Vikings
The people of the far north, later called Vikings, were first noticed by the Romans around the year 100 BC.{{efn|The Romans of the time believed the Baltic sea was a part of the ocean and lands north of the Baltic were islands. Early writers mentioned an island called Thule.<ref>Barry Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain (New York: Walker & Company, 2002), p. 126</ref> It lay beyond the known world of the time but it is thought now to be Norway. They did not come into contact with Germanic tribes north of the Danube until the 1st century AD. About 98 AD, Tacitus wrote Germania which was an account of the German peoples..}} This is when the Cimbri and the Teutons moved into southern Gaul. The Romans believed these war-like tribes came from Jutland. But the Romans suspected they were only a part of a greater threat located further north. The Roman historians Jordanes described the destructive Ostrogoths and Visigoths as having come from Gotland. The northern menace survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire.