Developments in Slavia and Germania Magna 251-750 (Abrittus)

At the beginning of this period, Germanic tribes are migrating across the Northern half of Europe. In OTL, they eventually bring the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and erect kingdoms in its former territories, where they adopt some elements of the Roman tradition and convert to Christianity, while much knowledge, capital and infrastructure is lost or decays.

This timeline begins with the major defeat of the Goths at Abrittus, and it continues with a defiant Roman civilization, be it in the Seconr Roman Republic or in the Imperium Romanum Galliarum. Romanisation (and to a lesser extent also Christianisation or at least Christian influences on the development of Germanic religions) of the Germans still occur, but under the paradigm of political, military and economic hegemony of the Roman sphere.

The Germanic tribes develop in significantly different directions - the main causes behind these differences being their respective distances to the democratic Roman Republic and the monarchist Celtic Empire.

Across Germania - but less pronounced in the far North-East -, urbanisation and the development of modern statehood set in. The enormous Roman and Celtic demand for wood leads to massive deforestation, while innovations in the fields of ploughshares, crop rotations and fertilisers improve agricultural productivity.

Ostrogoths
Before 360, the Ostrogoths were an Eastern Germanic kingdom, whose last Greutung king Ermanaric reigned over a vast East European empire, with Gepid, Antes, Alani, Bosporanian, Mansi, Mordwinian, Venetian, several Sarmatian and other subjects, besides the Goths, of course.After the victory of the Huns over the Greutungs, some of these people joined the Huns and were, together with them, defeated by Romans and Celts, and either killed or led into slavery in the Celtic Empire or Frankish Confederacy, where they later assimilated and vanished from Ostrogothic history.

The majority of those who had been Ermanaric`s subjects followed their king towards the Danube, though. They sought asylum in the Roman Empire, but were mostly refused. While the masses of ordinary refugees remained camped in conditions of squalour on the unsafe side of the Danube, the king and his court and other noblemen bribed their way into protected Moesia Superior. When the Huns approached the Danube, they used many of these refugees as human shields in their attempts to cross the Danube. In addition to these casualties, starvation and diseases in the refugee camps in the Danube Delta reduced the jumbled-up group of people who were referred to as "Ostrogoths". Their cruel fate left a lasting imprint on Roman public conscience. As the Huns moved further to the West, the refugees moved back East. A fleet of boat people landed in Tauris, whose marvellous cities had been mostly destroyed by the Huns and whose leadership of Greek descent was swept away by the sheer masses of refugees who plundered the meagre harvests, and after a winter of starvation, where only fish was available, joined the previous population in working the fields of the peninsula.

The Ostrogothic history of the 5th and all following centuries refers to these refugees on Tauris and their offsprings. From the chaotic circumstances under which they lived, a group of unofficial but very versatile leaders emerged (see The Tauris Group). Some of them were Goths, others were Bosporanian Greeks, yet others of Mordwinian, Alani, Gepid or Scythian backgrounds. Greek quickly became the lingua franca of this ethnically diverse society.

The Tauris Group negotiated with the victors after the Second Hun War. They emulated the Greek Judaist culture of the Bosporan Kingdom, which had been a Roman client kingdom for three centuries, and became the Roman Empire`s first "margo". The Tauris Group thus shaped both the conditions under which this new polity formed itself, and the foundations of its future policies for the next centuries.

