Geats
Geats, or
Götar in
Swedish, is the
Old English spelling of the name of a
Scandinavian people living in
Götaland, land of the Geats, currently within the borders of modern
Sweden. The name of the Geats lives on in the
Swedish counties of
Västra Götaland and
Östergötland, the Western and Eastern lands of the Geats, as does the city
Göteborg, known in English as
Gothenburg. Lake
Vänern, the largest lake in Sweden, is the major physical feature of the
Geatish territory; from it, the
Göta älv, or 'Geatish River,' flows through Gothenburg into
Kattegat, and the
North Sea.
The Geats were formerly politically independent of the Swedes, whose old name was Svear. Starting in the 500s, the Geats slowly lost their independence and became tributaries of the Swedish kings. The Götaland theory is an alternative school of thought that challenges this view.
The relationship between Geats and Goths, the wandering Germanic tribe (see: Völkerwanderung) that played a major part in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, is a subject of great dispute. The chief reason the Geats are remembered is that the hero of the Old English epic poem Beowulf was a Geat.
See also