Langobard study has S1194, U106, P312 migrating from Sth Baltic to Italy in 600AD.

[Riverman]

- Could Scandza have been just a short form for Gothiscanza? Goths were from there and prior to Slavic expansion it could have been known to exist all the time by trade contact with left behind Goths.

That's a good point, because especially East Germanics seem to have kept ties with the North through the ages. Not just when they influenced the whole Germanic world in the early phase, but later on as well. I'm actually convinced that there was no big break of the oral tradition and communication, not at all. A couple of generations are nothing for a clan based society, with a rich oral tradition and proud, clan based ancestor worship. You can't compare them with post-Christian farmers or think they lived isolated from others in the East. That was not the case. Even less so for the Langobards which lived always close to fellow Germanics. This makes the latter case more complicated, because we actually have to assume different Germanic influences being combined in their tradition. One can't conclude from the presence of one on the absence of another. Only present or absent yDNA can prove that if taken on a large scale - also the modern Italian subpopulations with the strongest Lombard tradition might give us hints. Did someone check that already in detail on FTDNA and YFull?

- "but the Laws and Customs as they actually defined their societies and identities": Yes, an btw. I remember how I was first surprised about the somewhat ridicolous seeming cause that the 20.000 Saxons retuned from Italy, which was that they were first promised by the Longobards to live under their own law, which later, when they did arrive in Italy, was denied. But I later considered: Today states are conntected exclusively to a part of the surface of the planet, but one can as also define a state detached from an area and let it be defined by a number of humans that are corporated and exclusively administrating their own business. Of course it is dependent on whether others respected such conditions, but in the migration period it actually often was like that. So I guess this law thing essentially was about having an own state on a personal basis.

Actually that is usually, up to modern times, correlated pretty closely with the situation the offering party is living with. Like if they need help or workforce, desperately, they might make all kind of promises, but once the situation changes, they will prefer to get rid of the ballast. Another problem of that kind of agreements is that they were usually personal. Like between king X and the prince Y and his warriors. But what if king X died, and his heir, king Z wasn't willing to fulfil the old agreement? That was part of the reason why many communities and individuals in Medieval times wanted, as soon as the new king took over, an official confirmation of their old rights and privileges, sometimes smuggling something into it which wasn't granted before. That was actually a major issue throughout Medieval Europe and is so, in a different framework, up until now. With every new ruler or ruling party, the old agreements might be called into question. That's a major source of conflict and unrest. This was just a very early example, one among many. Similar problems emerged in the Persian or Hellenistic states too.
Kings in a weak position had to grant all kinds of rights and privileges, even if they ruined his state and people. Taking them back was a difficult and dangerous task only strong kings could do. So if they didn't need their help as desperately any more, they might have reconsidered it.
For later times, many German settlements under the colonisation of the East were founded "with their own German rights". That was part of the deal and led to the spread of German customs first to the East with German settlers, later to all Catholic states, which largely copied the German laws (like the Magdeburger law). So its not that unusual at all, even for later times.

[Token]

Good considerations and agreed (especially with that cherry picking aspect) to all, but this:

"In the case of the Langobards, it was not that much time and generations in between, so people should have remembered."

The Longobards were at the lower Elbe river at the end of the 1st century BCE. If the Longobards came from Scandinavia that event must have been even earlier. Paul Warnefried (Paulus Diaconus/Paolo Diacono) wrote in 8th century CE, i. e. 800 years later. Consider 800 illiterate years! Some 30 generations! Real knowledge must have been zero and actually Paul Warnefried can impossibly have known what he was talking about in this matter.

It was a common custom among Early Medieval Germanic people to recite poetry celebrating the feats of kings and heroes of the past in mead halls during festivities - it was no different for the Lombards and Goths. We have traces of a rich Lombardic heroic poetry tradition in Hildebrandslied, and traces of Gothic poetry are abundant in Viking Age literature. One of the most poignant poems in the Nordic tradition, Hlöðskviða (The Battle of Goths and Huns), has its base in Gothic tradition, and was probably first written down in the 13th century - that is, nine centuries after the events being reported. Even more impressive, the poem preserves Gothic forms for toponyms such as Danparstaoi (reflected in Jordanes' Danaper, for Dnieper). What we see is that Germanic heroic poetry does have the potential to preserve memories of very old events of the past, even though the archaic forms of the poems would invariably change and be distorted by the succession of skalds (for the lack of a better word) to better reflect local and contemporary values. Paulus Diaconus may have heard a poem relating the Winnili stuff (the whole story has a heroic poetry feel to it) and, besides the whole Hundingas' tradition, we see one verse of Widsith mentioning a certain Sceafa Longbeardum - ruler of the Lombards - from Scandza/Scani in its list of kings, which may be a reflex of Lombardic tradition.