The Ostrogothic society survived against all odds: lumped-up group of people, speaking different languages and even coming from nomadic as well as sedentary backgrounds, had little in common; some groups had been enemies of each other in the recent past. The solutions developed by the Tauris Group were often quite creative; in any case they virtually created the Ostrogothic society as we know it: seized on the compassion factor first among Christian,later among Jewish groups in the Roman Empire and organised both public and private donations of grain and almost everything else that was needed for survival and impossible to get by in sufficient amounts on Tauris. emigrants and migrant workers with the Jewish middle class in the Roman Empire,  and kept these expats somehow linked to those who remained on the island. little opportunites for agriculture, fishing become an Ostrogothic staple - and the Ostrogoths soon dominated this business in the Northern half of the Black Sea; they built a large fleet from small boats to large ships, which also served as a backbone for sea trade that would dominate Ostrogothic society later and whose security was organised by the Roman classis. their connections to the Ugro-Finnic tribes dwelling in the lands North of the depopulated pontic steppe, they managed to secure a mediating role in the exchange of Komi, Mari and Mordwinian fur, horses and wood against Roman and Sassanid iron products, ready-made clothes and alcohol. Ostrogothic reconstruction along these lines took the rest of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th centuries. From then on, the margo "Tauris te Bosporos Kimmerikos" became an urbanised, wealthy region. Ostrogothic sea merchants knit networks and establish branches across the Mediterranean and even the Indian Ocean. The trading places along the Borysthenes turn into towns, and during the 6th century, Ostrogoths invest into systems for irrigated agriculture in the former steppe, becoming owners of large estates on which mostly Slavic peasants worked.
 * With all those refugees, the margo`s lands were heavily overpopulated.
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 * By converting to Judaism, the Tauris Group opened up profitable work and learning opportunities for Ostrogothic youth,
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The stable and affluent margo was dealt a severe blow when the Chasars arrived, ended Ostrogothic hegemony on the Tanais (OTL Don), demanded tribute from Tauris and destroyed its aquaeducts as punishment. A mass emigration from Tauris began. Although Tauris was stabilised by Roman troops and joined the Republic in the 7th century, the centres of Ostrogothic society and economy had already moved into the Roman Republic.

Some Ostrogothic refugees also sailed into the Atlantic and settled the Nesoi Porphyroi (OTL Madeira) and, upon their discovery, also the Nesoi Atlantikoi (OTL Azores). These new independent poleis in the Atlantic Ocean became the foundation of Ostrogothic commercial dominance in Western Africa, which led to the consolidation of the continental Mandinke polity of the "Horon" - or the "Liberiani", as the Romans called them.

Long before 750, "Ostrogoth" no longer means a Germanic tribe speaking an Eastern German language. It refers to a large group of peaceful merchants and associated planters and craftsmen; educated and literate people, who speak Greek (and often other languages, too), follow the Karaen branch of Judaism and support each other in world-spanning social networks like mutual insurances, credit clubs and syndicates. Some "Ostrogoths" are citizens of the Roman Republic, others live in other countries, some live in independent poleis shaped to a certain extent by Ostrogoths (like the city republics of Chortitia and Severopolis), yet others live in independent poleis exclusively run by Ostrogoths (on the Atlantic islands). The "Pangothikon" represents them all. Its political power is not based on a constitution, but on its cultural authority and its role as supreme arbiter between Ostrogothic associations around the world.

Visigoths
The Visigoths have become good, assimilated citizens of the Roman civitates in Dacia. Tribal structures eroded during the 4th century, and the last Visigothic king died around 437. They ceased speaking the Gothic language in a process of gradual Romanisation, which was completed approximately around 450.

Baiuvaria
After tribal structures separating and defining Vandals, Lugians, Langobards, Varisci and Markomanni were crushed in the Hun Wars, then questioned by the influence of Roman civilization (directly felt in the case of the asylum germanii, indirectly through cross-Danube trade in the following decades and centuries), Germanic people of all these backgrounds built fortified cities and villages, where they lived together. They developed a new common identity and called themselves Baiuvarians.

Highly influenced by trade relations with Roman Norica, the Baiuvarian cities and villages developed crafts as well as democratic structures based on guilds of these craftsmen. The development of crafts mirrored both the influence of Roman knowledge and the absence of sufficient amounts of capital necessary for large-scale production as it slowly developed in the Roman Empire. Baiuvaria`s main export produce is barley.

The economic symbiosis with Roman border civitates ultimately became so strong that a federation of Baiuvarian towns joined the Roman Republic - first becoming a margo, then fully integrating into the Republic. This opened the floodgates for Roman capital, and much of the Baiuvarian resources are exploited by Roman trusts and corporations, who hire Baiuvarians as wage labourers, around 750.

