Burgundians

The Burgundians (Latin: Burgundiones or less commonly Burgundii) were a Germanic people of the Roman imperial era, who established the powerful Kingdom of the Burgundians within the Roman empire in what is now western Switzerland and south-eastern France. The kingdom ended when it was incorporated into the Frankish empire in 534. It is the source of later names related to the region now known as Burgundy, including medieval entities such as the Duchy of Burgundy. In earlier periods, Burgundians were also reported by Roman sources to have lived in regions now within Germany and Poland, and there are probably connections between these and the later Burgundian kingdom.

The kingdom's core group were non-Roman soldiers under the leadership of the Gibichung dynasty, who had previously held a kingdom as foederati in Roman territory on the Rhine border, probably near Worms in present day Germany. The kingdom on the Rhine was destroyed when the Romans and their Hun allies killed many of the Burgundians along with their king Gundahar in 436, accusing them of rebellion. The death of Gundahar at the hands of the Huns became a central theme in medieval Germanic heroic legend, including the Nibelungenlied (where he is “Günther”) and the Völsunga saga (where he is “Gunnar”). After the remnants resettled in Sapaudia near Lake Geneva in about 443, their territory expanded to include the regional Roman capital of Lyon, which subsequently became the new Burgundian capital.

Although they used Germanic language and customs when they arrived in Sapaudia, the non-Roman soldiers led by the last Gibichungs had diverse origins. There are also indications in Greco-Roman accounts that the forerunners of their core group, the Rhine Burgundians, had seen themselves as descendants of Roman soldiers who had once manned Roman border defences in what is now southern Germany, east of the Rhine. In contrast, older Roman sources described Burgundians living in the region near the Main river only from the third century, initially as invaders and raiders. Both they and their neighbours the Alemanni were previously unattested in this region, much of which had been under Roman control. Archaeological evidence suggests that both these peoples included newcomers from the east, and once they arrived they ruled over populations which were partly Romanised, and partly made up of Germanic tribes who had lived in the same area previously. It was in the fourth century that the Burgundians became allies of the Romans in their conflicts against the Alemanni. In about 406, during a period of wider crisis, when large numbers of armed Alans and Vandals moved into the area from Pannonia, the Gibichung-led Burgundians crossed the Rhine and settled within the empire.

The earliest of all Burgundians mentioned by Greco-Roman writers lived near the Vistula river in present day Poland, between the first and third century. Roman panegyrics reported that in the late third century these Burgundians suffered devastating defeats against the eastern European Gepids and Goths, and modern scholars believe this may have induced some of them to move west in this period, closer to the empire, including those who lived near the Main in the third century.

There are also indications that the much later medieval inhabitants of the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm were also called Burgundi, although there is no indication that they were ever called Burgundiones. In the past, some historians have proposed a connection between these islanders and the continental Burgundi known to the Romans, although the shared name could also have a more topological explanation. A related speculation traces the origins of the Burgundi to what is now Norway, where similar placenames are relatively common. These origin stories are influenced not only by placename similarities, but also by a tradition among medieval scholars, most notably Jordanes and Paul the Deacon, according to which many barbarian peoples originally migrated south from Scandinavia. All these placenames and ethnonyms appear to share a similar etymology, indicating that the places or peoples were high or elevated in some way.