“So this bad blood between us and the Swedes, this vicious feud, I am convinced, is bound to revive; they will cross our borders and attack in force when they find out that Beowulf is dead…”
These words are spoken by a member of Beowulf’s retinue following the great hero’s death at the end of the epic Old English poem. The full passage foreshadows the rekindling of war with the Swedes and the coming doom of Beowulf’s people, the Geats. It implies a victory and expansion of authority for the Swedes and a defeat for the Geats, who wither away, eliminated at worst or heartlessly subsumed into the encroaching Swedish dominion at best. But this narrative paints a somewhat misleading picture. The identity of the Geats as a people distinct from the Swedes most likely survived—at least for some time—and remains conceptually alive and well in Sweden today, depending upon which strand of the philological quagmire one chooses to follow.
The poem depicts events that occurred in 6th-century Scandinavia, and disparate theories have abounded for a very long time regarding the identity of the Geats and the location of their homeland. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Swedish intellectuals promoted a now-discredited theory that suggested Beowulf was a Jute from the Jutland peninsula in today’s Denmark. And while it can’t necessarily be ruled out that Beowulf’s Geats weren’t an amalgamation or conflation of existing tribes as mistakenly or intentionally construed by the poet or passage of time, two theories presently lead the pack in terms of anchoring the tribe in specific geographic territories. One of these posits that the Geats hailed from Götaland on the Swedish mainland, while the other posits that their home was the Baltic island of Gotland.
The Götar inhabited Götaland, the region south of Lake Mälaren between the Baltic Sea and the straits separating Jutland from the Scandinavian peninsula. This is also the region identified as the homeland of the Goths (and distinctions between the Götar and the Goths—or Goter as they’re called in Swedish—remain an overlapping, convoluted mess). Nonetheless, the land of the Götar continues to be known as Götaland in Swedish to this day and includes the current counties of Västra Götaland and Östergötland.
The respective territories of the Svear, Götar, and Gutar in today’s Sweden. Image Credit: Ningyou / Wikimedia Commons
The Gutar, on the other hand, hailed from the Baltic island of Gotland, where the people of the past are referred to as Gutes in English. Historically, the theory which suggested that the Gutar were the Geats has found less acceptance than its rival. But with his recent book, Beowulfkvädet: Den nordiska bakgrunden (translated and released as The Nordic Beowulf), Uppsala University professor emeritus of archaeology, Bo Gräslund, has given the Gutar theory new momentum.
Relying on his extensive knowledge of Nordic geography and archaeology, a fresh examination of the poem itself and its existing scholarship, and investigations into related documents such as the often overlooked 13th-century Guta Saga, Gräslund’s suggestions have found widespread acceptance in Sweden among archaeologists. However, Anglophone historians and literary researchers have remained much more skeptical, and the two sides aren’t really talking to one another.
Despite the unresolved status of the competing theories, both Götaland and Gotland eventually came under the sway of the Swedes, or the Svear as the tribe was known. The Svear lived north of Lake Mälaren with the major cult center of Uppsala at the heart of their territory, still known in Swedish today as Svealand. While the term, Svea, is usually taken to generically mean “Swede” or “Swedish” in English, in modern Swedish the term retains a specificity to the tribe and territory that existed at the time of the events portrayed in Beowulf through the Viking Age and a bit beyond. In modern Swedish, to refer to a king of the Svear as “the king of Sweden” would be akin to referring to a king of the East Angles or a king of the West Saxons as “the king of England”—inherently misleading. When the Beowulf poet mentions the Swedes, he is referring to the Svear.
Lying on his funeral pyre, Beowulf’s death bodes ill for the Geats. Created by Rockwell Kent in 1931
The emergence of the Swedish state is shrouded in more mystery than that of its Danish and Norwegian counterparts, but it is clear that both the Götar and the Gutar joined the Svear in forming the political entity that eventually became Sweden. The Götar in particular played a commanding role in the emergence of the nation, but this occurred after the final days of the Viking Age and, consequently, long after the era portrayed in Beowulf.
