• Northern Europe AD 500

The upheavals in the Germanic worlds of the late Second and Third centuries resulted in the rise of new, more militarized tribal groupings along the Rhine, such as the Franks, the Alemmani, and the Burgundians. The appearance of a fearsome new threat from the east, in the form of the Huns, in the later Fourth and early Fifth centuries, triggered a mass migration of these western German tribes across the Rhine into Roman territory from 406 onwards.

These Great Migrations have led to a significant reduction of population within the Germanic homelands, and a general shift of German speaking peoples westward. This has allowed the expansion of the Slavs, who at this time come to predominate in the region east of the river Elbe.

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