Different brands of Christianity seeped in, but remained minoritarian in most towns and villages. After the catastrophe of the Great Hun War, Baiuvaria becomes one of the strongholds of the "Third Age interpretation" of Germanic religion, which is both a reflection and a cultural counterweight to the great economic developments and how they reshape the environment the Baiuvarians live in. As a result, Baiuvarians are not a warlike people.

After their integration into the Roman Republic, the Baiuvarian language, which had just emerged in the late 4th century as an amalgamate of various languages of Germanic tribes, latinised even faster. Around 750, all that is left of it is a Latin dialect with a few region-specific words. Third Age paganism is one of the few things that define the regional identity of the Baiuvarians on the Northern rim of the Roman Empire and unites them with their Alemannic Roman fellow citizens and the Germanic tribes outside the Empire: Burgunds, Franks and Saxons.

Alemannia
In the 4th century, the Alemanni had started to develop trade and cultural contacts with the Roman and Celtic empires and a confederal proto-state. The Hun War has destroyed much of this fundament and reduced the Alemanni both in number and in influence dramatically. The remaining Alemanni built fortified towns (burgi) in OTL Baden-Württemberg and Bayern. Throughout the 5th century, many of these independent cities were conquered or absorbed into the Frankish Confederacy, some as independent members of the confederacy, some bereft of ther independence and ruled by territorial kings.

In the conquered towns and their surrounding countryside, the Alemannic language (as it developed from the 2nd to the 4th century AD) and culture (as it resulted from the contact of Suebian Germanic cults with Christianised Romans) are less discernible and a greater extent of assimilation to Frankish German and a culture influenced rather by West Germanic cult and Celtic influences is observed. The newly codified Ripuarian Frankish law applies here.

The Alemannic towns which preserved their independence developed democratic and guild structures and joined the Roman Republic in the 6th century. Here, the Alemannic language blends into Latin. As in neighbouring Baiuvaria, Germanic cult has shifted towards the "Third Age" interpretation.

The economic back-bone of Alemannic society (whether Francised or Romanised) is situated in the Rhine and Neckar valleys, where wine and tobacco are grown and traded with Romans and Celts.

Franconia
At least eleven tribes on the Eastern shore of the Rhine have merged to some extent and formed the "gens Francorum" in the 3rd and 4th century. Before 360, they have repeatedly attempted to raid the Roman and later Celtic empire. The Great Hun Wars have reshaped their identity, owing to two pivotal experiences: and was organised by free peasants loyal to Lothar, saved thousands of Frankish lives and became a semi-mythological foundation of the Lothringian dynasty and its state reason of efficient organisation. Frankish army witnessed the might and superior organisation of the much larger armies of the Celts, Romans and Sassanids, as well as the cruel and horrible fate they brought upon the nomadic people of the steppe, The Frankish nobility returned into a system, where the Lothringian state reason rendered high-bred aristocrats without any function, not only with slaves, who would cause changes in the socio-economic structure, but also with a view of themselves as caught between the empires on the one hand, with whom they could neither compare nor contend, and the "primitive barbarians" on the other hand, from whom they sought to distinguish themselves (in the hope that they would never have to endure their fate) and whom they had subjugated and brought home with them.
 * The successful and well-organised retreat, which happened on the lone initiative of High King Lothar
 * In the later, reltaliative campaign, warriors in the confederate

In the 5th century, several Lothars built a modern state apparatus which was in constant conflict with the old warrior nobility, whose powerbase was now merely military and economic (slaves), but no longer as a judicial or spiritual authority.

At the beginning, both groups were still united in their pursuit of securing Frankish power and bringing forth their own type of culture and civilization, which would protect them from imperial annihilation. After Roman models, a network of solid roads and aquaeducts was built as well as an impressive capital of the Confederacy (Bonn), where the new Lothringian central ministeries were situated, too.

Traditional law was codified in the "Lex Franca" and juries were to be presided by judges selected by the High King.

Even traditional Germanic religious cult underwent a transformation. Lothar II. banned all Christian churches, and Lothar III., in order to stop the proliferation of the "Third Age" interpretation, attempted to transform Germanic mythology and cult into a scriptural religion with priests selected by the High King and official temples erected by the confederacy. (This fixation of Germanic religion did not find broad popular support, though. Later, the label "Odinism" was created to describe it.)

