ports were giving the area an economic vigour it had never had in Roman times. The coronation in 800 of a Frank, Charlemagne, as the first northern emperor, has often been seen, and rightly, as symbolic of this shift of balance from south to north which is one of the most important developments of the early Middle Ages. Another, still more important for the historian, is that in this period the north finds its own voice. In the Roman period we know about it only through the writings of Romans and Greeks; now, thanks to the spread of Christianity, some northerners themselves begin to write, in Latin, Germanic, or Celtic languages. The north (except for Scandinavia and the lands east of the Elbe) emerges into the light of history for the first time.
The end of the western Roman Empire was marked by movements of peoples. Whether these movements caused the end of the Roman Empire, or merely took advantage of it, is still a matter for debate among historians, as is the terminology; are these movements to be called 'the migrations' (the Völkerwanderungen) or 'the invasions'? As far as northern Europe is concerned the former term is probably more appropriate. Germanic-speaking and Celtic-speaking peoples moved into areas from which, in most cases, Roman armies had already withdrawn, and sometimes they did so with Roman encouragement. And it is likely that some of these migrations were on a much larger scale and had much greater cultural impact than the Germanic invasions of southern Europe. Large areas of the north-western Roman Empire became Germanic in language and culture: most notably England, but also a swathe of territory to the west of the Rhine and the south of the Danube, in modern Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The modern map of Europe owes some of its most obvious names to the incoming peoples of the fifth and sixth centuries: England (with county names such as Sussex or Essex), Scotland, France, Brittany, Alsace, Bavaria. And, of course, the political vacuum left by movements of peoples into
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