Crimean Goths

The least-powerful, least-known, and paradoxically longest-lived Gothic communities were those that remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in the Crimea. A Gothic principality around the stronghold of Doros (modern Mangup Kale) continued to exist through various periods of vassalage to the Byzantines, Khazars, Kipchaks, Mongols, Genoese and other empires until well into the 1500’s, when it was finally incorporated by the Girai Khanate.

While initially Arian Christians like other Gothic peoples, by the 500's the Crimean Goths were fully Orthodox. Many of them were Greek speakers and many non-Gothic Byzantine citizens settled in the region called "Gothia" by the government in Constantinople.

Crimean Gothic language texts from this region exist as late as the late 1500’s and Gothic communities appear to have survived intact until the late 1700’s, when many were deported by Catherine the Great. Their language vanished by the 1800’s.

The so-called Volga Germans who could be found in southern Russia as late as World War II were not Goths. They were a later population who spoke a German dialect, i.e. a West Germanic language, as opposed to the East Germanic Gothic language.

See also

• Gothiscandza
• Gutasaga
• Ostrogoths
• Scandza
• Visigoths
• Wielbark culture

Sources

• Vasiliev, Aleksandr A. The Goths in the Crimea. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936.