Vandals facts for kids

The Vandals were usually thought of as a horde of people pillaging and burning things. This is a colored steel engraving of the Sack of Rome (455) by Heinrich Leutemann (1824–1904), c 1860–80

The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe. They entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals may have given their name to the region of Andalusia, which according to one of several theories of its etymology was originally called Vandalusia or land of the Vandals. This would be the source of Al-Andalus — the Arabic name of Iberian Peninsula, in the south of present-day Spain, where they settled before pushing on to create a Vandal Kingdom in North Africa.

The Goth Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths and regent of the Visigoths, was allied by marriage with the Vandals, as well as with the Burgundians and the Franks under Clovis I.

Byzantine Empire forces under Justinian I conquered the Vandalic African kingdom in 534.

Images for kids

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  Vandalic goldfoil jewellery from the 3rd or 4th century

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  Neck ring with plug clasp from the Vandalic Treasure of Osztrópataka displayed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.

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  Germanic and Proto-Slavic tribes of Central Europe around 3rd century BC.

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  The Roman empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–38), showing the location of the Vandilii East Germanic tribes, then inhabiting the upper Vistula region (Poland).

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  Reconstruction of an Iron Age warrior's garments representing a Vandalic man, with his hair in a "Suebian knot" (160 AD), Archaeological Museum of Kraków, Poland.

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  Migrations of the Vandals from Scandinavia through Dacia, Gaul, Iberia, and into North Africa. Grey: Roman Empire.

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  The Vandal Kingdom at its greatest extent in the 470s

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  The Sack of Rome, Karl Briullov, 1833–1836

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  Barbarian kingdoms and tribes after the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476

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  A denarius of the reign of Hilderic. Legends: D[OMINUS] N[OSTRIS] HILDIRIX REX / KART[A]G[INE] FELIX.

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  Belisarius may be this bearded figure on the right of Emperor Justinian I in the mosaic in the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, which celebrates the reconquest of Italy by the Byzantine army under the skillful leadership of Belisarius

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  Vandal cavalryman, c. AD 500, from a mosaic pavement at Bordj Djedid near Carthage

See also

In Spanish: Vándalos para niños