributed to any specific language family.Given their association with the Goths, the Heruli may have spoken an East Germanic language, related to the Gothic language. Alternatively however, given their proposed connections to Scandinavia, it has also been proposed that they spoke a North Germanic language.
History
Possible Scandinavian origins
Although contemporary records locate the Heruli first near the Sea of Azov, and later on the Middle Danube, their ultimate origins are traditionally sought in Scandinavia. The Heruli are thus commonly believed to have migrated from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea before the 3rd century AD. In line with this, their Black Sea neighbours the Goths, and their Danubian neighbours Rugii, are both believed to have had their origins on the southern Baltic shore, and there are proposals that their ultimate origins were in Scandinavia. The idea that they came from regions near the Baltic is consistent with the fact that many of these peoples, such as the Goths, spoke Germanic languages, and these originated near the Baltic.The source of the idea that such peoples specifically came from Scandinavia is the 6th century historian Jordanes, who was based in Constantinople. He believed that the Goths and Gepids both came from Scandinavia many centuries before his time, which he described as "like a workshop or even better the womb of nations". This narrative was extremely influential for medieval writers, and modern scholars. Jordanes also made specific remarks concerning the Heruli, but these have been more difficult to interpret. He said that the Heruli had been driven out of their own settlements in Scandinavia by the Danes. This is interpreted by various scholars in at least two different ways.
- The expulsion happened centuries before Jordanes, and the Heruli origins are ultimately in present-day Denmark or southern Sweden.
- This expulsion from Scandinavia was not long before Jordanes, and at least some of the expelled Heruli were themselves recent immigrants to Scandinavia, from the Danube. This possibility still leaves debate open about whether the ultimate origins of the Heruli were in Scandinavia.
While a migration to Scandinavia can itself be seen as evidence of an old and continuous connection between the Heruli and Scandinavia, some scholars are sceptical of this interpretation, noting that Procopius specifically says that the Heruli who moved to Scandinavia left the "home of their ancestors". In contrast, in 2021 Prostko-Prostyński argued that there is "no doubt" about Scandinavian origins. Even though Procopius does not explicitly mention it, "it is hard to assume they ventured so far north without a reason of such nature". In his review of Prostko-Prostyński, Roland Steinacher argues that this is debatable.
Ellegård, one of the scholars who argued that the expulsion involved immigrants whose real homeland was on the Danube, wrote that "the only thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that a small group of Eruli lived there for some 38-40 years in the first half of the 6th century AD".
More controversially, Ellegård proposed that the evidence makes it most likely that the Heruli were "a loose group of Germanic warriors which came into being in the late 3rd century in the region north of the Danube limes that extends roughly from Passau to Vienna". This proposal has not been widely accepted.