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Comment by nivertech | Hacker News Reader

Is there any connection with Crimean Goths? [1,2]

It doesn't make sense that people will migrate from England to Crimea just out of the blue.

It's only make sense if they were already in the Mediterranean region and then were looking to settle in either colder climate, free rich lands, or a combination of the above.

There are also older anti-Normanist theories that Kievan Rus was founded by the people/warriors from the South (i.e. Crimea or adjacent Sea of Azov area).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Goths

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Gothic

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Normanism

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> It doesn't make sense that people will migrate from England to Crimea just out of the blue.

The article states that they didn’t want to be ruled by the Normans so they left and wandered around the Mediterranean then went to Constantinople to help with a siege. Then they were told they could settle an area that wasn’t currently under the Byzantine Empire’s control, which was in Crimea.

The novel "The Last English King" by Julian Rathbone [1] centers on one of Harold's housecarls who, after the defeat at Hastings, travels widely over Europe and the Near East before returning to Norman England.

Interesting to see there may be some historical fact behind it.

1 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-English-King-Julian-Rathbone/d...

By this time a significant pprtion of the varangian guard were actually anglo saxon.

for all the fanfare the vikings get, the anglo-saxons were nearly as infamous as raiders and pirates, although usually in a slightly earlier era.

Consider how they came to conquer and settle England.

And on a tangent to a tangent: The Old norse word for ‘boat’ is usually ‘bátr’, not the expected inherited ‘beitr’. The former is a loanword from Anglo-saxon and the inherited ’beitr’ is only found in poetry. While anecdotal, it is interesting that a culture so associated with seafaring as the viking-age Scandinavia borrowed the word for boat.

Yes, indeed. Consider also the fact that the Anglo-Saxons were culturally and ethnically similar to the Vikings (whom the Anglo-Saxons collectively referred to as "Danes" despite also coming from Norway and Sweden). The Danelaw[1] had resulted in significant intermixing of Anglo-Saxons and Danes, and by 1066 England had had two Danish kings.

It's completely unsurprising that Anglo-Saxons integrated well into the Varangian Guard.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw

It does make one wonder if some of the later attestations of Crimean Gothic language survival in the area might actually be people mistaking spoken Anglo-Saxon as Gothic.

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