It is repeatedly objected that the Götar are remote from the Anglo-Saxons[[704]]. Possibly: but remoteness did not prevent
the Anglo-Saxons from being interested in heroes of the Huns or Goths or Burgundians or Longobards, who were much more[[705]] distant. And the absence of any direct connection between the history of the Geatas and the historic Anglo-Saxon records, affords a strong presumption that the Geatas were a somewhat alien people. If the people of Beowulf, Hygelac, and Hrethel, were the same people as the Jutes who colonized Kent and Hampshire, why do we never, in the Kentish royal genealogies or elsewhere, find any claim to such connection? The Mercians did not so forget their connection with the old Offa of Angel, although a much greater space of time had intervened. The fact that we have no mention among the ancestors of Beowulf and Hygelac of any names which we can connect with the Jutish genealogy affords, therefore, a strong presumption that they belonged to some other tribe.
The strongest historical argument for the "Jute-theory" was that produced by Bugge. The Ynglinga tal represents Ottar (who is certainly the Ohthere of Beowulf) as having fallen in Vendel, and this Vendel was clearly understood as being the district of that name in North Jutland. The body of this Swedish king was torn asunder by carrion birds, and he was remembered as "the Vendel-crow," a mocking nickname which pretty clearly goes back to primitive times. Other ancient authors attributed this name, not to Ottar, but to his father, who can be identified with the Ongentheow of Beowulf. This would seem to indicate that the hereditary foes of Ongentheow and the Swedish kings of his house were, after all, the Jutes of Vendel.
But Knut Stjerna has shown that the Vendel from which "Ottar Vendel-crow" took his name was probably not the Vendel of Jutland at all, but the place of that name north of Uppsala, famous for the splendid grave-finds which show it to have been of peculiar importance during our period[[706]]. And subsequent research has shown that a huge grave-mound, near this Vendel, is mentioned in a record of the seventeenth century as King
Ottar's mound, and is still popularly known as the mound of Ottar Vendel-crow[[707]]. But, if so, this story of the Vendel-crow, so far from supporting the "Jute-hypothesis," tells against it: nothing could be more suitable than Vendel, north of Uppsala, as the "last ditch" to which Ongentheow retreated, if we assume his adversaries to have been the Götar: but it would not suit the Jutes so well.
An exploration of the mound has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was raised to cover the ashes of Ottar Vendel-crow, the Ohthere of Beowulf[[708]]. That Ohthere fell in battle against the Geatas there is nothing, in Beowulf or elsewhere, to prove. But the fact that his ashes were laid in mound at Vendel in Sweden makes it unlikely that he fell in battle against the Jutes, and is quite incompatible with what we are told in the Ynglinga saga of his body having been torn to pieces by carrion fowl on a mound in Vendel in Jutland. It now becomes clear that this story, and the tale of the crow of wood made by the Jutlanders in mockery of Ottar, is a mere invention to account for the name Vendel-crow: the name, as so often, has survived, and a new story has grown up to give a reason for the name.
What "Vendel-crow" originally implied we cannot be quite sure. Apparently "Crow" or "Vendel-crow" is used to this day as a nickname for the inhabitants of Swedish Vendel. Ottar may have been so called because he was buried (possibly because he lived) in Vendel, not, like other members of his race, his son and his father, at Old Uppsala. But however that may be, what is clear is that, as the name passed from the Swedes to those Norwegian and Icelandic writers who have handed it down
to us, Vendel of Sweden was naturally misunderstood as the more familiar Vendel of Jutland. Stjerna's conjecture is confirmed. The Swedish king's nickname, far from pointing to ancient feuds between Jute and Swede, is shown to have nothing whatsoever to do with Jutland.
It appears, then, that Gēatas is phonologically the equivalent of "Götar," but not the equivalent of "Jutes"; that what we know of the use of the word "Jutes" (Īote, etc.) in Old English makes it incredible that a poem of the length of Beowulf could be written, concerning their heroes and their wars, without even mentioning them by their correct name; that in many respects the geographical and historical evidence fits the Götar, but does not fit the Jutes; that the instances to the contrary, in which it is claimed that the geographical and historical evidence fits the Jutes but does not fit the Götar, are all found on examination to be either inconclusive or actually to favour the Götar.