Geats

This article is about the North Germanic tribe. For the Thracian tribe, see Getae.

Geatish settlements during the 6th century, within the red lines. The green areas show the main areas of North Germanic settlement in Scandinavia.

The Geats (/ɡiːts, ˈɡeɪəts, jæts/ GHEETS, GAY-əts, YATS;[1][2] Old English: gēatas [ˈjæɑtɑs]; Old Norse: gautar [ˈɡɑu̯tɑr]; Swedish: götar [ˈjø̂ːtar]), sometimes called Goths,[3] were a large North Germanic tribe who inhabited Götaland ("land of the Geats") in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. They are one of the progenitor groups of modern Swedes, along with the tribes of Swedes and Gutes. The name of the Geats also lives on in the Swedish provinces of Västergötland and Östergötland, the western and eastern lands of the Geats, and in many other toponyms.

The Swedish dialects spoken in the areas that used to be inhabited by Geats form a distinct group, Götamål.

  1. ^ "Geat". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
  2. ^ "Geat". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins.
  3. ^ E.g. Microsoft Encarta (on Swedish history), translations from Old Norse Archived 11 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Anglo-Saxon Archived 4 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine or Latin Archived 8 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine and the Primary Chronicle and some modern scholarly works on Germanic tribes.