It is now generally recognised that loose confederacies of tribes were, at the period with which we are dealing, very common. Lawrence says this expressly: "The actors in this drama are members of two North Sea tribes, or rather groups of tribes[[513]]"; and again[[514]]: "At the time when the present poem was put into shape, we surely have to assume for the Danes and Frisians, not compact and unified political units, but groups of tribes held somewhat loosely together, and sometimes known by tribal names."
This seems to me a quite accurate view of the political situation in the later Heroic Age. The independent tribes, as they existed at the time of Tacitus, tended to coalesce, and from such coalition the nations of modern Europe are gradually evolved. In the seventh and eighth centuries a great king of Northumbria or Frisia is likely to be king, not of one only, but of many allied tribes. I cannot therefore quite understand why some scholars reject so immediately the idea that the Eotens are not necessarily Frisians, but rather a tribe in alliance with the Frisians. For if, as they admit, we are dealing not with two compact units, but with two groups of tribes, why must we assume, as earlier scholars have done, that Eotenas must be synonymous either with Frisians or Danes? That assumption is based upon the belief that we are dealing with two compact units. It has no other foundation. I can quite understand Kemble and Ettmüller jumping at the conclusion that the Eotens must be identical with the one side or the other. But once we have recognised that confederacies of tribes, rather than individual tribes, are to be expected in the period with which we are dealing, then surely no such assumption should be made.
I think we shall be helped if we try to get some clear idea of the nationalities concerned in the struggle. For to judge by the analogy of other contemporary Germanic stories, there probably is some historic basis for the Finnsburg story: and even if the fight is purely fictitious, and if Finn Folcwalding never existed, still the Old English poets would represent the fictitious Frisian king in the light of what they knew of contemporary kings.
Now the Frisians were no insignificant tribe. They were a power, controlling the coasts of what was then called the "Frisian Sea[[515]]." Commerce was in Frisian hands. Archaeological evidence points to a lively trade between the Frisian districts and the coast of Norway[[516]]. From about the sixth century, when "Dorostates of the Frisians" is mentioned by the Geographer of Ravenna (or the source from which he drew) in a manner which shows it to have been known even in Italy as a place of peculiar
importance[[517]], to the ninth century, when it was destroyed by repeated attacks of the Vikings, the Frisian port of Dorestad[[518]] was one of the greatest trade centres of Northern Europe[[519]]. By the year 700 the Frisian power had suffered severely from the constant blows dealt to it by the Frankish Mayors of the Palace. Yet evidence seems to show that even at that date the Frisian king ruled all the coast which intervened between the borders of the Franks on the one side and of the Danes on the other[[520]]. When a zealous missionary demonstrated the powerlessness of the heathen gods by baptizing three converts in the sacred spring of Fosetisland, he was carried before the King of Frisia for judgement[[521]].
At a later date the "Danes" became the controlling power in the North Sea; but in the centuries before the Viking raids began, the Frisians appear to have had it all their own way.
Finn, son of Folcwald, found his way into some English genealogies[[522]] just as the Roman Emperor did into others. This also seems to point to the Frisian power having made an impression on the nations around.
We should expect all this to be reflected in the story of the great Frisian king. How then would a seventh or eighth century Englishman regard Finn and his father Folcwalda? Probably as paramount chiefs, holding authority over the tribes of the South and East coast of the North Sea, similar to that which, for example, a Northumbrian king held over the tribes settled along the British coast. Indeed, the whole story of the Northumbrian kings, as given in Bede, deserves comparison: the relation with the subordinate tribes, the alliances, the feuds, the attempted assassinations, the loyalty of the thegns—this is the atmosphere amid which the Finn story grew up in England, and if we want to understand the story we must begin by getting this point of view.
But, if this be a correct estimate of tribal conditions at the time the Finnsburg story took form, we no longer need far-fetched explanations to account for Finnsburg not being in Friesland. It is natural that it should not be, just as natural as that the contemporary Eadwinesburg should be outside the ancient limits of Deira. Nor do we need any far-fetched explanations why the Frisians should be called Eotenas. That the King of Frisia should have had Jutes under his rule is likely enough. And this is all that the words of the Episode demand.