In the first half of the 5th century, Franconia used the new military strategies learned from the Romans and Celts (especially the "Parthic maneuvre" the Huns had also practised) and conquered new territories. A Saxon attack on Western coastal Franconia resulted in a retaliative war, at the end of which Westphalia was brought under (Salian) Frankish control. Throughout the entire 5th century, Frankish kingdoms, who had their core settlements along the Rhine between Mogontiacum and Colonia Agrippina and would later come to be known as "Ripuarian Franks", conquered large swaths of the former Agri Decumates. But the Frankish Confederacy also expanded through voluntary accession: When the Saxons attacked the Chatti in the 450s, the Chatti asked for permission to join the Confederacy, which was granted. With some help from other Frankish tribes, the Chatti pushed the Saxons back across the Weser and Werra.

The beginning of the 6th century marked the end of Lothringian rule. Under Lothar V., central administration had become ineffective, the bureaucracy and judges were deemed corrupt, and local kings prevented tax collections and resumed judicial and fiscal authority. The Lothars were Ripuarians; so, in order to weaken the High King further, Salian kings managed to install Ucomer (from the small kingdom of the Chatti) as High King.

This backfired badly. When a slave revolt broke out in the land of the Salian Franks and three kings called for confederal help, Ucomer declined (the Chatti held no slaves, on account of not having participated in the Hun Campaign). The slave revolt was ultimately suppressed, although not only many slaves, but also many Frankish noblemen were killed in the fights. This paved the way for the later establishment of a Salian peasant republic.

The formal end of the Confederacy came in 544, when a war of succession between the Salians and Ripuarians ended inconclusively.

Overall, the 6th century marked a decline in Frankish power and a partial return to tribalist structures. This was aggravated by outbreaks of the bubonic plague towards the end of the century. (Only the Chatti were not affected and managed to expand across the Rhön mountains and further to the South.) Religious conflicts with Christian minorities in the South regularly turned violent, too.

But the myth of Frankish unity endured and fuelled internal power struggles throughout the 7th century, at the end of which the "New Frankish Federation", an alliance of the Salian Peasant Republic and the Inter-Mayorate, which comprised city states whose councils had declared themselves independent from the kingdoms surrounding them, emerged triumphant. Some old kingdoms continued to exist into the 9th century, but progressively, the NFF - and with it a modern state which combined the old and mythological Lothringian state reason with a solid bottom-up foundation of the polity - took control over all of Franconia.

In this later period, the Frankish economy became oriented towards the Celtic Empire and provided the developing Celtic industry with cheap coal and ore in exchange for advanced products manufactured by the Celts.

Its statehood has protected the Frankish language and prevented the Franks from being absorbed by either the Roman or Celtic Empire. Frankish shows significant Latin influences and is written in the Latin alphabet, though, and educated Franks can read and write in Latin, too.

Burgundy
The Burgunds were already united under a single judge king in the 3rd and 4th century.

After the Huns defeated the allied Germanic tribes under the Langobard king Albert in the battle on the Eastern Pannonian plains, the Burgunds had considerably less time and were forced to retreat in a much less organised manner than the Franks. It is assumed that almost half of the population died, either killed by Huns or starved on the flight to Bohemia.

In Bohemia, the decimated Burgunds settled in unpopulated woodland, secluded by mountains on three sides, and quite large for their small number. Thus, no intermediary warrior nobility was required in the 5th century, which had proved so inadequate against the Huns anyway.

In three battles against the advancing Czechs and Moravians at the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries, the Burgundian yeomen army proved able to defend its land, and the Burgundian kings and Czech and Moravian chieftains agreed on the Morava as their common border.

In their relative isolation, the Burgundian social system remained unchallenged and unchanged throughout the centuries: the comparatively primitive economy was based on agriculture, cattle farming, hunting and fishing, with a free peasantry as its backbone. Most issues were solved by the heads of families, in village gatherings and by juries. Major conflicts and appeals were brought unto the King, who came from the same dynasty throughout the 5th-8th centuries. From the late 7th century on, population surpluses led to some Burgundian emigration into Transdanubia. In the 8th century, Moravia`s quicker economic development led to increased economic activity and interference in Eastern Burgundy.

