The Name Gotland

Gutland, Latinized to Gotland

Admittedly, many people think of Gotland as a "good land," and in fact, it was even spelled "Gottland" for a while, which literally means "good land" in Swedish. However, linguists strongly object to this spelling, dismissing it as an oversimplification (or, to put it bluntly, nonsense). Moreover, the island’s original name isn’t Gotland at all but Gutland.

Gutland is precisely the name recorded in the Chronicle from the early 13th century, known as Gutasagan. Gutland is also believed to be the name inscribed on the Torsätra Stone in Uppland, though in the runic language of the 11th century, it was spelled "Kutlanti," which some claim is another way of writing Gotland. However, the notion that a runestone in Svealand, written with Danish letters, would provide the correct name for Gotland is highly questionable. Some have speculated that the stone reveals the true name of Gotland as Kutland, meaning "the land of the pups" (seals). Unfortunately, as noted by Ingemar Olsson in Gotländska Ortsnamn, the same letter was used for both "k" and "g" in runic script, meaning the stone actually says Gutland and nothing else. Why it doesn’t say Kutland, according to the same scholar, remains unclear.

The Danes also said and wrote "Gulland" for a while during the Middle Ages, but that’s just a Danish adaptation, and that’s not what Gutland is called either.

The Name Gotland

The name Gotland is probably a Latinization of Gutland, or perhaps, as scholars suggest, a scholarly identification with the widely known Goths, who, among other things, toppled Rome in the early 5th century. Scholars write that to dispel any misconceptions—scholarly identification—but from a purely linguistic perspective, they’re actually forced to admit that "Gutar" (Gutnish people) and "Goter" (Goths) are the same word.

If you happen to have read Gutasagan in its original language (scholars don’t mention this), you’ll find it tells, among other things, of an emigration when Gutland became overpopulated. Every third family was chosen by lot (þa lutaþu þair bort af landi huert þriþia þiauþ) and forced to leave the country. It doesn’t actually say "family," but "thiauth" (þiauþ), which is a word for "people," "person," or something similar. Practically speaking, it was probably every third family head who was chosen.

In the 6th century AD, a man named Jordanes wrote the history of the Goths, their tribal saga, in which he claimed that the Goths emigrated from the island of Gothiscandza before coming to the Weichsel area (the Vistula River in Poland, which empties near Gdańsk). He says, among other things, that this island lies directly opposite the mouth of the Weichsel and that it looks like a lemon leaf.

But Jordanes doesn’t say "Goths," he calls them "Guthiuda"—the people from Gut. Moreover, there are Germans who understand Latin, and they say that Gothiscandza, which according to Jordanes is located near Thule (as I read in Tore Gannholm’s book Gotland, the Pearl of the Baltic), can be interpreted as the "Gutnish coast," which is a sort of official name for Gutland used in trade treaties with foreign countries.

And we should also add that we are "Gutar," not Gotlanders.