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24-465: The county of Agder was named Nedenes amt from the 1600s until 1919. This name was chosen because the Nedenes village was once a large, medieval farm and later was the seat of the county officials. This Agder location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Agder Agder is a county ( fylke ) and traditional region in the southern part of Norway and

48-456: A monk , a religiosus or a member of the clergy. Some manuscripts say that he was a bishop, and some even say bishop of Ravenna , but the name Jordanes is not known in the lists of bishops of Ravenna. Jordanes wrote Romana , about the history of Rome , but his best-known work is his Getica , which was written in Constantinople about 551 AD. Jordanes wrote his Romana at

72-553: A high-level notarius , or secretary, of a small client state on the Roman frontier in Scythia Minor , modern southeastern Romania and northeastern Bulgaria . Jordanes was notarius , or secretary to Gunthigis Baza , a nephew of Candac and a magister militum of the leading Ostrogoth clan of the Amali . That was ante conversionem meam ("before my conversion"). The nature and

96-403: A possibly late form, *augjo-, but this derivation is speculative. There is no other evidence on Auganza, and its connection to Egder is hypothetical too. On 1 January 1838, the formannskapsdistrikt law went into effect, creating local municipalities all over Norway. The municipalities have changed over time through mergers and divisions as well as numerous boundary adjustments. When Agder county

120-482: Is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder counties were merged. Since the early 1900s, the term Sørlandet ("south country, south land, southland") has been commonly used for this region, sometimes with the inclusion of neighbouring Rogaland . Before that time, the area was considered a part of Western Norway . The area

144-576: The Getica of Jordanes , who wrote of Scandza (Scandinavia) in the 6th century. If Jordanes's Scandza is a palatalized form of *Scandia, then Augandzi is likely a palatalized form of *Augandii, residents of *Augandia. A name of that period would have to be closer to Proto-Germanic ; in fact, a word of that period does present itself and fits the geographical lore of the times: *agwjō (meaning "island"), which Jordanes and all his predecessors writing of Scandinavia believed it to be. A simple metathesis produces

168-603: The Alani with their leader, Candac by name, received Scythia Minor and Lower Moesia . Paria, the father of my father Alanoviiamuth (that is to say, my grandfather), was secretary to this Candac as long as he lived. To his sister's son Gunthigis, also called Baza, the Master of the Soldiery, who was the son of Andag the son of Andela, who was descended from the stock of the Amali , I also, Jordanes, although an unlearned man before my conversion,

192-504: The Ynglinga saga tells us that Harald Redbeard, chief of Agðir, refused his daughter Åsa to Gudröd Halvdanson, on which event Gudröd invaded Agðir, killed Harald and his son Gyrd, and took Åsa whether she would or no. She bore a son, Halvdan (the Black), and later arranged to have Gudröd assassinated. Among the royal families, these events seem to have been rather ordinary. Her word was the last in

216-568: The Egyptian pharaoh Vesosis (47). The less fictional part of Jordanes's work begins when the Goths encounter Roman military forces in the third century AD. The work concludes with the defeat of the Goths by the Byzantine general Belisarius . Jordanes concludes the work by stating that he writes to honour those who were victorious over the Goths after a history spanning 2,030 years. Jordanes wrongly equated

240-557: The Old Norse word Agðir . In the early Viking Age , before Harald Fairhair , Agðir was a petty kingdom inhabited by a people named after it, the Egðir. Nothing in Old Norse gives any hint as to the word's meaning; it was not produced (from known segments) in Old Norse, which means the name is older still. The Egðir are believed to be the same etymologically as the Augandzi people mentioned in

264-586: The argument, as her grandson, Harald Fairhair, unified Norway. Prior to the Viking Age is a gap in the region's history for a few hundred years, but in Jordanes we also find regions of the same but earlier forms of names, presumably also petty kingdoms under now unknown chiefs. The previous most credible source, Ptolemy , gives the briefest of sketches, only citing all of Norway as the Chaedini ("country people"). Perhaps

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288-519: The behest of a brother Castalius, who apparently knew that Jordanes possessed the twelve volumes of the History of the Goths by Cassiodorus . Castalius wanted a short book about the subject, and Jordanes obliged with an excerpt based on memory, possibly supplemented with other material to which he had access. The Getica sets off with a geography/ethnography of the North, especially of Scandza (16–24). He lets

312-513: The behest of a certain Vigilius. Although some scholars have identified this person with Pope Vigilius , there is nothing else to support the identification besides the name. The form of address that Jordanes uses and his admonition that Vigilius "turn to God " would seem to rule out this identification. In the preface to his Getica , Jordanes writes that he is interrupting his work on the Romana at

