Available in Autumn 2021
Historians do not know the reasons for the mass exodus of the Cimbri people that occurred around 120 BC, but most agree of the time frame. For literary purposes, I chose a sudden cataclysmic event that forced the decision upon them.
Geological evidence of layers of sand and gravel between layers of peat in Denmark, Scotland and areas surrounding the North Sea, indicates a sudden unexplained rise in sea levels near the end of the 2nd century BC.
While the great flood in "Out of the Northern Mists: The Cimbri Appear" is fabricated, a tsunami caused by an underwater earthquake, volcanic eruption or landslide could be an explanation for this evidence.
An event such as this could have precipitated an evacuation of lowland communities such as where the Cimbri and their allies lived. Coupled with over-population, the changing weather conditions of the Roman Warm Period between 250 BC and 400 AD, and dwindling food supplies, it is a plausible explanation for their migration.
In fact, in 2015 the University of Caen Lower Normandy, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and the University of Copenhagen published a study in the scientific journal Geology that provided physical evidence of tsunamis reaching as far south as the west coast of Denmark over eight thousand years ago, when a large piece of seabed slipped off the continental shelf west of Norway. This event is known as the Storegga slide.