[Saetro]

The Longobards were at the lower Elbe river at the end of the 1st century BCE. If the Longobards came from Scandinavia that event must have been even earlier. Paul Warnefried (Paulus Diaconus/Paolo Diacono) wrote in 8th century CE, i. e. 800 years later. Consider 800 illiterate years! Some 30 generations! Real knowledge must have been zero and actually Paul Warnefried can impossibly have known what he was talking about in this matter.

Detailed, literal truth certainly does not last that long.
But gems of importance do.
You are comparing literate societies with ones of oral tradition, without knowing how the latter works.

In my literate family, one fact was preserved orally from 180 years ago.
It made no sense to us, until it did; when the relevant written records were discovered.

Our first nations peoples have preserved memories of meetings from 250 years ago with British, who recorded the event.
And Dutch from before that.
And maybe others from 550 years ago: the archaeology and some of the visitors' records seem to support it.

We also have Irish tales from long ago that contain elements of truth.
And Scandinavian ones.

The problem often is that now we find it hard to pick out from the embroidery necessary to ensure transmission, the truth buried within.
(And to reverse the mutations along the way.)
And yes, some of these tales are total fabrication, or have become mutilated beyond reconstruction.
But I think it is worth checking for a wet baby before throwing out the bathwater.

[rothaer]

It was a common custom among Early Medieval Germanic people to recite poetry celebrating the feats of kings and heroes of the past in mead halls during festivities - it was no different for the Lombards and Goths. We have traces of a rich Lombardic heroic poetry tradition in Hildebrandslied, and traces of Gothic poetry are abundant in Viking Age literature. One of the most poignant poems in the Nordic tradition, Hlöðskviða (The Battle of Goths and Huns), has its base in Gothic tradition, and was probably first written down in the 13th century - that is, nine centuries after the events being reported. Even more impressive, the poem preserves Gothic forms for toponyms such as Danparstaoi (reflected in Jordanes' Danaper, for Dnieper). What we see is that Germanic heroic poetry does have the potential to preserve memories of very old events of the past, even though the archaic forms of the poems would invariably change and be distorted by the succession of skalds (for the lack of a better word) to better reflect local and contemporary values. Paulus Diaconus may have heard a poem relating the Winnili stuff (the whole story has a heroic poetry feel to it) and, besides the whole Hundingas' tradition, we see one verse of Widsith mentioning a certain Sceafa Longbeardum - ruler of the Lombards - from Scandza/Scani in its list of kings, which may be a reflex of Lombardic tradition.

Agreed. I did not state any contradictory to this. This tale tradition does not change that Paul Warnefried did not know what he was talking about in that context more than referreing to (at that time) common tales.

[rothaer]

Detailed, literal truth certainly does not last that long.
But gems of importance do.
You are comparing literate societies with ones of oral tradition, without knowing how the latter works.

In my literate family, one fact was preserved orally from 180 years ago.
It made no sense to us, until it did; when the relevant written records were discovered.

Our first nations peoples have preserved memories of meetings from 250 years ago with British, who recorded the event.
And Dutch from before that.
And maybe others from 550 years ago: the archaeology and some of the visitors' records seem to support it.

We also have Irish tales from long ago that contain elements of truth.
And Scandinavian ones.

The problem often is that now we find it hard to pick out from the embroidery necessary to ensure transmission, the truth buried within.
(And to reverse the mutations along the way.)
And yes, some of these tales are total fabrication, or have become mutilated beyond reconstruction.
But I think it is worth checking for a wet baby before throwing out the bathwater.

In my family there were some tales/sayings that turned out to be wrong. Just because I'm into ancestry research I was one of the few that were capable to check such things out. However, as for the quality of tales I find the Nibelungen tale to be illustrative: a number of true things amalgamated into one story and some confused. The product with the context as it is told is basically not applicable. This does not question it to be an interesting source for a number of facts. But it does require some interpretational effort.