The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe which 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 Vandalusia or land of the Vandals (which 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 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.

Incursions into the Roman Empire
In 406 the Vandals advanced from Pannonia travelling west along the Danube without much difficulty, but when they reached the Rhine, they met resistance from the Franks, who populated and controlled Romanized regions in northern Gaul. Twenty thousand Vandals, including Godigisel himself, died in the resulting battle, but then with the help of the Alans they managed to defeat the Franks, and on December 31, 406 the Vandals crossed the frozen Rhine to invade Gaul, which they devastated terribly. Under Godigisel's son Gunderic, the Vandals plundered their way westward and southward through Aquitaine.

In Gaul
On October 13, 409 they crossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian peninsula. There they 'received land' from the Romans, as foederati, in Gallaecia (Northwest) and Hispania Baetica (South), while the Alans got lands in Lusitania (West) and the region around Carthago Nova. The Suebi also controlled part of Gallaecia. The Visigoths, who invaded Iberia before receiving lands in Septimania (Southern France), crushed the Alans in 426, killing the western Alan king Attaces. The remainder of his people subsequently appealed to the Vandal king Gunderic to accept the Alan crown. Later Vandal kings in North Africa styled themselves Rex Wandalorum et Alanorum ("King of the Vandals and Alans").

In Iberia

The Vandal Kingdom in North Africa
The Vandal conquest of North Africa is considered as a strategic move. The Vandals took North Africa as a base for raiding the Mediterranean Sea, much like the Vikings. It was under the reign of king Geiseric (Genseric, Gaiseric), Gunderic's half brother, when Vandals started building a Vandal fleet, to plunder the Mediterranean.
In 429, political maneuvering in Rome was to change the landscape forever. Rome was ruled by the boy emperor Valentinian III (who rose to power at the age of 8), and his mother Galla Placidia. However, the Roman General Flavius Aëtius, in vying for power, convinced Galla Placidia that her General Boniface was plotting to kill her and her son to claim the throne for himself. As proof, he implored her to write him a letter asking him to come to Rome and she would see that Boniface would refuse. At the same time Aëtius sent Boniface a letter stating that he should disregard letters from Rome asking him to return for they were plotting to kill him. When Boniface saw the letter from Rome, and believed there was a plot to kill him, he enlisted the help of the Vandal King Geiseric. He promised the Vandals land in North Africa in exchange for their help. However, once it was known that the whole thing was a plot, and Boniface was once again in Rome's favour, it was too late to turn back the Vandal invasion.
Geiseric crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with the entire tribe of 80,000 and moved east, pillaging and looting as they drove more and more refugees toward the walled city of Hippo Regius. Gaiseric realized that they wouldn't be able to take the city in a direct assault, so began a months long siege on the walls of Hippo Regius. Inside Saint Augustine and his priests prayed for relief from the Arian invaders, knowing full well that the fall of the city would spell conversion or death for many Christians. On 28 August 430, three months into the siege, St. Augustine died, perhaps from hunger or stress, as the wheat fields outside the city lay dormant and unharvested. After 14 months, hunger and the inevitable diseases were ravaging both the city inhabitants and the Vandals outside the city walls.
Peace was made between the Romans, who in 435 granted them some territory in Northern Africa, but it was broken by Geiseric, who in 439 took Carthage and made it his capital. The Vandals took and plundered the city without a fight, entering the city while most of the inhabitants were attending the races at the hippodrome. Geiseric then built the Kingdom of the Vandals and Alans into a powerful state with the capital at Saldae; he conquered Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands.

Establishment

Main article: Sack of Rome (455) Sack of Rome
In 468 the Vandals destroyed an enormous East Roman fleet sent against them. Following up the attack, the Vandals tried to invade the Peloponnese but were driven back by the inhabitants of the Mani peninsula at Kenipolis with heavy losses.

Consolidation
Differences between the Arian Christian faith which most of the Vandals followed and the Nicaean Trinitarian Christians (who included the official church of the Roman Empire and later Byzantium as well as Donatists) was a constant source of tension in their African state. Catholic bishops were punished by Geiseric with deposition, exile, or death, and laymen were excluded from office and frequently suffered confiscation of their property. It is said of Geiseric himself that he was originally a Catholic and had changed to Arianism about 428; this, however, is probably an invention. He protected his Catholic subjects when his relations with Rome and Constantinople were friendly, as during the years 454–57, when the Catholic community at Carthage, being without a head, elected Deogratias bishop. The same was also the case during the years 476–77 when Bishop Victor of Cartenna sent him, during a period of peace, a sharp refutation of Arianism and suffered no punishment. Generally, however, and although Trinitarian Christianity was rarely officially forbidden (the last months of Huneric's reign being an exception) most Vandal kings, except Hilderic, persecuted non-Arian Christians to a greater or lesser extent. They were forbidden from making converts among the Vandals, and life was generally difficult for the non-Arian Christian clergy, who were denied bishoprics.

