OBSERVATIONS LAID BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL
SECTION, AT THE MEETING OF THE BRITISH
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
SCIENCE, HELD AT BIRMINGHAM 1849.
So far from the Gothi and Getæ being identical there is no reason to
believe that any nation of Germany ever bore the former of these two
names until it reached the country of the population designated by the
latter. If so, the Goths were Gothic, just as certain Spaniards are
Mexican and Peruvian; and just as certain Englishmen are Britons _i.e._
not at all.
The Goths of the Danube, etc. leave Germany as Grutungs and Thervings,
become Marcomanni along the Bohemian and Moravian frontiers, Ostrogoths
and Visigoths, on the Lower Danube (or the land of the Getæ), and
Mœsogoths (from the locality in which they become Christian) in
Mœsia.
What were the Goths of Scandinavia? _It is not I who am the_ first by
many scores of investigators to place all the numerous populations to
which the possible modifications of the root _G--t_ apply in the same
category. I only deny that that category is German. Few separate the
Jutes of Jutland, from the Goths of Gothland. Then there is the word
_Vitæ_; which is to _Gut-_, as _Will_-iam is to _Gul_-ielmus, a form
that was probably Lithuanic.
If _J_+_t_, as it occurs in the word _Jute_, be, really, the same as
the _G_+_t_ in _Got_ or _Goth_, we have a reason in favour of _one_ of
the earlier Danish populations having been Lithuanic.
The four islands of Sealand, Laaland, Moen, and Falster formed the
ancient _Vithesleth_. This division is of considerable import; since
the true country of _Dan_, the eponymus of the _Danes_, was not
Jutland, nor yet Skaane, nor yet Fyen. It was the Four Islands of the
Vithesleth:--"Dan--rex primo super Sialandiam, Monam, Falstriam, et
Lalandiam, cujus regnum dicebatur _Vithesleth_. Deinde super alias
provincias et insulas et totum regnum."--Petri Olai Chron. Regum
Daniæ. Also, "Vidit autem Dan regionem suam, super quam regnavit,
Jutiam, Fioniam, _Withesleth_, Scaniam quod esset bona."--Annal. Esrom.
p. 224.
That the Swedes and Norwegians are the newest Scandinavians and that
certain Ugrians were the oldest, is undoubted. But it by no means
follows that the succession was simple. Between the first and last
there may have been any amount of intercalations. Was this the case?
My own opinion is, that the first encroachments upon the originally
Ugrian area of Scandinavia were not from the south-west, but from the
south-east, not from Hanover but from Prussia and Courland, not German
but Lithuanic, and (as a practical proof of the inconvenience of the
present nomenclature) although not German, _Gothic_.
Whether these encroachments were wholly Lithuanic, rather than Slavonic
as well, is doubtful. When the archæology of Scandinavia is read
aright, _i. e._ without a German prepossession, the evidence of a
second population will become clear. This however, is a detail.
The Gothic historian Jornandes, deduces the Goths of the Danube
first from the southern coasts of the Baltic, and ultimately from
Scandinavia. I think, however, that whoever reads his notices will be
satisfied that he has fallen into the same confusion in respect to the
Germans of the Lower Danube and the Getæ whose country they settled in,
as an English writer would do who should adapt the legends of Geoffrey
of Monmouth respecting the British kings to the genealogies of Ecbert
and Alfred or to the origin of the warriors under Hengist. The legends
of the soil and the legends of its invaders have been mixed together.
Nor is such confusion unnatural. The real facts before the historian
were remarkable. There were Goths on the Lower Danube, Germanic in
blood, and known by the same name as the older inhabitants of the
country. There were Gothones, or Guttones, in the Baltic, the essential
part of whose name was _Goth-_; the _-n-_ being, probably, and almost
certainly, an inflexion.
Thirdly, there were Goths in Scandinavia, and Goths in an intermediate
island of the Baltic. With such a series of _Goth_-lands, the single
error of mistaking the old _Getic_ legends for those of the more recent
Germans (now called _Goths_), would easily engender others; and the
most distant of the three Gothic areas would naturally pass for being
the oldest also. Hence, the deduction of the Goths of the Danube from
the Scandinavian Gothland.