Who were the Jutes?

Did they really come from Jutland?

According to St Bede, the English descend from three Germanic tribes: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Archaeological evidence connects the Angles with what is now called Angeln in Northern Germany and the Saxons with the coastal parts of the German state of Lower Saxony. But what about the Jutes? Did they really come from Jutland in western Denmark?

The idea that the Jutes came from Jutland is popular in Denmark. In 1949, a group of Danes sailed a replica Viking longship to England to celebrate the 1500th anniversary of the first leaders of the Jutes landing in Kent. They rowed it all the way to London and ventured as far west as Torquay. “Hugin”, the boat that was made for the occasion, can still be visited near Ramsgate in Kent.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that the Jutes migrated to eastern Kent and the Isle of Wight. There is evidence, too, that the Jutes spoke a different dialect to the Angles and the Saxons. The form of Old English spoken in Kent had a series of peculiar dialectal features that distinguished it from Mercian, Northumbrian and West Saxon. But the dialects spoken in Jutland today are considered Danish by linguists, not English, and no archaeological evidence has ever been found that links the Jutes specifically with Jutland.

So who were the Jutes? According to the Historia Brittonum, Hengist and Horsa, the leaders of the Jutes, were exiles from their homeland. The Historia Brittonum is a ninth-century compilation and its worth as a historical source has often been questioned. But the Old English poems Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg record that Hengist was a Jute in the service of a Danish king and that there was a group of exiled Jutes at the court of King Finn of Frisia.

Theodebert I depicted on one of his coins (German Central Bank)

The Jutes are also described in a letter written by the Frankish king Theodebert I to the Byzantine emperor Justinian. King Theodebert reigned from 533 to 548 and the Frankish king lists the names of peoples that owed him allegiance:

To the illustrious and most excellent lord and father, the emperor Justinian, from King Theodebert … After successfully subduing Thuringia, and having acquired their provinces, after their kings at that time had been extinguished, the ruler of the Norse nation submitted to us, and by God’s mercy the Visigoths who inhabited the northern quarter of France, Pannonia along with the Saxones Eucii, who surrendered themselves to us of their own free will – by the mercy of our God, our dominion, under God’s protection, extends from the Danube and the border of Pannonia to the shores of the ocean …

A t is often written as a c when it comes before an i in medieval Latin, so it is evident that the Saxones Eucii were the Jutes. But what is the significance of the doubled name Saxones Eucii?

Doubled names comparable to Saxones Eucii are found in earlier sources. The Greek geographer Ptolemy records that a group of Angles living in Lower Saxony were known as the Suebii Angili ‘the Suebian Angles’ and the peoples who made up the tribal confederation of the Lugii are called the Lugii Buri, the Lugii Didumi and the Lugii Omani by Ptolemy.

Theodebert seems to be describing the Jutes as a people of the Saxons in his letter. But why would he have done that?

The most obvious explanation is that the Jutes were considered to be Saxons, just as the Suebii Angili seem to have been Angles who lived in exile among the Suebians. If the Jutes who came to Britain in the fifth century had been exiled from Jutland, they might also be expected to have given up using the kinds of objects that archaeologists associate specifically with graves from Jutland and to have begun employing typically Saxon ones instead.

King Theodebert’s claim that the Saxones Eucii had submitted to him of their own free will may also explain the prevalence of goods of Frankish origin found in Kent and the south of England that date to the early Anglo-Saxon period. A brooch of a particular type known as the quoit style, named for the rings used in the game of quoits, seems to have developed in the Jutish territories that has its closest analogue to similar objects manufactured in northern France at the time. The archaeological connection of the Jutes to the Franks appears to have been much stronger than any between the Jutes and Jutland.

The bracteate from Skonager (National Museum of Denmark)

There is also clear evidence from Jutland that the region had fallen under the control of Danish kings at the time. The Danish kingdom was centred on the island of Zealand (Sjæland), which is where Copenhagen is situated, and it expanded west to include Jutland during the fourth and fifth centuries. Runic inscriptions are also known from Jutland dating from the late fifth century that show evidence that two different languages were spoken in the area. Golden bracteates from hoards found at Skonager and Darum in western Jutland even record the name of a man in both Jutish and Danish manners. His Jutish name is spelled Niuwila, while his Danish name is spelled Niujila. Niuwila differs from Niujila in much the same manner as Old English biddan ‘to ask’ differs from Old Norse biðja ‘to ask’. The spelling Niuwila preserves the effect of a sound change known as West Germanic gemination that is characteristic of Old English, but not Old Danish.

Niujila appears to have been a Danish lord who was known as Niuwila in Jutish. Bracteates were manufactured by goldsmiths employed by lords to reward their retainers and they have also been discovered in significant numbers both in East Kent and on the Isle of Wight. Bracteates were originally modelled on Roman coins and the concentrations of bracteates found in Kent and on the Isle of Wight are evidence that the early Jutish kings also used the golden manufactures to reward their warriors. The earliest bracteates seem to have been made at the behest of early Danish kings and they employ peculiar iconographic styles whose development over time has been traced by archaeologists. The use of bracteates in Britain, many employing typically Danish decorative styles, demonstrates that the practice was adopted from Denmark in the years that immediately followed the Anglo-Saxon migrations. They were manufactured by goldsmiths employed by Anglo-Saxon kings mimicking what their Danish counterparts did.

The use of bracteates in Britain seems to have been ideological – they were used to maintain royal power. The Jutish kings of Kent and the Isle of Wight seem to have been well aware of what was happening in Denmark at the time and they copied what was happening at the Danish court on Zealand by adopting the use of bracteates.

The inscription on the Guilton pommel (World Museum, Liverpool)

But none of the bracteates found in Kent or on the Isle of Wight feature runic inscriptions. The best example of a runic inscription from Kent that is clearly Jutish is recorded on an early sword pommel. It is of a type known as the Bifrons-Gilton style only found in southern England and northern France, and other sword pommels of the Bifrons-Gilton type have been unearthed that record runic inscriptions. Most of the inscriptions on the sword pommels from England and France are poorly preserved and difficult to read, but a pommel from Guilton, Kent, clearly records the Jutish name Sigimer in runic letterforms. It is the same as the name later attested as Sigemær in Old English charters, and it retains a spelling e in its second element -mer that is typical of the later Kentish dialect of Old English.