1. Brondings. Breca was a Bronding. After his famous swimming-match
with Beowulf (Chapter VIII.), he is said to have sought out his
'pleasant fatherland the land of the Brondings.' Arnold suggests that
they were located in Mecklenburg or Pomerania.
2. Danes, also called Bright-Danes, Ring-Danes, Spear-Danes, because
of their warlike character; and North Danes, South Danes, &c.,
because of their wide distribution. They are said to have inhabited
the Scede lands and Scedenig and 'between the seas'; that is, they
were spread over the Danish Islands, the southern province of Sweden,
and the seas between them.
3. Jutes (Eotenas), probably people ruled over by Finn, King of
Friesland, and identical with the Frisians.
4. Franks and Frisians. The Franks were ancestors of the modern
French. After the conversion of Clovis (A.D. 496), they gradually
encroached on the Frisians.
5. Frisians include the Frisians, the Franks, the Hetware, and
the Hugs. Friesland was the country between the River Ems and the
Zuyder Zee.
6. Geats. They dwelt in the south of Sweden between the Danes and
the Swedes. Bugge sought to identify them with the Jutes, and held
that Gautland was Juteland. He based this theory on certain phrases:
e.g. Chapter XXXIII., where the Swedes (the sons of Ohthere) are said
to have visited the Geats 'across the sea,' and again in Chapter
XXXV. the Swedes and the Geats are said to have fought 'over wide
water'; but, as Arnold points out, these phrases can be interpreted
in such a way as not to be incompatible with the theory that they
dwelt on the same side of the Cattegat, i.e. on the northern side,
and in the extreme south of Sweden.
The question as to whether they are identical with the Goths of Roman
history is still an open one. Arnold says, 'There is a great weight
of evidence tending to identify the Geats with the Goths,' and he
quotes evidence from Gibbon (chapter X.). Pytheas of Marseilles,
in the fourth century, says that, passing through the Baltic Sea,
he met with tribes of Goths, Teutons, and Ests.
Tacitus, in chapter XLIII. of Germania, speaks of the Goths as
dwelling near the Swedes. Jornandes traces the Goths to Scanzia,
an island in the Northern Sea. It is probable, then, that the Goths
had a northern and indeed a Scandinavian origin. If so, Beowulf the
Geat was probably a Goth.