Who were the Geats?
That's what they were called in our (old) tongue: Geatas. Pronounced (Gheah-tas), as only one syllable. In the other tongue (Old Norse), they were probably also called Gauts. Not much is really known about them. Perhaps they were conquered before a less vague historical period?
What we do know is that they were of the old Germanic culture and are akin to Anglo-Saxons, so they probably had their mead-halls, their scops (skalds in the other tongue), and they probably lived on the southern coast of Sweden close to Denmark. They were probably in close kinship with the Danes (or Spear-Danes, at least).
Our knowledge ends there.
Our knowledge ends there, but that's where I begins my theorization. I mean, we do believe in the theory of gravity, right? So let's start with the general time and location:
Based on more dateable events occurring in the story, Beowulf seems to take place in the early 6th century-- early 500's. The place? Southern Sweden. Judging by this map of the spreading infection influence of Christianity in the 6th century,, both Denmark and Southern Sweden were far from being Christianized, and supposedly the Christianization of those cultures did not begin until the 8th.
So Beowulf's Geats? Undoubtedly pagan. No monasteries, no church, no wimples, no nuns, no modest dress codes, no high social standards, no crusades, no bibles, nothing. Just Odin and Freya and friends, and a more freestyle standard of living.
Some people like to argue that Beowulf is at its heart a Christian poem. I disagree and attest that if it was a christian poem, it would have begun in the monastery, and not have as many of the Scandinavian/Norse/whatsit elements of sagas and other Germanic stories as it does, or the pagan funeral and worship practices which were forbidden by the church, and certainly not have the Hwaet at the beginning, which simply shows that Beowulf was originally an oral poem and did not start in the monastery, a possible translation of a similar oral poem that may have circulated in Geatland and Daneland, before finally being written down in the form it is now.
The whole thing with Grendel being Son of Cain or whatever? Christian addition. The part with Grendel being weak to the power of God? Christian. That part where they demonize the native religion and call it devil-worship? Undoubtedly a Christian addition. Granted, the poem's not overly christianized, it's just that if you look at it closely, all of the Christian bits can easily be replaced, so it must have begun pagan. So something else was there, and it's up to us to fill it in.
So anyway, back to Beowulf's Geats. We know their religion, it's just that we don't know what music they danced to, what kind of art they enjoyed, what stories they told, how they dressed, what their rights were as people under a king, whether they had slaves, or how the royalty lived. We don't even know exactly what people they were.
The solution? Mix & match. Cultures in that region and time period tended to be very similar: Anglo-Saxons, Jutes (possibly also Geats?), Danes, Swedes, even the later Vikings, and since we know almost nothing of the Geats anyway, we can use artistic liberties (within reason).
Which is exactly what I decided to do. Most of the research was put into Anglo-Saxons, but Vikings (despite the fact that they came later and were quite different) were also put in the mix, as well as a bit of the Swedish folk culture, as shown by Beowulf playing säckpipa in the drawing above. I also threw in a pinch of my personal taste because of "What little documentation on socks no you gotta wear socks" and also "Noooo I don't care if I can't find a lot of information on it he looks cute with thigh-length hair in a braid".
The result is something that I'm a little worried about shoving under the noses of seasoned historians and gurus on the subject, but wouldn't look out of place at a Pre-Roman Scandinavia Renaissance Faire if there was one.
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