While there are faint echoes of very early traditions in the surviving Old English poetic corpus, the period which seems to have given rise to the richest heroic traditions is the Migration Era - the period between the Fourth and Seventh Centuries when many Germanic peoples were on the move and when the crumbling Western Roman Empire was their primary destination.

Many stories arose in this period and were passed on from tribe to tribe, so that warriors and kings who had once lived on the shores of the Black Sea in the Fourth Century were still the subject of semi-historical or pseudo-historical legend in England six hundred years later.

Foremost amongst these heroes were the Goths. We have already seen how the Gothic king Ermanaric appears in Anglo-Saxon poems as Eormenric - the cunning and malicious ruler mentioned in several of the surviving poems. Many other warriors and heroes seem to have been associated with him, though in some cases we know that they could not have been the contemporary of the historical king. It is most likely that they were linked to him, regardless of any historical origin, because they were remembered as Gothic warriors.

Prominent amongst them is Hama, though he is mentioned so fleetingly it is difficult to reconstruct the stories associated with him. Beowulf mentions him in passing, assuming its audience would know the story referred to well:

There was no hoard like it since Hama snatched
The Brosings' neck-chain and bore it away
With its gems and setting to his shining fort
Away from Eormenric's wiles and hatred,
and thereby earned eternal reward.
Beowulf (ll. 1197-1201)

There is just enough information here to tantilise but not enough to really support a reconstruction. "The Brosings' neck-chain" or, in Old English, "Brosingamene" is clearly connected, somehow, to the Old Norse "Brisingamen", the necklace of the Viking goddess Freyja stolen by Loki, but who the "Brosings" were and how the two stories are connected is unclear. The later Old Norse Thithreksaga tells of "Heimir" (Hama) who flees the emnity of "Erminrekr" (Eormenric/Ermanaric) and enters a monastery. Obviously there was once a Gothic hero called "*Haima", though whether he was really associated with the Gothic king Ermanaric is also unknown.

Hama also appears in Widsith, and does so in the company of Wudga or Widia, who is mentioned with him in other sources:

It was Widia and Hama who wielded the people,
Two strangers distributed the gold.
(Widsith ll. 129-30)

If Hama is strongly linked to Eormenric in the Old English legends, then his companion Widia harks back to an even earlier layer of Gothic stories. He is almost certainly a memory of the very ancient Gothic hero, Vidigoia, mentioned by the Gothic historian Jornanes in his Origins and Deeds of the Goths:

In earliest times they sang of the deeds of their ancestors in strains of song accompanied by the cithara; chanting of Eterpamara, Hanala, Fritigern, Vidigoia and others whose fame among them is great; such heroes as admiring antiquity scarce proclaims its own to be.
(Jordanes, V, 43)

Later Jordanes mentions that Vidigoia is said to have died in battle against the Sarmatians, citing the Fifth Century Roman envoy to Attila, Priscus, as his source (Jordanes, XXXIV, 178)

Given that this Vidigoia (or *Widugauja in Gothic) was an ancient legend even when Jordanes was writing in the Sixth Century, it's likely he represents a very early Gothic hero.

As such, he enjoyed a very long life in Germanic legend. One of the only other fragments of Old English heroic verse - Waldere - mentions him as rescuing Theodoric from monsters. And long after the Norman Conquest his stories were still remembered. Layamon's Early Middle English Arthurian romance, the Brut describes Arthur armouring with his mail shirt 'Wygar', which the poet says was forged by "Witege". Another even later version of the same romance mentions him in a list of ancient heroes, once again alongside Hama.

The idea that he was a smith who made both swords and mail fits with another aspect of him which is attested from multiple fragments - he is also a descendant of Weland, the semi-mythic weapon smith of Germanic legend.

The late Brut romance mentioned above also links him with another Gothic hero, Unwine. Widsith mentions him too, as the son of "Eastgota" (l. 113), which in turn links him to history, as this is the "Ostrogotha" described as a Third Century Gothic king by Jordanes:

(The Gepidic king Fastida) sent ambassadors to Ostrogotha, to whose rule Ostrogoths and Visigoths alike, that is, the two peoples of the same tribe, were still subject. Complaining that he was hemmed in by rugged mountains and dense forests, he demanded one of two things,--that Ostrogotha should either prepare for war or give up part of his lands to them.

Then Ostrogotha, king of the Goths, who was a man of firm mind, answered the ambassadors that he did indeed dread such a war and that it would be a grievous and infamous thing to join battle with their kin,--but he would not give up his lands. And why say more? The Gepidae hastened to take arms and Ostrogotha likewise moved his forces against them, lest he should seem a coward. They met at the town of Galtis, near which the river Auha flows, and there both sides fought with great valor; indeed the similarity of their arms and of their manner of fighting turned them against their own men. But the better cause and their natural alertness aided the Goths.

Finally night put an end to the battle as a part of the Gepidae were giving way. Then Fastida, king of the Gepidae, left the field of slaughter and hastened to his own land, as much humiliated with shame and disgrace as formerly he had been elated with pride. The Goths returned victorious, content with the retreat of the Gepidae, and dwelt in peace and happiness in their own land so long as Ostrogotha was their leader.
(Jordanes, XVII, 98-100)

Earlier Jordanes tells us Ostrogotha was the father of "Hunuil", indicating that Unwine was also part of this semi-historical Gothic legend. As late as 1340 he is mentioned as a famous warrior called "Unewyn" in an English Latin work, the Fasciculus Morum. And in the Fifteenth Century English prose romance Waldef he appears as a king in ancient Suffolk:

At that time (after Arthur) there reigned in Norfolk a certain king called Attalus. In Suffolk ruled Unwyn, king of Thetford, who fought in single combat against Attalus. But the two were reconciled without the intervention of a mediator.

So here, one thousand years or more after he lived, seems to be a faint echo of an Old English poetic tradition of a single combat between Attila the Hun and the Gothic champion, Unwine.

But while these ancient heroes of the Goths appear in the Old English material as fragmentary references, with echoes in Jordanes' accounts of the Migration Era and even earlier Gothic legends, there are other characters about whom we know a little more. In the next part I will examine Weland, Wada, Theodoric and Hildibrand and what we can reconstruct about their Anglo-Saxon stories from non-English material.

(Continued ... )