ON THE TERMS OF GOTHI AND GETÆ.
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.