Editing Burgundians (section)

===Uncertain origins===
[[File:DenmarkBornholm2.png|thumb|right|220px|Location of the island of [[Bornholm]]]]

The origins of the Burgundians before they reached the area near the Roman-controlled Rhine is a subject of various old proposals, but these are doubted by some modern historians. As remarked by [[Susan Reynolds]], citing [[Ian N. Wood]]:<ref>Reynolds, "Our Forefathers" in Goffart (ed.) ''After Rome's Fall'', p.35, citing Ian Wood "Ethnicity and Ethnogenesis of the Burgundians" in Wolfram (ed.) Typen de Ethnogenese.</ref>
{{blockquote|Wood suggests that those who were called Burgundians in their early sixth-century laws were not a single ethnic group, but covered any non-Roman follower of Gundobad and Sigismund. Some of the leaders of Goths and Burgundians may have descended from long-distant ancestors somewhere around the Baltic. Maybe, but everyone has a lot of ancestors, and some of theirs may well have come from elsewhere. There is, as [[Walter Goffart]] has repeatedly argued, little reason to believe that sixth-century or later references to what looks like names for Scandinavia, or for places in it, mean that traditions from those particular ancestors had been handed through thick and thin.}}

They have long been associated with Scandinavian origin based on place-name evidence and archaeological evidence (Stjerna) and many consider their tradition to be correct (e.g. Musset, p.&nbsp;62). According to such proposals, the Burgundians are believed to have then emigrated to the Baltic island of [[Bornholm]] ("the island of the Burgundians" in [[Old Norse]]). By about 250 AD, the population of Bornholm had largely disappeared from the island. Most cemeteries ceased to be used, and those that were still used had few burials (Stjerna, in German 1925:176). In ''[[Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar]]'' (''The Saga of Thorstein, Viking's Son''), a man (or group) named [[Veseti]] settled on a [[holm (island)|holm]] (island) called ''borgundarhólmr'' in Old Norse, i.e. Bornholm. [[Alfred the Great]]'s translation of ''[[Paulus Orosius|Orosius]]'' uses the name ''Burgenda land'' to refer to a territory next to the land of [[Suiones|Sweons]] ("Swedes").<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4076 |title=The Discovery of Muscovy by Richard Hakluyt |website=www.gutenberg.org |access-date=2020-08-28 |archive-date=2020-07-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727070959/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4076 |url-status=live }}</ref> The 19th century poet and mythologist [[Viktor Rydberg]] asserted from an early medieval source, ''[[Sigismund of Burgundy|Vita Sigismundi]]'', that they themselves retained oral traditions about their Scandinavian origin.