Geats

Geats

Geats, or G�tar in Swedish, is the Old English spelling of the name of a Scandinavian people living in G�taland, land of the Geats, currently within the borders of modern Sweden. The name of the Geats lives on in the Swedish counties of V�stra G�taland and �sterg�tland, the Western and Eastern lands of the Geats, as does the city G�teborg, known in English as Gothenburg. Lake V�nern, the largest lake in Sweden, is the major physical feature of the Geatish territory; from it, the G�ta �lv, 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 G�taland theory is an alternative (but highly controversial) school of thought that challenges this view.

The relationship between Geats and Goths, the wandering Germanic tribe (see: V�lkerwanderung) 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, and the fact that the name g�t appears in several important geographical names in Sweden.

See also