Jutes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Jutes were a Germanic people who are believed to have originated from Jutland (called Iutum in Latin) in modern Denmark and part of the Frisian coast. The Jutes, along with the Angles, Saxons and Frisians, were mentioned amongst the Germanic tribes who sailed across the North Sea to raid and eventually invade Great Britain from the late fourth century A.D. onwards, either displacing, absorbing or destroying the native Celtic peoples there. According to Bede, they ended up settling in Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. There are a number of toponyms that attest to the presence of the Jutes in the area, such as Ytene, which Florence of Worcester states was the contemporary English name for the New Forest.
While it is commonplace to detect their influences in Kent (for example, the practice of partible inheritance known as gavelkind), the Jutes in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight vanished, leaving only the slightest of traces. One recent scholar, Robin Bush, even argued that the Jutes of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight became victims of a policy of ethnic cleansing by the West Saxons, although this has been the subject of debate amongst academics, with the counter-claim that just the aristocracy might have been wiped out.
It is thought that others remained in their continental homeland and became the indigenous people of modern Jutland.
Some scholars read the ēotenas involved in the Frisian-Danish conflict described in the Finnesburg Episode (lines 1068-1159 in Beowulf) as Jutes, others as "giants" or as a kenning for "enemies"; If the Jutes are indeed the same as the Euthiones, they are mentioned in a poem by Venantius Fortunatus (583).
[edit] Jutes and Geats
Some authorities believe the Jutes are identical with the Geats (the "Jutish hypothesis"), a people who once lived in southern Sweden, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, which speculatively identifies the Swedish Geats (through Eotas, Iótas, Iútan and Geátas) with the Danish Jutes. However, in both Widsith and Beowulf, the Eotenas in the Finn passage (see Finnsburg Fragment) are neatly distinguished from the Geatas. It may be that the two tribal names happened to be confused, which has happened, for example, in the sources about the death of the Swedish king Östen. Otherwise, Eotenas might correspond - in an etymological sense - to Jotuns (ogres in new-english) as a call name instead of the name of a tribe.
It is possible that the Jutes are a related people to the Geats and a Gothic people as it is mentioned in the Gutasaga that some inhabitants of Gotland left for mainland Europe (the Wielbark site in Poland is evidence of a Scandinavian migration).
