One of the most persistent puzzles in early Germanic history is how the island of Scandia, described by Jordanes in his Getica as the vagina nationum — the “womb of nations” — could have generated enough demographic pressure to trigger large-scale migrations, including that of the Goths. Traditional scholarship has long identified Scandia with the vast Scandinavian Peninsula, a region so enormous that significant overpopulation and the resulting mass emigration appear highly implausible. However, when Scandia is reinterpreted as a much smaller, densely populated island in what is now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the narrative in Jordanes’ Getica suddenly gains compelling ecological and demographic logic. In this geographically compressed setting, rapid population growth could quickly reach a Malthusian tipping point, creating the very conditions of overcrowding and outward pressure that Jordanes describes. This reinterpretation transforms the Gothic migration from a seemingly mythical event into a plausible consequence of real demographic stress on a limited island territory.