Goths 'R' Us

It's usually assumed that *gauta- and *gut-o:n- contain the same root. The "Geats" (Geatas = Norse Gautar) of Beowulf were a Swedish people.

 

Piotr

 

Also, could the Jutes have any connection with Goths? I only ask this on the
basis of the modern Swedish pronunciation of Goteborg, usually rendered
Gothenburg in English.

 

Dennis

The Jutes (from Denmark) have no connections with the Swedish city of Gothenburg. And no Goths ever lived there: Gothenburg was founded in 1607. The main part of Denmark is called Jylland ("the Jutes' land"), which means that the origin of the Jutes is pretty certain. But what about the Goths and the Swedes? My impression is that this question can be summed up in two words: a mess.

 

Linguistics and etymology used to be mixed up with nationalistic sentiments (at least in my country) and since the Goths are the oldest known Germanic people there have been many attempts to show that the Goths came from Sweden. We're a people with a largely unwritten history and it would have meant a lot if we could connect ourselves to the oldest known records of a Germanic language. Back then, people took for granted that geographic names like Gotland (an island) or Vastergotland, Ostergotland (these are regions that used to be separate kingdoms, like Wales and Scotland in Britain; their names mean "land of the West / East Gotas") proved that we were the Goths. Modern research has sweeped out this "Goths 'R' Us" attitude, but nobody has been able to show where the Goths came from. The most honest answer seems to be that the origin of the Goths and their possible connections with Sweden are uncertain.

 

People in Vaster- / Ostergotland are called gotar in modern Swedish (with dots above the o) and this word is etymologically related to the Goths. But I'm not sure if this means that they are the same people as the Goths. To further complicate the matter, the real Goths were also divided into West and East Goths: the Visigothae who lived in Dacia and the Ostrogothae around the Black Sea. But some say it's a mistake to translate these names as "west" and "east": according to them, visi means "noble" and ostro "shining" (though both east and ostro are connected to the same IE root which means "sunrise" or something like that).

 

And then there's the island of Gotland. The people who live there are not related to Vaster- / Ostergotland. They speak a different dialect and call themselves gutar. This island is full of stone age graves and its people are proud of their history, they would no doubt accept the role as the true descendants of the Goths.

 

Some have said that the Geatas of Beowulf were the Swedish gotar - but not the Goths. Some have said that the Geatas were the Jutes. Some have...     are you still listening?

 

Perhaps several Germanic tribes, sharing more or less the same language, preferred similar names for themselves? The got- tribe name (which is related to a verb that means "pour out", "flow"; modern Swedish gjuta, German giessen) has been linked to several rivers or streams. An old etymological dictionary suggests that the got- tribe name might simply have meant "men". In Greek, arsen (from the root ars- which means "pour", "make wet") means "male".

 

Ancient historiographers like Ptolemaios (150 BC) and Jordanes (a Goth himself) have said that the Goths were a people who lived in/came from "Scandinavia". But where was "Scandinavia"? Names of distant countries and foreign tribes were not used with a lot of exactitude in those days (all foreigners were Bastarns anyway). According to some ancient sources, "Scandinavia" was an island. Tacitus said the Goths lived around the Wisla / Weichsel river in Poland.

 

Hakan

...hope this confuses you!