336-583: The details of the conversion remain obscure. The Goths had been converted with the assistance of Ulfilas (a Goth), made bishop on that account. However, the Goths had adopted Arianism . Jordanes's conversion may have been a conversion to the trinitarian Nicene Creed , which may be expressed in anti-Arianism in certain passages in Getica . In the letter to Vigilius he mentions that he was awakened vestris interrogationibus – "by your questioning". Alternatively, Jordanes's conversio may mean that he had become

360-698: The difference between kingdoms was not sufficiently important to cite them individually. Prior to then the most credible and respected source, Tacitus in Germania Chapter 44 described the Suiones , who were divided into civitates (kingdoms?) along the coast of Scandinavia and were unusual in owning fleets of a special type of ship. These were pointed on both ends and were driven by banks of oars that could be rearranged or shipped for river passage. They did not depend on sail (so Tacitus says) but other than that they do not differ from Viking ships. These civitates went all

384-407: The history of the Goths commence with the emigration of Berig with three ships from Scandza to Gothiscandza (25, 94), in a distant past. In the pen of Jordanes, Herodotus's Getian demigod Zalmoxis becomes a king of the Goths (39). Jordanes tells how the Goths sacked " Troy and Ilium" just after they had recovered somewhat from the war with Agamemnon (108). They are also said to have encountered

408-530: The later history of the Goths. Getica has been the object of much critical review. Jordanes wrote in Late Latin rather than the classical Ciceronian Latin. According to his own introduction, he had only three days to review what Cassiodorus had written and so he must also have relied on his own knowledge. Jordanes writes about himself almost in passing: The Sciri , moreover, and the Sadagarii and certain of

432-752: The two counties joined in 2020, they cooperated in many ways; the University of Agder had sites in both Aust-Agder and Vest-Agder, as did many other institutions, such as the Diocese of Agder og Telemark , the Agder Court of Appeal , and the Agder Police District . The name Agder is older than the Norwegian language . Its meaning is not known. Just as the Norwegian language derives from Old Norse , Agder derives from

456-628: The way around Scandinavia to the Arctic, or at least to regions of very long days, where they stopped. It seems clear that in the Roman Iron Age Norway was populated by people of the same identity as Sweden, who were called the Suiones by Latin sources. In settling the coast at some point in prehistory they had been divided into civitates by the terrain. These states took on mainly geographical names or names of individuals or mythological characters. Agder

480-431: Was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, widely believed to be of Gothic descent , who became a historian later in life. He wrote two works, one on Roman history ( Romana ) and the other on the Goths ( Getica ). The latter, along with Isidore of Seville 's Historia Gothorum , is one of only two extant ancient works dealing with the early history of the Goths . Other writers, such as Procopius , wrote works on

504-495: Was a medieval petty kingdom , and after Norway's unification became known as Egdafylki and later Agdesiden , a county within the kingdom of Norway. The name Agder was not used after 1662, when the area was split into smaller governmental units called Nedenæs, Råbyggelaget, Lister, and Mandal. The name was resurrected in 1919 when two counties of Norway that roughly corresponded to the old Agdesiden county were renamed Aust-Agder (East Agder) and Vest-Agder (West Agder). Even before

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528-535: Was established on 1 January 2020, it had 25 municipalities. Norway of the Viking Age was divided into petty kingdoms ruled by chiefs who contended for land, maritime supremacy, or political ascendance and sought alliances or control through marriage with other royal families, either voluntary or forced. These circumstances produced the generally turbulent and heroic lives recorded in the Heimskringla . For example,

552-537: Was one of them. After the unification of Norway by Harold Fairhair and army and allies in the 10th century, all the civitates became provinces ( fylker ) and after their conversion to Christianity, they became dioceses or parishes. The development of Old Norse into local dialects and the dissimilation of customs due to isolation added an ethnic flavor to the area, which is cherished today. Jordanes Jordanes ( / dʒ ɔːr ˈ d eɪ n iː z / ; Greek : Ιορδάνης), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes ,

576-508: Was secretary. Paria was Jordanes's paternal grandfather. Jordanes writes that he was secretary to Candac , dux Alanorum , an otherwise unknown leader of the Alans. Jordanes was asked by a friend to write Getica as a summary of a multi-volume history of the Goths by the statesman Cassiodorus that existed then but has since been lost. Jordanes was selected for his known interest in history and because of his own Gothic background. He had been

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