As you already know, "Gothic" architecture nothing (or very little) to do with the Goths, a Germanic tribe which roamed around Europe. But, although the Goths didn't invent this architectural style, they had a sophisticated culture of their own.
Historians sometimes picture the Goths as "savage", uncultured, crude, and blood-thirsty. This is far from true.
By 100 A.D., at the latest, the Goths were literate (i.e., they could read and write). Some historians believe that they were literate even eariler.
The earliest Gothic writings are preserved in "runes". Runes, which are now sometimes used in silly fortune-telling games, are simply the letters of an early Germanic alphabet, which was used to write Gothic and Scandinavian languages.
By around 350 A.D., the Gothic leader Wulfila (also spelled "Ulfilas" and several other ways) revised the Gothic spelling and grammar, and created a more modern alphabet for the language. By 400 A.D., there was quite a literary culture among the Goths. One surviving work is a commentary on Greek texts.
So the Goths weren't uncultured. Nor were they savage: when they became Christianized around 300 A.D., they stopped human and animal sacrifice.
So why do we have this image of Goths as "rude and crude"? Perhaps because the earliest historians to write about them were Romans, and these Romans, upset about the decline of their own empire, needed to find somebody who looked even worse, so as to make the Romans look good by comparison. Later historians, then, simply relied on the earlier historians, and painted a rather grim picture of the Goths.
Gothic, as a living and spoken language, survived in isolated, obscure pockets until around 1400 A.D., mainly in small villages around the Crimean Sea.
The U of M, here in Ann Arbor, has two noted Gothic specialists, who are famous around the world for their expertise in this language. They have published several books on Gothic grammar.
Is this a future career for you? Would you like to be a specialist in the Gothic language?
