WERE THE GEATS ACTUALLY A SUB-TRIBE OF THE SAXONS? I have never heard it said so forthrightfully that the Frankish and Saxon Wars spurred on the Danes and possibly helped institute the Viking age. But if you think about it and the border fights between the Franks and the Danes that had been occurring sporadically long before it kind of makes sense that perhaps they were indeed preemptive. It would fit with the Viking lightning-raid style of water based behind the line strike. If you can keep your enemys attention fixed upon being worried about his own borders then that slows his advance considerably and forces a reallocation of resources from offensive war (and the Franks were growing tired of ceaseless offensive war) to defensive fortification and consolidation. The Danes also had no natural fall back position. A concerted invasion might easily fail but then again if it didnt then to where could they retreat - North? Hardly. Youd need colony lands to retreat to, in the East, West, and South. Thats not even to mention resource routes. If this idea is true then it might go a very long way to explaining several odd things about Beowulf, like why it is a story about the Geats and Scandinavians but written in Anglo-Saxon. Perhaps there was a contingent of Saxons who were aligned and allied to to the Danes in a much closer way than previously thought, perhaps even Tolkien was right in general principle when he thought the Geats were not Geats but Goths. But in this case the Geats would be Saxons not Goths, perhaps even Geat was a Scandinavian/Saxon code term for Saxons who had aligned themselves with the Danes and Vikings or had went North to escape the Franks and maintain their pagan tribal links. If that idea is true then it makes perfect sense why the subject matter of the poem should be Danish/Scandinavian and yet the poem written in Anglo-Saxon. Maybe the poet was a Geat, a Saxon tribesman turned Scandinavian. Here is an interesting analysis I found on the same general subject. freya.theladyofthelabyrinth/?page_id=483
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 21:47:20 +0000
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