Domestic religious tensions
Geiseric, one of the most powerful personalities of the "era of the Migrations" died at a great age on 25 January 477. According to the law of succession which he had promulgated, his successor was not the eldest son but the oldest male member of the royal house (law of seniority). Thus he was succeeded by his son Huneric (Hunerich, 477–484), who at first protected the Catholics, owing to his fear of Constantinople. But from 482 Huneric's reign was mostly notable for its religious persecutions of the Manichaeans and Catholics in the most terrible manner.
Gunthamund (484 – 496), his cousin and successor, sought internal peace with the Catholics and protected them once more. Externally, the Vandal power had been declining since Geiseric's death, and Gunthamund lost large parts of Sicily to the Ostrogoths and had to withstand increasing pressure from the autochthonous Moors.
While Thrasamund (496–523), owing to his religious fanaticism, was hostile to Catholics, he contented himself with bloodless persecutions.

Decline

Main article: Vandalic War The turbulent end

Godigisel (359–407)
Gunderic (407–428)
Geiseric (428–477)
Huneric (477–484)
Gunthamund (484–496)
Thrasamund (496–523)
Hilderic (523–530)
Gelimer (530–534) List of kings

Main article: Vandalic language Vandalic language
From the Middle Ages, the Swedish king had been styled, Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum Rex: King of the Swedes, the Goths and the Vandals. The present king, Carl XVI Gustaf dropped the title in 1973 and now styles himself simply as King of Sweden.

See also
Helmut Castritius: Die Vandalen. Etappen einer Spurensuche. Stuttgart u.a. 2007. Christian Courtois: Les Vandales et l'Afrique. Paris 1955 Pierre Courcelle: Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques. 3rd edition Paris 1964 (Collection des études Augustiniennes: Série antiquité, 19). Hans-Joachim Diesner: Vandalen. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der class. Altertumswissenschaft (RE Suppl. X, 1965), S. 957-992. Hans-Joachim Diesner: Das Vandalenreich. Aufstieg und Untergang. Stuttgart 1966. Frank M. Clover: The Late Roman West and the Vandals. Aldershot 1993 (Collected studies series 401), ISBN 0-86078-354-5. L'Afrique vandale et byzantine. Teil 1. Turnhout 2002 (Antiquité Tardive 10), ISBN 2-503-51275-5. L'Afrique vandale et byzantine. Teil 2, Turnhout 2003 (Antiquité Tardive 11), ISBN 2-503-52262-9. Walter Pohl: Die Völkerwanderung. Eroberung und Integration. Stuttgart 2002, S. 70-86, ISBN 3-17-015566-0. Roland Steinacher: Vandalen - Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. In: Hubert Cancik (Hrsg.): Der Neue Pauly, Stuttgart 2003, Band 15/3, S. 942-946, ISBN 3-476-01489-4. Yves Modéran: Les Maures et l'Afrique romaine. 4e.-7e. siècle. Rom 2003 (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, 314), ISBN 2-7283-0640-0. Die Vandalen: die Könige, die Eliten, die Krieger, die Handwerker. [Publikation zur Ausstellung "Die Vandalen"; eine Ausstellung der Maria-Curie-Sklodowska-Universität Lublin und des Landesmuseums Zamość ... ; Ausstellung im Weserrenaissance-Schloss Bevern .... Nordstemmen 2003. ISBN 3-9805898-6-2 Ludwig Schmidt: Geschichte der Wandalen. 2. Auflage, München 1942. Roland Steinacher: Wenden, Slawen, Vandalen. Eine frühmittelalterliche pseudologische Gleichsetzung und ihr Nachleben bis ins 18. Jahrhundert. In: W. Pohl (Hrsg.): Auf der Suche nach den Ursprüngen. Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 8), Wien 2004, S. 329-353.

Stefan Donecker; Roland Steinacher, Rex Vandalorum - The Debates on Wends and Vandals in Swedish Humanism as an Indicator for Early Modern Patterns of Ethnic Perception, in: ed. Robert Nedoma, Der Norden im Ausland - das Ausland im Norden. Formung und Transformation von Konzepten und Bildern des Anderen vom Mittelalter bis heute (Wiener Studien zur Skandinavistik 15, Wien 2006) 242-252.
John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries
Westermann, Grosser Atlas zur Weltgeschichte (in German)
Pauly-Wissowa
This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
Lord Mahon Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope, The Life of Belisarius, 1848. Reprinted 2006 (unabridged with editorial comments) Evolution Publishing, ISBN 1-889758-67-1. [1]
Online Etymology Dictionary: Vandal
Brian Adam: History of the Vandals
Ivor J. Davidson, A Public Faith, Chapter 11, Christians and Barbarians, Volume 2 of Baker History of the Church, 2005, ISBN 0-8010-1275-9
Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal Persecution ISBN 0-85323-127-3. Written 484, non-NPOV primary source.
F. Papencordt's Geschichte der vandalischen Herrschaft in Afrika