De origine gentis Swevorum (or Origo gentis Swevorum) is a short anonymous Latin tract on the origins of the northern Swabians,Mathias Kälble, "Ethnogenese und Herzogtum Thüringen im Frankenreich (6.–9. Jahrhundert)", in , Dieter Geuenich and , eds., Die Frühzeit der Thüringer: Archäologie, Sprache, Geschichte, De Gruyter, 2009, p. 375n. the inhabitants of the Nordschwabengau in Saxony., "De origine gentis Swevorum", in Graeme Dunphy, ed., Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, Online ed., Brill, 2016. Robert W. Rix, "Out-of-Scandinavia: New Perspectives on Barbarian Identity", in Lindy Brady and Patrick Wadden, eds., Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe, Brill, 2022, p. 271. The earliest manuscript (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1357) dates to about 1250 and the work itself was probably composed about that time or perhaps some decades earlier.Jonas Wellendorf, "Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature", Scandinavian Studies 94.4 (2022), n10.
De origine gentis Swevorum is influenced by the accounts of Saxon origins in Rudolf of Fulda, Widukind of Corvey and the Annals of Quedlinburg and by the account of Lombard origins in Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards. The author's purpose is to show that the northern Swabians had been settled in the Nordschwabengau since the year 555–556. It claims that they migrated there from the north. It describes wars between the northern Swabians and the Franks and Thuringians, but its historical reliability is doubtful.
Editions . De origo gentis Swevorum. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum. Hanover, 1935.
References
External links De origine gentis Swevorum – Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters