The Geats
The Geats is inspired by the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, the oldest work of literature in the English language. Written down probably sometime in the 10th century, but reflecting a much older oral tradition, it recounts the adventures of its eponymous 6th century Geatish hero. The poem interweaves a series of other tales with an account of two major events in Beowulf’s life. The first is the best known and takes place in his youth: his slaying of the monster Grendel who is terrorising the Danish king in his great hall of Heorot, and the subsequent dispatch of Grendel’s equally monstrous mother. The second event take place many years later when Beowulf is in his twilight years and has become King of the Geats. Beowulf confronts a firedrake that has been ravaging his lands and his people in a mortal combat in which both perish. During the struggle Beowulf is deserted by his Gesiths (bodyguards) who flee in terror. Only his nephew, the young Wiglaf, stands by him and survives the struggle to bring the news to his people. The poem ends with the elaborate funerary rites of Beowulf, accompanied by dismal speculation as to the fate (wyrd) of the Geats, surrounded by enemies and bereft of their great warrior king. This is the point at which the action in the game commences.
Beowulf
Beowulf paints a vibrant picture of a Dark Age warrior society in which worth is measured by deeds of arms and loyalty to one’s kin and lord. Conspicuous wealth is also highly regarded but open-handedness with gifts and lavish hospitality more so. Apart from the monsters and supernatural foes of the two main episodes of the poem, warriors in Beowulf also pit themselves against other men in personal and family feuds, disputes, raids and open warfare between tribes. Although the Anglo-Saxons were long since converted to Christianity by the time the poem was written down, there are strong echoes in it of the pagan world of its origin and in particular frequent references to wyrd – a term normally translated as fate or destiny but having much stronger emphasis on personal responsibility and moral comportment. A warrior could influence his own wyrd for good or ill through his deeds, and a king the wyrd of his people.
Historical Frame
The events of the poem can be dated historically to the 6th century AD. The defeat and death of Hygelac, the king of the Geats and Beowulf’s lord at the time of his struggles against Grendel, is recounted in the poem. The Geatish raid on the Franks of the Upper Rhine during which this occurred, is corroborated by the Frankish chronicler, Gregory of Tours, who places it around 520AD. According to the poem, Beowulf was the sole survivor of that ill-fated expedition. On his return he refused to accept the kingship and supported instead the claims of Hygelac’s son, Heardred. Only after Heardred’s death perhaps some ten years later – in battle against the Sweons (Swedes) – did Beowulf allow himself to be proclaimed King of the Geats. The poem has him ruling for 50 years – though this would have Beowulf fighting the dragon in his eighties or nineties, which for some reason I find harder to accept than the existence of the dragon in the first place. However, even with some trimming of Beowulf’s reign, the arithmetic places the game sometime in the second half of the 6th Century. The precise date of the game is only relevant if players start to interact with events in recorded history in the Southlands.
The Geats in History
The Geats were an historical people living in the southern part of what is now Sweden – very roughly in the modern Swedish administrative areas of Ostergotland and Vastergotland (literally East and West Geatland). They occupied a band of territory between the Baltic and the North Sea coasts stretching from the modern cities of Stockholm in the North East to Gothenburg in the South West. No city, nor indeed any other significant settlement, exists in the period. There are historical references to East Geats and West Geats, which I reflect in the game. In the poem Beowulf is frequently described as a Weather Geat and I have gone with those scholars who associate him with the Baltic island of Gotland. So within the game the Geats are a federated people of three distinct groupings.
Tradition has it that the Geats were originally a tribe of the Goths. If so they probably migrated to Scandinavia from Eastern Europe sometime in the 4th Century AD. They seem to have been swallowed up by the Swedish kingdom sometime between the time of Beowulf and the 10th Century, with only client kings occasionally mentioned thereafter. They have left little trace in the archaeological record and no literary heritage. However, it seems likely that the Geats were amongst the “Anglo-Saxon” peoples who migrated to Britain during this period. There is good evidence that the Anglo-Saxon Kings of East Anglia were of Geatish origin. I have followed Beowulf in using Anglo-Saxon personal and place-names for the Geats.