During the entire period, Burgundy preserved its traditional cult and mythology. Only few people were literate (and then only in Latin). Burgundy exports a limited amount of its agricultural produce, especially pork and beer, and starts to import chemical products for medical and agricultural purposes in the 8th century.

Frisia
Frisia´s economy, society and geopolitical role were shaped by the North Sea.

In the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, unaffected by the Hun War, Frisia´s main military concern was to defend itself against Saxony. Sometimes, after military defeat, Frisia became temporarily tributary (first to the Angrivarii, later to the Saxon king), but the Frisians always managed to free themselves after short periods of oppression.

Politically, Frisia is almost a peaceful anarchy. Conflicts between clans are settled in consensus-oriented Things, criminal offenses are dealt with by juries, common endeavours are discussed and decided upon in Things, too. Frisian "counts" are basically only a guard paid by the peasantry to warn and organise evacuation in case of floods, to keep dikes in shape and assemble all young males in case of military attacks. With the formation of trading towns, the counts also became official heads of a police force protecting the market place, which was paid by the city council, who in turn financed themselves through excises and customs. Thus, with increasing urbanisation, Frisia turned more towards democracy in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Economically, Frisia is a trading nation with a great (and defiant) commercial fleet, whose cog boats are equally well adapted to landing in the shallow tidelands of Frisia, Luticia and Courland and to sailing on the high sea. Frisia trades its own products (wool, mutton, fish, salt) for all kinds of practical imports (wood, steel, glass, chemical products etc.). Starting in the 8th century, Frisian ships import cereals from all across Venedia; its modern windmills turn them into flour, which is both consumed domestically and sold in innovative sealed paperbags to Celtic wholesalers. Frisian fishermen control and exploit vast areas of the North Sea.

After Frisia recovered from the bubonic plague in the 7th century, it modernised its production to compete against cheap cotton etc. on the European market (inventing new manufacturing techniques for wool and building new and modern shipyards, selling ships to other nations like Franconia as well). Now, Frisians overtook the Ostrogoths in trade volume in the North and Baltic Seas. This has brought Frisian ships into repeated conflicts with (not only) Danish pirates.

Towards the end of the 8th century, Frisian settlers followed the invitation of the Celtic Empire to help settle Glaciana.

Frisian religion remained fixed on Nerthus. Foreign merchants have brought their cults with them, which are all tolerated in the liberal Frisian towns.

Saxony
In the course of the 3rd and 4th century, a distinct and homogeneous Saxon culture develops in Northern Germany. The Hun Wars do not affect Saxony directly.

Early Saxon society was highly hierarchical: led by the ethelinga caste, with frilinga (yeomen), lide (half-free craftsmen etc.) and indentured servants as the other castes, plus slaves (e.g.war captives) outside the caste system. Saxon religious cult at this time highlighted the Æsir and their rule over the Vanir (comparable to the warrior nobility ruling over the peasantry). Local ethelinga acted together across Saxony, but never chose a king in these first centuries.

This rigid order is dealt a severe blow in 416/7, when a Saxon invasion of Salian Frankish territory leads to a Saxon-Frankish war, which ends in an utter defeat of the Saxons and an enslavement of the Westphalian ethelinga. The catastrophe is generally interpreted as an absence of divine intervention. Nobility and peasantry differ in the details of their interpretations, though. While the majority of the Saxons takes over the South-East Germanic interpretation of the Hun War and adapts it - i.e. a Third Age has come in which the bellicose Æsir have been defeated by the earth-bound Vanir -, the Angrivari and Eastphalian nobility explains the defeat as the sign of a new era in which the gods would not intervene directly and humans would have to follow the divine rules revealed in earlier times (a position which paves the way for the later move towards scriptural Odinism invented in Franconia).

The catastrophe and the ensuing religious/mythological/cultural disagreement undermine the foundation of Saxon`s unique social model. The continuously aggressive foreign policy provokes the wrath of the Celtic Empire, which defeats the Saxons in the middle of the 5th century and occupies most of its heartland, installing a puppet kingdom in Eastphalia.

