Jutes

Jutland Peninsula, where the juths were presumably born.

The Jutes (can also be seen as Iuti or Iutae depending on the source) were a Germanic people who, according to Bede, were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of the Iron Age, the other two being Saxons and Angles. They are believed to have originated in southern Jutland (Iutia in Latin) in present-day Denmark, Southern Schleswig (South Jutland) and part of the East Frisian coast.

Origin

Bede places the homeland of the Jutes on the other side of the Angles in relation to the Saxons, which would mean the northern part of the Jutland peninsula. Tacitus portrays a people called the Eudoses who lived in northern Jutland and these may have been the later Iutae. The Jutes have also been identified with the Eotenas (ēotenas) involved in the Frisian conflict with the Danes as described in the Finnesburg episode in the poem Beowulf (lines 1068–1159). Others have interpreted the ēotenas as jotuns (ettins in English), meaning giants, or as a kenning for "enemies".

Disagreeing with Bede, some historians identify the Jutes with the people called the Eucii (or Eucii Saxons) who were evidently related to the Saxons and dependent on the Franks in 536. The Eucii may have been the same as an obscure tribe called the Euthiones and probably associated with the Saxons. The euthiones are mentioned in a poem by Venancio Fortunato (583) as a people under the sovereignty of Chilperic I of the Franks. This identification would agree well with the later location of the Jutes in Kent, since the region just across from Kent on the European mainland (present-day Flanders) was part of France. Even if the Jutes were present south of the Saxons in the Rhineland or close to the Frisians, this does not contradict the possibility that they were emigrants from Jutland.

Before the great migrations occurred between the 3rd and 8th centuries, then, most likely, the Jutes bordered on the north with the Danians (that is, the direct ancestors of the current Danes), on the south with the Saxons, to the southeast with the Angles and to the west (on the islands) with the Frisians.

Migrations

After moving towards the mouths of the Rhine, in a migration in which the majority of the Juthians participated, they participated together with the Angles, Saxons and Frisians in the Germanic invasions of England that took place from the year 430. According Bede, settled in Hampshire, Kent and the Isle of Wight (Kingdom of Kent). This is attested by numerous place names in this area.

While it is easy to detect its influences in Kent (for example in the division of estates), its impact in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is much smaller. Robin Bush, a modern scholar, believes it is due to Saxon assimilation and ethnic cleansing, despite opposition from other scholars.

Those Jutes who did not migrate are believed to be the ancestors of the current inhabitants of Jutland.^{[citation needed]}

In addition, some scholars identify them with the göter (read ioeter) or Goths and the Geats, from the south of what is now Sweden and called in Latin Eotas or Iótas (not to be confused with Thracian Getae).^{[citation needed]} Without However, in classic literary works such as Beowulf, both tribes appear differentiated, naming the goter (from the island of Gotland in the southwest of the Baltic Sea), it being possible that the similarity in the name is a simple confusion.