In the yeare 369, the Emperor Valentinian I enlisted their aid in his war against another Germanic tribe, the Alamanni. The Burgundians were possibly living in the Vistula basin, according to the mid-6th century historian of the Goths, Jordanes. The Burgundians whom are if not parallel patterned with Ostragoths warred against the Alamanni between the Gepidae whose king would have stood between the Huns and the Ostragoths. About 400 AD the Burgundians appear again. Following Stilicho’s withdrawal of troops to fight Alaric I the Visigoth in AD 406-408, the northern tribes crossed the Rhine and entered the Empire in the Völkerwanderung, or Germanic migrations. Among them were the Alans, Vandals, the Suevi, and possibly the Burgundians. The Burgundians migrated westwards and settled in the Rhine Valley.
The Burgundians were extending their power over southeastern Gaul; that is, northern Italy, western Switzerland, and southeastern France. In 493 Clovis, king of the Franks, married the Burgundian princess Clotilda, daughter of Chilperic. At first allies with Clovis' Franks against the Visigoths in the early 6th century, the Burgundians were eventually conquered by the Franks in 534 CE. The Burgundian kingdom was made part of the Merovingian kingdoms, and the Burgundians themselves were by and large absorbed as well.
In 552 the Byzantine general Narses defeated Totila, who fell in battle as a result, the Ostrogoths lost their national identity, and the hegemony over Italy passed to Byzantium and shortly afterward to the Lombards. Under the Ostrogothic kings, the culture of late antiquity was revived by Boethius and Cassiodorus; Dionysius Exiguus compiled church law; and Saint Benedict laid the basis of Western monasticism before the Vendel era. Roman law and institutions were for the most part maintained; however, the Ostrogoths were resented as aliens by the Italians, from whom they differed not only in culture but also in religion, since they were Arians.
The Burgundians' tradition of Scandinavian origin finds support in place-name evidence and archaeological evidence (Stjerna) and many consider their tradition to be correct. Burgundes were an East Germanic tribe which may have emigrated from mainland Scandinavia to the island of Bornholm, whose old form in Old Norse still was Burgundarholmr and from here to mainland Europe. Scandinavia was beyond the horizon of the earliest Roman sources, including Tacitus (who only mentions one Scandinavian tribe, the Suiones), they don't tell from where the Burgundians came, and the first Roman references place them east of the Rhine. Early Roman sources thought they were simply another East Germanic tribe or possibly the Gauls during the Gallo wars of Caesar.
The Burgundians left three legal codes, among the earliest from any of the Germanic tribes and probably never moved north, at least not among the status of the bishopric and marital codes. The Liber Consitutionum sive Lex Gundobada (The Book of the Constitution following the Law of Gundobad), also known as the Lex Burgundionum, or more simply the Lex Gundobada or the Liber, was issued in several parts between 483 and 516, principally by Gundobad, but also by his son, Sigismund. It was a record of Burgundian customary law and is typical of the many Germanic law codes from this period. In particular, the Liber borrowed from the Lex Visigothorum and influenced the later Lex Ribuaria. The Liber is one of the primary sources for contemporary Burgundian life, as well as the history of its kings. Like many of the Germanic tribes, the Burgundians' legal traditions allowed the application of separate laws for separate ethnicities. Gundobad also issued (or codified) a set of laws for Roman subjects of the Burgundian kingdom, the Lex Romana Burgundionum (The Roman Law of the Burgundians). Gundobad's son Sigismund later published the Prima Constitutio.
Anund's mound, a grave associated with Anund, the name is taken from the runestone, which was raised 400 years after Anund's deathBrøt-Anundr (Old East Norse) or Braut-Önundr (Old West Norse), meaning trail-blazer Anund or Anund the land-clearer, d. ca 640, was a legendary Swedish king of the House of Yngling. Anund succeeded his father Ingvar on the Swedish throne, and after his father's wars against Danish vikings and Estonian pirates, peace reigned over Sweden and there were good harvests. In those days Sweden was dominated by vast and uninhabited forests, so Anund started making roads and clearing land and vast districts were settled by Swedes.
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