How the name of the Vandals tribe became a common term
Who were the Vandals? They were first mentioned by the ancient Roman historian Pliny in the 1st century AD. He refers to one of the groups of Germanic tribes as ‘Vandili’ and includes the Goths, Varinians, Carinians, and Burgundians. Tacitus later writes about them in his treatise ‘On the Origin of the Germans’, around 98 AD, considering it an ancient name for one of the Germanic tribes. In Old German, there was indeed a word ‘Wendel’, referring to a tribal alliance. Other Roman writers and historians classified the Vandals as one of the Gothic tribes. Modern researchers believe that the Vandals originally lived in the territory of modern Poland, between the Vistula and Oder rivers.
The ancient Romans soon had to get to know the Vandals more closely than they would have liked. For centuries, the Vandals migrated through Eastern Europe, pushed by other tribes. In the 2nd century AD, they were trapped between the Goths from the east and the Marcomanni from the west. This migration caused the so-called ‘Marcomannic Wars’, with barbarians intensifying their pressure on the Roman limes. The Vandals asked the Romans for protection and a place to settle in the Roman province of Dacia. However, the Romans preferred an alliance with the Lacringi tribe, who defeated the Vandals in battle and drove them away from Roman territories. From that time, the Vandals…
