Lombards

The Lombards, Longobards or Langobards (Latin: Langobardi) were a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. They were previously settled in the area of the Middle Danube near what is now Austria and Hungary, but they only entered this area in 5th century, having moved from a previous homeland in the north. Roman-era historians in the first and second centuries AD wrote of the Lombards as being one of the Suebian peoples, and in the first century at least they were described as living on the Lower Elbe, in the area near present day Hamburg.

There are no contemporary records of the Lombards in the 3rd, 4th, and most of the 5th century, which is when they reappear far to the south, near the Danube river. Legendary accounts of Lombard migration are found in several early medieval texts. The oldest is the Origo Gentis Langobardorum (Origin of the Lombard People). There are two notable later adaptations which contain more information, the Chronicon Gothanum and the History of the Lombards by Paul the Deacon, written between 787 and 796. All three describe the Langobards as a people who moved, but the details differ until the point where they entered "Rugiland", which was soon after Odoacer defeated the Rugii, who lived north of what is now Vienna, and killed their king. The destruction of this kingdom happened in 487/488.

In the Danube region the Lombards subsequently came into conflict with neighbouring kingdoms, starting with their neighbours the Heruls, and culminating with their defeat of the Gepids. The Lombard king Audoin defeated the Gepid leader Thurisind in 551 or 552, and Audoin's successor Alboin eventually destroyed the Gepids in 567. The Lombards also settled in Pannonia (modern-day Hungary). Near Szólád, archaeologists have unearthed burial sites of Lombard men and women buried together as families, unusual among Germanic peoples at the time. Contemporary traces have also been discovered of Mediterranean Greeks and a possible migrant from France.

Following Alboin's victory over the Gepids, he led his people into northeastern Italy, which had become severely depopulated and devastated after the long Gothic War (535–554) between the Byzantine Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom. The Lombards were joined by numerous Saxons, Heruls, Gepids, Bulgars, Thuringians and Ostrogoths, and their invasion of Italy was almost unopposed. By late 569, they had conquered all of northern Italy and the principal cities north of the Po River except Pavia, which fell in 572. At the same time, they occupied areas in central and southern Italy. They established a Lombard Kingdom in north and central Italy, which reached its zenith under the eighth-century ruler Liutprand. In 774, the kingdom was conquered by the Frankish king Charlemagne and integrated into the Frankish Empire. However, Lombard nobles continued to rule southern parts of the Italian peninsula well into the eleventh century, when they were conquered by the Normans and added to the County of Sicily. In this period, the southern part of Italy still under Lombard domination was known to the Norse as Langbarðaland ('land of the Lombards'), as inscribed in the Norse runestones.^[1] Their legacy is also apparent in the name of the region of Lombardy in northern Italy.