Geats

The Geats, or Gautar in Old Norse, were a North Germanic people who inhabited Geatland in what is now southern Sweden. Their heartland lay in Götaland, the historic region that roughly corresponds to modern southern Sweden. They are one of the principal groups mentioned in medieval Norse and Germanic sources and are closely associated with the neighboring Swedes (Svear).

Name and language: The ethnonym Geats derives from Old Norse Gautar; the region Götaland is named after them. Although related terms are sometimes linked to the Goths, the Geats are generally considered a distinct North Germanic group. The name Geats appears in Beowulf and other sources as the native people of Geatland.

History: The Geats are best known from Beowulf, a poem set among Geats and their Danish neighbors. Hygelac is described as a Geatish king in the early medieval period, and Beowulf himself becomes king after Heardred. The text recounts conflicts with the nearby Swedes and the Geats’ eventual Christianization in the early medieval era. By the High Middle Ages, Geatland had become part of the expanding Swedish realm, and the Geats ceased to exist as a separate political entity.

Legacy: In modern scholarship, the Geats are primarily studied as a historic people and as the literary locus of Beowulf. The geographic region of Götaland survives as a major part of Sweden, while the Geats as a distinct ethnolinguistic group no longer exist.