In the 580s, Saxony is restored and regains its independence under the leadership of King Widukind, who seizes on the opportunity of Celtic political weakness during the crisis of the Celtic monarchy, which ultimately led to the establishment of the republican model in the Celtic Empire, too. The Celts continued to block Saxon access to the North Sea, though.

In the 7th century, Saxony began to expand into Venedian territories lying to its East. Culturally, the emerging state is influenced by the Svear, and the Saxon language comes to be written in runes.

Saxon kings facilitate the use of modern Northern ships and the growth of trading ports into cities and grant their crafts- and tradesmen far-reaching autonomy in exchange for royal loyalty. Especially Saxony`s capital, Hammaburg, grows considerably. The ethelinga react to the social transformations with the codification of the old Saxon laws. They are written down in the runic alphabet developed by the Norse and Svear. This becomes the main function of the annual Things, after military leadership must no longer be chosen, but falls automatically to the king. The kings, in return, try to influence the Things, which over the course of the 7th and 8th century develop into a more permanent parliament, by securing the representation of commoners from the cities. After Hammaburg, Bremen grows to become the kingdom`s second largest city.

Saxon economy is still mostly dominated by agriculture, farming, fishing and relatively simple, but slowly developing craft manufactures in the port towns. Saxony`s most important trading partner is the wealthier Celtic Empire, which also brings new and revolutionary political ideas to the Western port towns. Compared to other parts of Europe, Saxony is relatively poor, but no acute famines have been recorded in the 7th and 8th centuries anymore. Literacy is mostly limited to port city dwellers and ethelinga, who use runes to write in their Saxon language. Religious cult has declined somewhat, but is still rather homogeneously Germanic in nature, with scriptural Odinism being a minority position in a mostly third-age-oriented mythology.

Scandinavia
The Scandinavian tribes, who speak North Germanic languages, remain almost unaffected by the changes in the timeline in the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. They have versatile longboats, but not yet endowed with sails. Trade and foreign contacts are limited, thus. Tribes are still relatively small, headed by "kings" whose power is not necessarily felt in the everyday lives, which have not changed a lot yet. Expansion and the formation of greater political units has not taken place. Armed conflicts aimed at enriching oneself take the forms of either moving from one region to another and driving the initial inhabitants away, or raiding and plundering.

Changes from OTL leading to quicker development, but also to a containment of the Scandinavians within their georegion in contrast to OTL, are caused by the political, military and economic power of the Celtic Empire and its increased involvement in the North and Baltic Seas from the end of the 5th century on.

Because Celtic ships have difficulties sailing the Kattegat, where they become an easy prey of Danish and Geatic pirates, the only Scandinavian region with which Celts establish trading contacts is OTL Norway. This contact triggers learning processes concerning shipbuilding on both sides: Norwegians endow their longboats with sails, and Celts begin to use the small and fast longboats, too, diversifying their navy and commercial fleet, which had up to that point consisted only of the large, bulky types of ships that the Romans used, too. The Celts buy most of these boats in Norway, especially in the growing town of Sørstad (OTL Kristiansand), providing well-paid jobs for Norwegian craftsmen, who begin to buy imported textiles, glassware and alcohol and to learn the language and alphabet of the people they traded with.

The Celtic Empire starts two military campaigns to conquer Denmark and control the Kattegat in fht 6th century. Both fail. Their failures marks not only the end of Celtic expansionism for several centuries, but also the beginning of a Danish myth of heroic resistance and independence. Two Danish kingdoms emerged from the successful defense against the Celts: one in Gudme in the West, one in Lejre in the East.

In the 6th century, the Norwegian invention of the longboat with sails travels along the North Sea Coast to the Frisians and into the Baltic Sea to the Geats, Svear and Danes, but also the Slavic Obodrites and Lutici and the Baltic Prussians and Curonians. This development comes at least a century earlier than OTL thus, and the increased trade in the Baltic Sea is also less intra-Baltic; each tribe focusing rather on exchanging their products for advanced Celtic goods (looking glasses, brandy, fashionable cotton clothes...) rather than those of their neighbours.

