The Vandals

 

Origins

Jordanes refers to Vandals as Gothic (East Germanic) speakers, and name etymologies support the notion of Vandalic being near related to Gothic. The bearers of the Przeworsk culture (possibly the Lugii) had the custom of cremation. Cremation is characteristic to Baltic Prussian tribes. In Prussia both cremation and inhumation burials were found, which Germanic tribes practised. The remains of the Przeworsk culture is mainly traced in the areas which were marshes, when Romans mentioned the Lugii tribe.

Similarities of names have led to appointing homelands for the Vandals in Norway (Hallingdal), Sweden (Vendel), or Denmark (Vendsyssel). The Vandals are assumed to have crossed the Baltic into what is today Poland somewhere in the 2nd century BC, and to have settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. This tradition supports the identification of the Vandals with the Przeworsk culture, since the Gothic Wielbark culture seems to have replaced a branch of that culture.

Hasdingi

The Hasdingi were the southern tribes of the Vandals, . They lived in areas of today's southern Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. They were part of the migratory movements of the Vandals, into the Iberian peninsula and later on to North Africa.

In 409 they settled as foederati in Gallaecia (today Galicia and the north of Portugal).

Gunderic, king of the Hasdingi, lost his kingdom to king Hermeric of the Suebi after a battle against an allied force of Suebi and Romans. He fled to Baetica with his army where he became king of the Silingi Vandals and of the Alans.

 

Haddingji

The Haddingjar refers on the one hand to legends about two brothers by this name, and on the other hand to possibly related legends based on the Hasdingi, the royal dynasty of the Vandals. The accounts vary greatly.

Origins

It has been suggested that they were originally two Proto-Germanic legendary heroes by the name *Hazdingōz, meaning the "longhairs", and that they were identical to the Alci mentioned by Tacitus. According to Tacitus, the Alci were worshiped as gods by priests in female clothing:

[...] and the Nahanarvali. Among these last is shown a grove of immemorial sanctity. A priest in female attire has the charge of it. But the deities are described in Roman language as Castor and Pollux. Such, indeed, are the attributes of the divinity, the name being Alcis. They have no images, or, indeed, any vestige of foreign superstition, but it is as brothers and as youths that the deities are worshipped.^[1]

Cassius Dio mentioned c. 170 the Astingoi as a noble clan among the Vandals, and the Asdingi reappear, in the 6th century in Jordanes' work as the royal dynasty of the Vandals.

The root appears in Old Icelandic as haddr meaning "women hair", and the motivation for the name Haddingjar/Astingoi/Asdingi was probably that men from Germanic royal dynasties sported long hair as a mark of dignity (cf. the "longhaired Merovingians").

DNA Material R1a

Norwegians do have a lot of R1a DNA, on average ca. 24% of the population but in the South it’s only 13% of all y-dna. A good portion of R1a clusters are matching with males from East-Germany / West-Poland. This supports the  theory that tribes of Vandals settled in Norway.

Please see for more information: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gallgaedhil/haplo_r1a.htm