Geats
The Geats, sometimes called Goths, were a large North Germanic tribe who inhabited Götaland in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. They are one of the progenitor groups of modern Swedes, along with the tribes of Swedes and Gutes. The name of the Geats also lives on in the Swedish provinces of Västergötland and Östergötland, the western and eastern lands of the Geats, and in many other toponyms.
The Swedish dialects spoken in the areas that used to be inhabited by Geats form a distinct group, Götamål.
Etymology
The etymology of the name Geat is similar to that of Goths and Gutes. The names derive from ablaut grades of the Proto-Germanic word *geutaną, meaning "to pour". They have the literal meaning "they who pour their seed". The names could also allude to watercourses in the land where they were living, but this is not generally accepted to be the case, partly because that would mean that the names' similarity would be coincidental.A more specific theory about the word Gautigoths is that it means the Goths who live near the river Gaut, today's Göta älv. It might also have been a conflation of the word Gauti with a gloss of Goths. In the 17th century the name Göta älv, 'River of the Geats', replaced the earlier names Götälven and Gautelfr. The etymology of the word Gaut derives from the Proto-Germanic word *geutan, and the extended meaning of "to pour" is "flow, stream, waterfall", which could refer to Trollhättan Falls or to the river itself.
The short form of Gautigoths was the Old Norse Gautar, which originally referred to just the inhabitants of Västergötland, or the western parts of today's Götaland, a meaning which is retained in some Icelandic sagas.
History
Early history
The earliest known surviving mention of the Geats appears in Ptolemy, who refers to them as Goutai. In the 6th century, Jordanes writes of the Gautigoths and Ostrogoths ; and Procopius refers to Gautoi. The Norse Sagas know them as Gautar; Beowulf and Widsith as Gēatas. Beowulf and the Norse sagas name several Geatish kings, but only Hygelac finds confirmation in Liber Monstrorum where he is referred to as "Rex Getarum" and in a copy of Historiae Francorum where he is called "Rege Gotorum". These sources concern a raid into Frisia, ca 516, which is also described in Beowulf. C. 551, some decades after Hygelac's raid, Jordanes described the Geats as a nation which was "bold, and quick to engage in war".The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain included many North Germanic people who were losers in the brutal tribal warfare of Scandinavia. The place-name -gate marks the site of Geatish settlement, often alongside strategically important Roman roads and nearby Visigothic and/or Jutish settlements. Defeated Jutes like Hengest and his brother Horsa fled to Kent, while Geats defeated by encroaching Swedes moved to Yorkshire where they founded Gillingshire by the Tees, originally the settlement of the Geatlings. It has also been suggested that East Anglia was settled by Geats at this time, or by Wulfings who also came from Götaland, bringing the traditions of Beowulf with them.
Any peace that eventually settled in southern Scandinavia was most likely due to exhaustion, and a Danish archaeologist has summarized that in the mid-6th century, and after, Scandinavia "went down to hell". Scandinavian wares appear to have stopped arriving in England, c. 550, suggesting that contact was broken.
Political centralization in Scandinavia
According to Procopius there were 13 "very numerous nations" on the Scandinavian peninsula in the 6th century, which is supported by recent archaeological analyses. Several scholars consider this to be a reasonable number of independent kingdoms at the time, with each consisting of one or more tribes, as reported by Jordanes. However, by 1350, these 13 kingdoms had been reduced in number to only two, Norway and Sweden. The Geats were one of the largest tribes.Procopius and Jordanes both mention the Geats, but after them, foreign sources about Scandinavia are scarce until the 9th century, when Anglo-Saxon and Frankish sources do shed some light on the area. In these, the Geats are absent, which has led some scholars to conclude that they were no longer an independent nation and had been subsumed by the Swedes. Norwegian and Icelandic scaldic sources from the 10th century however indicate that they were still politically independent, sometimes opposing Norwegian kings. It has been suggested that their absence from older sources is instead due to their being an inland people.
The nature and the processes of how Geats and Swedes came to form one kingdom have been much debated among Swedish scholars. The scarcity and sometimes debated veracity of sources has left much room open for interpretation. The oldest medieval Swedish sources present the Swedish kingdom as retaining differences between provinces, in laws as well as in weights and measures. Some scholars have argued that the Geats were subjugated by the Swedes, and have suggested various dates for such an event, from the 6th to the 9th centuries. Others have wanted to see a more gradual merging, and that the Geats were slowly subsumed into the more powerful kingdom of Sweden, and in many respects they maintained their own cultural identity during the Middle Ages. Still others have put emphasis on how it was individual rulers, not ethnic groups, who were driving the process towards a unified kingdom, and that the process was very complicated.
