Narratives of Origin and Migration in Early Medieval Europe

Abstract

This contribution concentrates on the origin narratives of the post-Roman peoples and kingdoms in Latin Europe between c. 500 and 1000, including some observations on the elaborate production of origin stories in the later Middle Ages. It thus addresses a period in which a durable multiplicity of polities with ethnic designations emerged in Europe and was anchored in the mental maps of (at least) the political elites through a set of foundational narratives. Most of these new peoples—Goths, Longobards, Franks, Anglo-Saxons and others—prided themselves in their distant origins, be it from Scandinavia or Troy. Their origin narratives are based on a common stock of mythical points of reference, developed in classical mythology and ethnography and complemented by other motifs and memories. Christianity transformed the frame but not necessarily the elements of the narrative. The wide-ranging comparison to other ethnic and tribal origin stories, as exemplified in this issue, sheds better light on the specificities of the Latin European tradition of ‘origines gentium’, the origins of peoples. The result is that we should look at these texts as essentially hybrid products of cultural encounters in which formerly subaltern peoples developed new identities as a ruling minority in former Roman provinces.