The port towns, who sprang up along the Baltic Sea coast, become power centres and targets of raiders and pirates in the 7th century. To defend themselves, they were increasingly fortified. Some of these Scandinavian towns became the capitals of local kingdoms (Uppsala for the Svear, Malmhaug (OTL Malmö) for the Suions, Karmøy for a Norwegian kingdom), whereas in other towns like Sørstad (OTL Kristiansand) or Älvsborg (OTL Gothenburg), traders of Norwegian and later also Frisian descent together with craftsmen formed city councils after the Celtic model of democratic self-rule. In secret societies whose bases are Sørstad and (Frisian) Dorestad, skills are handed down, mutual help is organised and trade monopolies are defended.

Also in the 7th century, the trade networks extended to the Ugro-Finnic tribes of the Estonians and the Finns in the Northern half of the Baltic Sea. After another shipbuilding innovation, Scandinavians lost much to the Frisians who achieved a quasi-monopoly on trade with towns on the Southern coast of the Baltic Sea, where shallow tidelands provided difficult conditions for any larger cargo boat but the Frisian cog.

The Danish kings in Lejre establish close ties with the Sørstad alliance, while the other Danish kings in Gudme have good connections with the Frisian Hanse. Through marriage, the Danish kings of Lejre and the Geatic kings of Geataborg unite their territories in the late 7th century. In the 8th century, Lejre-Geataborg defeats Gudme in one of the last major Scandinavian battles before the advent of firearms and creates a unified Kingdom of Denmark and Geatland (in modern Danish, transcribed: Kongeriget Danmark og Gøtland). The Frisian Hanse, faced with difficulties and high charges in the Kattegat, negotiates with the Celtic Empire and is allowed to hire Celtic specialists and equip their cogs with Greek fire operated by Celts.

Increased contact between increasingly urban cultures along the Baltic Sea also brought the Runic as well as the Latin alphabet to all these port towns. As a rule of thumb, every literate person (only townsmen and priests so far) West of the Oslosund wrote in Latin, while those East and South of the Oslosund wrote in runes.

The towns cannot keep up with the pace of technological innovations from the Mediterranean, whose products they import, but slowly, Mediterranean knowledge and skills are received and reproduced along the Baltic Sea. In the towns, schools modelled both after Celtic/Mediterranean and Southern Germanic ones first teach the sons of the merchant and guild elites. In the 7th and 8th centuries, the sons of petty craftsmen and the sons and daughters of landowners are schooled either there or by Celtic monks, too. At Uppåkra and in Sørstad, the first universities in Scandinavia are founded towards the end of the 8th century. While Uppåkra University has a Germanic religious tradition and gradually extends to include medicine, law, chemistry, biology and physics, Sørstad`s City University is more secular and focuses on medicine, law, accountance, mathematics, civil engineering and physics.

The crisis of the Germanic cult on the continent, most prominently in Saxony, does not extend to Scandinavia, where Svear priests from the "Helgö school" and Suion priests from the "Uppåkra school" become widely influential. Celtic Christianity, now firmly anchored in Norwegian coast towns, where several monasteries have been built, also finds followers among the inhabitants of the larger and more multicultural port towns like Sørstad, Avaldsnes, Oslo and Älvsborg.

The process of centralisation from petty kingdoms to greater kingdoms continues in Scandinavia. In Norway, the king of Karmøy gains control over all of Rogaland and Hordaland and resides in Avaldsnes; the yarl of Lade control Trøndelag, the king of Agder controls the Southern coast, while the king of Borre controls the Vest- and Østfold. In Sweden, the Ynglingar dynasty reigns over a growing kingdom from its capital in Uppsala and supports cultural development; under their rule, two universities (founded on the above-mentioned schools of priests of the traditional Germanic cult) are built in Helgö and Mora. Likewise, the chiefs of the Suioni form a stable union; here, the most successful (religion-based) school resides: Uppåkra. In all these Swedish, Norwegian and Danish kingdoms, laws are codified in runes in the 7th or 8th century.

Abrittus