Jutes - Jutes and Geats

A Germanic people whose original homeland was the N part of the Danish peninsula (Jutland). The tradition preserved by Bede, that Jutes participated in the 5th-c Germanic invasions of Britain and settled in Kent, SE England and the Isle of Wight, S England, UK, is confirmed by archaeological evidence. Their name is preserved in Jutland and Juteborg.

The word Jute is used in reference to a coarse vegetable textile fiber.

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.

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, has 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 it was just the aristocracy who were wiped out.

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 OED, which speculatively identifies the Swedish Geats (through Eotas, Iótas, Iútan and Geátas) with the Danish Jutes. In Beowulf the Jutes appear as the Eotenas in the Finn passage (see Finnsburg Fragment), making them a people distinct from the Geatas.

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 shows that the Goths moved there)