The Germanic tribes referred to as East Germanic constitute a wave of migrants who moved from Scandinavia into the area between the Oder and Vistula rivers between 600 - 300 BC.

Groups

Groups identified as east Germanic tribes include:

• Bastarnae
• Burgundians
• Goths
• Lombards
• Rugians
• Vandals

Language

See: East Germanic languages

The East Germanic languages are contrasted with North and West Germanic. However, the East Germanic languages shared many characteristics with North Germanic, perhaps because of the later migration date. All the East Germanic languages are extinct as living languages. However, there have been recent attempts by Germanic tribal polytheists to reconstruct a form of neo-Gothic as a common community language. This is primarily based on the academic publications of a small number of scholars who have studied what remains of the written records of the Gothic dialects within Italia, the Iberian peninsula, and old Anatolia. Whether their efforts will succeed has yet to be proven conclusively since the reconstruction of elder Germanic tribal belief systems is a rather young movement, dating by most accounts to the last quarter of the 19th century.

See Also

• West Germanic tribes