Papal letters from the 1080s style the recipients as "king of the Swedes" or "king of the West Geats". In another papal letter from the 1160s, the title rex Sweorum et Gothorum is first attested. The Swedish kings began the custom of styling themselves as also the kings of the Geats in the 1270s.
Dynastic struggles
In the 11th century, the Swedish House of Munsö became extinct with the death of Emund the Old. Stenkil, a Geat, was elected king of the Swedes, and the Geats would be influential in the shaping of Sweden as a Christian kingdom. However, this election also ushered in a long period of civil unrest between Christians and pagans and between Geats and Swedes. The Geats tended to be more Christian, and the Swedes more pagan, which was why the Christian Swedish king Inge the Elder fled to Västergötland when deposed in favour of Blot-Sweyn, a king more favourable towards Norse paganism, in the 1080s. Inge would retake the throne and rule until his death c. 1100.In his Gesta Danorum, the Danish 12th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus noted that the Geats had no say in the election of the king, only the Swedes. When the West Geatish law or Westrogothic law was put to paper, it reminded the Geats that they had to accept the election of the Swedes: Sveær egho konong at taka ok sva vrækæ meaning "It is the Swedes who have the right of choosing and also deposing the king" and then he rode Eriksgatan "mæþ gislum ofvan" – "with hostages from above " through Södermanland, the Geatish provinces and then through Närke and Västmanland to be judged to be the lawful king by the lawspeakers of their respective things. One of these Swedish kings was Ragnvald Knaphövde, who in 1125 was riding with his retinue in order to be accepted as king by the different provinces. According to material appended to the oldest manuscript of the Westrogothic law, he decided not to demand hostages as he despised the Geats, and was slain near Falköping.
In a new general law of Sweden that was issued by Magnus Eriksson in the 1350s, it was stated that twelve men from each province, chosen by their things, should be present at the Stone of Mora when a new king was elected.
The distinction between Swedes and Geats lasted during the Middle Ages, but the Geats became increasingly important for Swedish national claims of greatness due to the Geats' old connection with the Goths. They argued that since the Goths and the Geats were the same nation, and the Geats were part of the kingdom of Sweden, this meant that the Swedes had defeated the Roman empire. The earliest attestation of this claim comes from the Council of Basel, 1434, during which the Swedish delegation argued with the Spanish about who among them were the true Goths. The Spaniards argued that it was better to be descended from the heroic Visigoths than from stay-at-homers. This cultural movement, which was not restricted to Sweden went by the name Gothicismus or in Swedish Göticism, i.e. Geaticism.
After the 15th century and the Kalmar Union, the Swedes and the Geats appear to have begun to perceive themselves as one nation, which is reflected in the evolution of svensk into a common ethnonym. It was originally an adjective referring to those belonging to the Swedish tribe, who are called svear in Swedish. As early as the 9th century, svear had been vague, both referring to the Swedish tribe and being a collective term including the Geats, and this is the case in Adam of Bremen's work where the Geats appear both as a proper nation and as part of the Sueones. The merging/assimilation of the two nations took a long time, however. In the early-20th century, Nordisk familjebok noted that svensk had almost replaced svear as a name for the Swedish people.
At the same time, the Swedish ancestors were often referred to as Geats, especially when their heroism or connection to the Goths was to be stressed. This practice disappeared during the 19th century, when the vikings gradually took over the role as the heroic ancestors.
Society
The Geats were traditionally divided into several petty kingdoms, or districts, which had their own things and laws. The largest one of these districts was Västergötland, and it was in Västergötland that the Thing of all Geats was held every year, in the vicinity of Skara. Despite the name, the thing was only for the inhabitants of Västergötland and Dalsland. The equivalent in Östergötland was Lionga thing.Unlike the Swedes, who used the division hundare, the Geats used hærrad, like the Norwegians and the Danes. Surprisingly, it would be the Geatish name that became the common term in the Swedish kingdom. This is possibly related to the fact that several of the medieval Swedish kings were of Geatish extraction and often resided primarily in Götaland. In Västergötland and Dalsland, there were also a higher-level division where one or more hærrad made up a bo linked to a kongsgård.