In the following centuries, Sweden gradually developed into the nation that we recognize today, progressing through its post-medieval periods as a world power, an industrial powerhouse, and a pioneer of the welfare state, losing the tribal affiliations that constituted its earlier population base along the way. But remnants of the identities of the Götar and Gutar—and by plausible extension, the Geats—remain present in the language and landscape of today’s Sweden.
This is most immediately apparent in the case of the Götar, whose identity is still born in the name of Götaland and its prevalence in present Swedish society. For example, the weather forecasts on Swedish television typically differentiate between the weather that’s predicted to hit Svealand versus Götaland. And within Götaland itself are additional subregions and landscape features that likewise include the old tribal identity in their names, such as the present-day counties of Östergötland and Västra Götaland.
Cutting across both counties is the Götakanal, a 190 kilometer long man-made waterway that connects Sweden’s east coast to its west coast via the river, the Göta Älv. The Göta Älv empties into the sea at Göteborg, Sweden’s second largest city. Meaning “Stronghold of the Götar,” Göteborg is known in English as Gothenburg—which brings us full circle back to the whole Geats versus Goths quandary.
A bus in the system of Gotlands Kollektivtrafik—Geatland’s Public Transit? Photo by Bene Riobo / Wikimedia Commons
With the Gutar, the connections are less widespread, but also less diffuse. The name of the tribe’s homeland of Gotland naturally features in many of the island’s authorities and organizations, such as Gotlands Kollektivtrafik (Gotland’s Public Transportation) and Föreningen Gotlands Fornvänner (Society for Gotland’s Friends of Ancient History).
But thanks to the work of Bo Gräslund, the island has now been labeled as the “Home of Beowulf.” According to Gräslund, the material descriptions found in Beowulf match the archaeological record of 6th-century Scandinavia so well that he doesn’t believe the poem could have been originally composed elsewhere or at a significantly later date. Furthermore, he found that the descriptions in the poem pertaining to the land of the Geats cohere surprisingly well with Gotland’s natural landscape and ancient sites. Among these locations are Torsburgen, which Gräslund identified as the ruined stronghold of the Geats mentioned in the poem, and Stavgard i Burs (also known simply as Stavars hus or simply Stavgard), which he identified as the residence of Geatish royalty.
Torsburgen, the ruined fortification on Gotland that Bo Gräslund has associated with Beowulf’s Geats. Photo by Helen Simonsson / Wikimedia Commons
So, would the Beowulf poet have thought of Göteborg as Geat-burg or something similar? Would he have referred to the Götakanal as the Geat Canal? Or talked about seeing live music at Stockholm’s popular venue of the Geat Lion (Göta Lejon) on Götgatan (Geat Street)? Or might he have instead thought of the island of Gotland as Geatland? And considered Stavars Hus to be the ancestral home of Geatish kings?
The Göta Lejon theater in Stockholm—a Geatish lion? Photo by Holger Ellgaard / Wikimedia Commons
These are all real places in today’s Sweden with very apparent and ostensible connections to the old poem. In the English-speaking regions of the world, we’re accustomed to studying Beowulf, whether by choice or as part of a required school curriculum, and regarding it simply as a fantasy tale from a bygone time set in Denmark and an amorphous “anywhere” in southern Scandinavia. And while the poem’s geographical background is usually addressed in an abbreviated fashion alongside an acknowledgement of the existence of certain tribes in early medieval Scandinavia and their cultural milieu, any regard for its potential real-world geographical basis usually stops there.
We’ve grown used to thinking that no semblance of Beowulf’s tribe could exist any longer in the world we inhabit today, and that very well may not be the case. We’ll never really know for sure, of course, but it’s certainly fun to ponder the possibilities especially when they’ve been neglected for so long.
