sentences:  It is believed that the Sulm valley was only minimally (if at all) populated during the Migration Period, after the Romans had withdrawn from the province of Noricum in the 5th century.Records from the 10th and 11th century C.E., when it was resettled by Bavarian emissaries from Salzburg, describe it as swamped and hardly passable.Many settlements in the lower Sulm valley likely date back to the 9th century when the Bavarians reclaimed the region from the predecessors of the current Slovenes who had loosely settled it after the rule of the Avars had succumbed to Charlemagne.