Lombards

The Lombards—also called Longobards or Langobards—were a Germanic people who took over much of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774 AD. Before that, during the 5th century, they had settled in the Middle Danube region, in what is now Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary. Even earlier, they lived farther north, near modern-day Hamburg. Roman-era writers from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD listed the Lombards as one of the Suebian groups and placed them on the Lower Elbe as early as the 1st century. Their name lives on in Lombardy, the northern Italian region named after them.

No contemporary records mention the Lombards in the 3rd or 4th centuries, except for a single reference in Julius Honorius’s *Cosmographia*. They reappear in history living near the Danube in the late 5th century. Early medieval texts tell legendary migration stories, the oldest being the *Origo Gentis Langobardorum*. Two later versions—the *Chronicon Gothanum* and Paul the Deacon’s more scholarly *History of the Lombards* (written between 787 and 796)—add more detail. All three describe the Lombards moving to the Danube from somewhere near the North Sea, though the specifics differ until they enter “Rugiland” shortly after Odoacer defeated the Rugii in 487/488 AD, near present-day Vienna.

In the Danube area, the Lombards clashed with other barbarian kingdoms, starting with the Heruls and ending with their defeat of the Gepids. King Audoin moved his people south into Pannonia (modern-day Hungary) and beat the Gepid leader Thurisind in 551 or 552. His successor Alboin wiped out the Gepid kingdom in 567. Near Szólád, archaeologists have found Lombard burial sites where men and women were buried together as families—an unusual practice among Germanic peoples at the time.

After defeating the Gepids, Alboin led his people into northeastern Italy, which was heavily depopulated and devastated by the long Gothic War (535–554) between the Byzantine Empire and the Ostrogoths. The Lombards were joined by Saxons, Heruls, Gepids, Bulgars, Thuringians, and Ostrogoths, and their invasion faced almost no resistance. By late 569, they had taken all of northern Italy and the major cities north of the Po River, except Pavia, which fell in 572. They also occupied parts of central and southern Italy. They set up a Lombard Kingdom in northern and central Italy, which peaked under 8th-century ruler Liutprand. In 774, the Frankish king Charlemagne conquered the kingdom and absorbed it into the Frankish Empire. Lombard nobles, however, kept ruling southern parts of Italy into the 11th century, until the Normans took over and added them to the County of Sicily.

**Name**

The classical Latin and Greek forms of the name were first recorded by Strabo and Velleius Paterculus. The standard explanation breaks it down as “long” and “beard”—meaning “the Long-beards.” In the 7th century, Isidore of Seville wrote that people said the Langobards got their name because they never cut their beards. The origin stories in the *Origo* and Paul the Deacon’s history link the name to a trick played by the Lombards’ ancestors. The *Chronicon Gothanum* skips that episode and says the name came simply “by the voice of the common people,” due to their long, uncut beards. Scholars generally accept this “long-beard” explanation as linguistically and semantically sound. Other theories—like deriving *-bard-* from a weapon (*barta* “axe”) or treating it as a synonym for “fighters” alongside the alternate ethnonym *Winnili* (“the fighters”)—are less convincing. *Winnili* may have been the tribe’s internal name, while *Langobardi* started as an outsider label.

Later sources sometimes used the rare shortened form *Bardi*. Place-names like Bardengau and Bardowick in northern Germany, near the Lombards’ first known homeland, may preserve this element. But scholars note that *Bard* place-names are common across northern Germany and often linked to wet or muddy areas.

**Legendary origins**

All three legendary accounts say the Langobards were originally called Winnili, ruled by two brothers, Ibor and Aio (or Agio), with their mother and advisor Gambara. The *Origo* and Paul the Deacon’s history place them first on an island in the far north, spelled variously as Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan, or Scadinavia—likely imitating Jordanes’ 6th-century account of the Goths. The 7th-century writer Fredegar also says the Langobardi came from Scathanavia, but only describes it as “between the Danube and the Ocean,” not as an island.

The *Codex Gothanus*, written later than the other two, seems to preserve older material. It says the Lombards set out from a river called Vindilicus at the far edge of Gaul, then moved to “Scatenauga,” a place on the lower Elbe where 1st-century Roman authors had placed the Langobardi. The Vindilicus had earlier appeared in Isidore of Seville’s etymologies as the river where the Vandals supposedly came from.