Gotlanders

The Gotlanders are the folk of the iland of Gotland. In Swedish, they are also called Gutar a thedename stemmingly selfsame to Goths (Gutans), and both names were stemmingly Ur-Teutonish *Gutaniz. Their byleid/tung is called Gutnish (Gutniska).

Their oldest eretide is told in the Gutasaga, where it is told that because of overbreeding one third of the Gutar had to leave and settle in southern Europe.


 * over a long time, the folk born from these three timesed so much that the land could not uphold them all. Then they draw lots, and every third man or woman was chosen to leave, and they could keep everything they owned and take it with them but their land. ... they went up the ea Dvina, up through Russland. They went so far that they came to the land of the Greeks. ... they settled there, and live there still, and still have something of our tung.

The truth that the thedename is selfsame to Goth may be the ground why they are not spoken of as a byous team until Jordanes' Getica, where they may be those who are called Vagoths (see Scandza).

Before the 7th hundredyear, they made a swapping- and withstand -withholding with Swedish kings, by to the Gutasaga.


 * ''Many kings made war on Gotland while it was heathen, but the Gotlanders always kept up their own worship and law. Then the Gotlanders were sending many errandgivers to Sweden, but none of them won in forhandling a frith, until Awair Strabain from Alva churchleet. He was the first to make frith with the king of the Swedes.[...] As he was a smooth-tunged man, wise indeed and craftful, as the tales of him go, he installed a given truce with the Swedish king: 60 marks of silver a year - that is the geld for the Gotlanders - with 40 for the king, out of that sixty, and the earls to get 20. This deal had already been chosen by truce of the whole land before he left.


 * So the Gotlanders made a swapping- and withstand -withholding with the king of the Swedes of their own free will, that they might go anywhere in all lands lorded by the Swedes freely and unfettered by tolls or any tasks. So too the Swedes could come to Gotland with no ban on the inbringing of corn, or any other backholdings. The king was to give help whenever they needed it and asked. The king would send errandgivers to the Gotland thede-thing, and the earls likewise, to gather their geld. These errandgivers must abede freedom to the Gotlanders to fare in frith over the sea, to all stows where the Swedish king held sway. And the same went for anyone fareing there to Gotland.