Bardulia

According to some sources, Bardulia is the ancient name of the territories that composed the primitive Castile in the north of what later became the province of Burgos. The name comes from Varduli, the name of a tribe who, in pre-Roman and Roman times, populated the eastern part of the Cantabrian coast of the Iberian peninsula, primarily in present-day Guipúzcoa. Some assert that the Varduil also encompassed or assimilated the Caristii and Autrigones.

It has been speculated that a possible expansion of the Basque territories—Late Basquisation, an expansion to the Basque Country in the 6th through 8th centuries—occasioned a westward migration of the Varduli to what the documents of the Low Middle Ages call Bardulia.

The first written mention of Bardulia is a 10th-century chronicle that describes it as a former name for Castile. The Chronicle of Alfonso III, written in Latin, uses the term four times, in various declensions. Similar passages recur in the texts of later chroniclers.

There are two variants of the Chronicle of Alfonso III. Among the passages there are "Bardulies qui (quae) nunc uocitatur (appellatur) Castella" ("Bardulia, which is now called Castella") and "Barduliensem provintiam" ("the Bardulian Province") where King Ramiro I of Asturias was traveling to take a wife, and where he heard of the death of his predecessor Alfonso II.

The early 12th-century Historia Silense says of Ramiro I: "cum Bardulies, quae nunc Castella vocatur, ad accipiendan uxorem accederet." The 12th-century Chronica Naierensis and the forged donation to the bishops of Lugo and Oviedo (11th-12th century) also refer to Bardulia.

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