By Rowdy Geirsson
“So this bad blood between us and the Swedes,
this vicious feud, I am convinced,
is bound to revive; they will cross our borders
and attack in force when they find out
that Beowulf is dead…”
These words are spoken by a member of Beowulf’s retinue following the great hero’s death at the end of the epic Old English poem. The full passage foreshadows the rekindling of war with the Swedes and the coming doom of Beowulf’s people, the Geats. It implies a victory and expansion of authority for the Swedes and a defeat for the Geats, who wither away, eliminated at worst or heartlessly subsumed into the encroaching Swedish dominion at best. But this narrative paints a somewhat misleading picture. The identity of the Geats as a people distinct from the Swedes most likely survived—at least for some time—and remains conceptually alive and well in Sweden today, depending upon which strand of the philological quagmire one chooses to follow.
The poem depicts events that occurred in 6th-century Scandinavia, and disparate theories have abounded for a very long time regarding the identity of the Geats and the location of their homeland. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Swedish intellectuals promoted a now-discredited theory that suggested Beowulf was a Jute from the Jutland peninsula in today’s Denmark. And while it can’t necessarily be ruled out that Beowulf’s Geats weren’t an amalgamation or conflation of existing tribes as mistakenly or intentionally construed by the poet or passage of time, two theories presently lead the pack in terms of anchoring the tribe in specific geographic territories. One of these posits that the Geats hailed from Götaland on the Swedish mainland, while the other posits that their home was the Baltic island of Gotland.
The Götar inhabited Götaland, the region south of Lake Mälaren between the Baltic Sea and the straits separating Jutland from the Scandinavian peninsula. This is also the region identified as the homeland of the Goths (and distinctions between the Götar and the Goths—or Goter as they’re called in Swedish—remain an overlapping, convoluted mess). Nonetheless, the land of the Götar continues to be known as Götaland in Swedish to this day and includes the current counties of Västra Götaland and Östergötland.
The Gutar, on the other hand, hailed from the Baltic island of Gotland, where the people of the past are referred to as Gutes in English. Historically, the theory which suggested that the Gutar were the Geats has found less acceptance than its rival. But with his recent book, Beowulfkvädet: Den nordiska bakgrunden (translated and released as The Nordic Beowulf), Uppsala University professor emeritus of archaeology, Bo Gräslund, has given the Gutar theory new momentum.
Relying on his extensive knowledge of Nordic geography and archaeology, a fresh examination of the poem itself and its existing scholarship, and investigations into related documents such as the often overlooked 13th-century Guta Saga, Gräslund’s suggestions have found widespread acceptance in Sweden among archaeologists. However, Anglophone historians and literary researchers have remained much more skeptical, and the two sides aren’t really talking to one another.
Despite the unresolved status of the competing theories, both Götaland and Gotland eventually came under the sway of the Swedes, or the Svear as the tribe was known. The Svear lived north of Lake Mälaren with the major cult center of Uppsala at the heart of their territory, still known in Swedish today as Svealand. While the term, Svea, is usually taken to generically mean “Swede” or “Swedish” in English, in modern Swedish the term retains a specificity to the tribe and territory that existed at the time of the events portrayed in Beowulf through the Viking Age and a bit beyond. In modern Swedish, to refer to a king of the Svear as “the king of Sweden” would be akin to referring to a king of the East Angles or a king of the West Saxons as “the king of England”—inherently misleading. When the Beowulf poet mentions the Swedes, he is referring to the Svear.
The emergence of the Swedish state is shrouded in more mystery than that of its Danish and Norwegian counterparts, but it is clear that both the Götar and the Gutar joined the Svear in forming the political entity that eventually became Sweden. The Götar in particular played a commanding role in the emergence of the nation, but this occurred after the final days of the Viking Age and, consequently, long after the era portrayed in Beowulf.
In the following centuries, Sweden gradually developed into the nation that we recognize today, progressing through its post-medieval periods as a world power, an industrial powerhouse, and a pioneer of the welfare state, losing the tribal affiliations that constituted its earlier population base along the way. But remnants of the identities of the Götar and Gutar—and by plausible extension, the Geats—remain present in the language and landscape of today’s Sweden.
