The Heruls

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Web-article //2012, http://gedevasen.dk/heruls.pdfIn most history books the Heruls are mentioned as a people of Scandinavian origin. The only historical source for that claim is the work "Getica" from 551 AD by the Gothic historian, Jordanes. But Jordanes never wrote that - and no other historian wrote that they returned, as Procopius is often falsely quoted. Jordanes connected their etymology with the swamps at the Black Sea, where they were first time mentioned by Greek and Roman historians in 267 AD. Consequently he could not regard them as Scandinavians. First when the news about a Herulian envoy to Scandinavia in 548 AD were circulating in the city of Constantinople both Procopius and Jordanes wrote about Heruls and Danes in 551 and 553 AD - and Procopius also told that they arrived there in the first decade of his own century. Earlier no historians - not even Tacitus nor Ptolemeus - mentioned Heruls in Scandinavia. The idea about the Scandinavian origin of the Heruls was based on 5 bungled words in the geographical introduction of Jordanes, where he wrote about the Danes "expelling the Heruls from their settlements" - words which were misunderstood already in 1783 as an event before 267 AD. Modern linguists read these words in the introduction as a reference to an event of his own time - making