Gold coin minted by King Euric,with the name of the Roman Emperor on it The Visigoths established a kingdom for themselves within the collapsing Roman Empire in 418 AD. They took over most of [...]
A Viking ship. Viking trade took the Vikings all over the world. Who were the Vikings? The Vikings were Indo-European people from Scandinavia (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden). Around the 400s AD the Vikings started to [...]
The Rhine river, frozen over The Vandals first entered the collapsing Roman Empire from Germany in the winter of 409 AD. They crossed the frozen Rhine river with a group of Alans and Sueves. The [...]
Early Slavic history: Where did the Slavs come from? A Slavic furnace from Novae, in Bulgaria (300s AD) - maybe a pottery kiln? The Slavs were Indo-Europeans The Slavs, who [...]
Ukrainian landscape In 500 BC, we might have called the people living in Russia Scythians. But then between about 300 and 800 AD, a lot of people passed through Russia. Most of them were [...]
Ostrogothic helmet By 476 AD, the Ostrogoths were still living north of the Black Sea, but the Roman Emperors no longer had any practical power in the West. In that year, the last Roman Emperor [...]
Early France: A Merovingian fibula (a pin to hold a cloak on) from the 500s-600s AD Early France: the Franks invade Gaul Who were the Franks? The Franks had been [...]
Ural mountains In the Early Middle Ages, Turkic and Mongol people in Central Asia were moving westward, pushing out Indo-European people - and other people - who had been living there. The Magyars, who [...]
The Lombards: a Lombard Christian altar (700s AD) (University of Alabama) Where did the Lombards come from? In 568 AD, a Turkic people, the Avars, pushed the Indo-European Lombards out of their home in Central [...]
Gold coin of King Leovigild, the father-in-law of Ingundis A religious problem By the late 500s AD, the Visigoths were the only people in Europe who hadn't converted from Arianism to Catholicism. They were [...]
