Contacts between the Late Roman Empire and North-Central Europe

Abstract

The concept of Central Europe is understood here to cover the geographical centre of the European continent (i.e. the territory between the Elbe, Bug and Neman rivers, that is, eastern Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia and Lithuania), formerly treated in much of the English-speaking world as ‘Eastern Europe’. In the past six years, however, this area has been moving closer to the West. This paper shall concentrate on the region north of the Carpathian mountains, particularly the Vistula river-basin and Scandinavia (without Norway), in other words the territory round the Baltic Sea.