This is most immediately apparent in the case of the Götar, whose identity is still born in the name of Götaland and its prevalence in present Swedish society. For example, the weather forecasts on Swedish television typically differentiate between the weather that’s predicted to hit Svealand versus Götaland. And within Götaland itself are additional subregions and landscape features that likewise include the old tribal identity in their names, such as the present-day counties of Östergötland and Västra Götaland.
Cutting across both counties is the Götakanal, a 190 kilometer long man-made waterway that connects Sweden’s east coast to its west coast via the river, the Göta Älv. The Göta Älv empties into the sea at Göteborg, Sweden’s second largest city. Meaning “Stronghold of the Götar,” Göteborg is known in English as Gothenburg—which brings us full circle back to the whole Geats versus Goths quandary.
With the Gutar, the connections are less widespread, but also less diffuse. The name of the tribe’s homeland of Gotland naturally features in many of the island’s authorities and organizations, such as Gotlands Kollektivtrafik (Gotland’s Public Transportation) and Föreningen Gotlands Fornvänner (Society for Gotland’s Friends of Ancient History).
But thanks to the work of Bo Gräslund, the island has now been labeled as the “Home of Beowulf.” According to Gräslund, the material descriptions found in Beowulf match the archaeological record of 6th-century Scandinavia so well that he doesn’t believe the poem could have been originally composed elsewhere or at a significantly later date. Furthermore, he found that the descriptions in the poem pertaining to the land of the Geats cohere surprisingly well with Gotland’s natural landscape and ancient sites. Among these locations are Torsburgen, which Gräslund identified as the ruined stronghold of the Geats mentioned in the poem, and Stavgard i Burs (also known simply as Stavars hus or simply Stavgard), which he identified as the residence of Geatish royalty.
So, would the Beowulf poet have thought of Göteborg as Geat-burg or something similar? Would he have referred to the Götakanal as the Geat Canal? Or talked about seeing live music at Stockholm’s popular venue of the Geat Lion (Göta Lejon) on Götgatan (Geat Street)? Or might he have instead thought of the island of Gotland as Geatland? And considered Stavars Hus to be the ancestral home of Geatish kings?
These are all real places in today’s Sweden with very apparent and ostensible connections to the old poem. In the English-speaking regions of the world, we’re accustomed to studying Beowulf, whether by choice or as part of a required school curriculum, and regarding it simply as a fantasy tale from a bygone time set in Denmark and an amorphous “anywhere” in southern Scandinavia. And while the poem’s geographical background is usually addressed in an abbreviated fashion alongside an acknowledgement of the existence of certain tribes in early medieval Scandinavia and their cultural milieu, any regard for its potential real-world geographical basis usually stops there.
We’ve grown used to thinking that no semblance of Beowulf’s tribe could exist any longer in the world we inhabit today, and that very well may not be the case. We’ll never really know for sure, of course, but it’s certainly fun to ponder the possibilities especially when they’ve been neglected for so long.
Rowdy Geirsson is the author of The Scandinavian Aggressors and translator of The Impudent Edda. His writing on Nordic history and culture has also appeared in Medieval World: Culture and Conflict, Scandinavian Review, and McSweeney’s. Visit him online at www.scandinavianaggression.com and on social media at X and Instagram and BlueSky.
Further Readings
Anonymous. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Translated by Seamus Heaney. W.W. Norton and Company, 2002.
Anonymous. Guta Saga: The History of the Gotlanders. Edited by Christine Peel. Viking Society for Northern Research University College London, 1999.
Gräslund, Bo. The Nordic Beowulf. Translated by Martin Naylor. Arc Humanities Press, 2022.
Eriksson, Kristina Ekero. Vikingatidens vagga. Natur och Kultur, 2021.
Harrison, Dick. Det svenska rikets födelse. Historiska Media, 2020.
Larson, Mats G. Götarnas riken: Upptäcktsfärder till Sveriges enande. Atlantis, 2002.
Lindström, Henrik, and Fredrik Lindström. Svitjods Undergång och Sveriges Födelse. Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2006.
Shippey, Tom. Beowulf and the North before the Vikings. Arc Humanities Press, 2022.
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