Geography and Society
The terrain of the Geatish mainland is that of southern Sweden. It is rugged but mainly quite low-lying, dotted with lakes, including three extremely large ones, interconnected by waterways and marshland. The higher ground is dominated by forest, with a few peaks. The summers are temperate if a bit damp but the winters can be harsh. People live by fishing and fowling on the coasts and waterways; raising livestock; cultivating the lowlands; hunting in the forests; and raiding their neighbours. Craft trades as there are almost exclusively for local markets. These include: spinning and weaving; iron-working – mostly using low quality bog-iron which is plentiful; tar and charcoal production and fur-trapping in the forests.
The population is highly dispersed with no significant towns on the mainland and few settlements that are not based around a single dominant family – the larger of which may have a supporting population of tenant farmers, servants and slaves. Longer distance trade takes place at the larger of these places and most strategically placed of these settlements. There are also a few seasonal beach markets or wics where ships may arrrive periodically and await customers (or other traders) to barter for their wares. The exception to this picture is the island of the Weather Geats, which due to its central position in the southern Baltic, is a depot for trade. It has a number of settlements with either sheltered beaches or harbours where more organised trade takes place between merchants from all over the Baltic region and from further south.
Most trade is either by barter or uses hack silver sceattas (shards) or occasionally gold as a “currency”. (For game purposes there are 100 sceattas to the pound weight – although no such equivalence is know historically). There is no coinage as such – although foreign coins of trusted silver or gold content may be used according to weight. Outside the bounds of formal trade there is a strong culture of hospitality and gift-giving. Most households welcome guests and will feed them and house them willingly. Guests are normally expected to gift their hosts. If they have nothing to gift then they will typically volunteer to be put to work. The structure of gift-giving is very much bound up with considerations of status. Generosity both to followers and strangers is much admired. Hospitality and lavish guest-gifts are an opportunity to demonstrate wealth and openhandeness.
Society is stratified on a variety of factors including birth status, ownership of property and reputation which are recognised by law and custom. It is possible to move fairly freely between strata by changing the latter two factors, subject to a few constraints. At the very top of society are those of Atheling birth, who belong to families who claim descent from a god (usually Woden, but other dieties have seeded lineages). Traditionally only Athelings are eligible to be considered for the kingship of Germanic peoples at this period (although within the game I have the king of the West Geats as a war-leader chosen by public contest). Below the king are thegns who are large landowners with servants, slaves and armed followers – a thegn may or may not be an Atheling and vice versa. Thegns also have a role as local administrators and “magistrates” – collecting dues for the king; organising and leading musters of armed men; settling disputes and disposing justice in his district. The ceorl is an independent yeoman who owns his owns and farms a farm with his own family – representing the vast majority of Geats. A dreng is a more prosperous sort of ceorl who has servants and perhaps one or two armed followers. A gebur is a man who works the land for another. They are the lowest sort of free man. At the very bottom are slaves. Most slaves are born to their station but there is a constant supply of new blood as a product of warfare, raiding and judicial outcomes. Such trading of slaves as there is tends to be export rather than import.
Horses are highly valued and are useful for short journeys. However, most long distance travel is by boat. Wooden hulled ships are used on the sea and the larger inland waterways. Small boats made of tarred hide stretched over a light wooden frame are used for the narrower channels and can be carried from one waterway to another. It is said that it is possible to traverse the whole of Geatland in such a craft.
Enemies of the Geats
The tribes neighbouring the Geats – the Sweons, the Eowan, the Danes, the Jutes, the Heathobards, the Norse and the Kven – are all historical and mostly as shadowy as the Geats themselves. Their supernatural foes have names chiefly drawn from Anglo-Saxon myths and stories. Many of these are oddly unfamiliar from modern fantastical fiction – even Tolkein, a great Anglo-Saxon scholar, made little use of them in his great works. However, Pukel, Nicor, Thurse, Wose and Ettin are all genuine Anglo-Saxon terms for monstrous entities. Wight seems to have been a generic term for “monster” – rather than signifying a type of undead. Lich and Ghaist were words the Anglo-Saxon used to describe the unquiet dead. There has been much scholarly ink expended on Aelfs in Anglo-Saxon, and I have drawn heavily on the elements I like and that fit with the game and discarded the rest.
Gods and Magic
The chief gods of the Geats are those that give their names to the working days of the week in English. While they obviously draw somewhat on the better documented attributes of their Norse equivalents I have sought to differentiate them as appropriate. The competing Ese and Wen pantheons reflect the later Norse Aesir and Vanir, but at an earlier stage of integration into the single belief system described by Snorri Sturlasson. Magic is conceptually based around the FUTHORC – the Anglo-Saxon rune system.