>>20517779The origin story that the Goths told themselves—as would later be related by the sixth-century writer Jordanes in the Getica (full name: De origine actibusque Getarumi, or The Origin and Deeds of the Goths)—is that they came from an island known as Scandza (which would be modern Sweden); left that land under the leadership of a king called Berig to cross the Baltic Sea; and settled in a place they called Gothiscandza, which would be the coastline of modern eastern Germany and Poland (once described as Pomerania), around the mouth of the Vistula river.
Within a few generations, the Goths outgrew the food-production capabilities of Pomerania’s forest farms, and began to put pressure on their neighbors. They moved south and east up the Vistula, and pushed several other peoples off their lands—most notably the Vandals, who were by now already well-established in Central Europe.
The first Gothic raids were smash-and-grab jobs across the river. But they grew in size and ferocity as the advantages of the wealth-by-robbery approach became clear to the various Gothic tribes, which, in turn, began to form larger alliances that allowed them to scale up their attacks.
