Tolkien read the word as Jutes, and theorised that the fight was a purely Jutish feud, and Finn and Hnæf were simply caught up by circumstance.
There are a number of toponyms that attest to the presence of the Jutes in the area, such as Ytene, which Florence of Worcester states was the contemporary English name for the New Forest.
A 15th-century Latin chronicle, "Chronicon Holsatiae vetus", found in Gottfried Leibniz's Accessiones historicae (1698), states the Danes were of the Tribe of Dan, while the Jutes the Jews.
Some historians note that Jutes migrating to Kent through the continent may have been associated with the Rhineland south of the Saxons.
Jutes |
Barbara Yorke has suggested that it was Cædwalla's conquest of the Jutish province and the South Saxons that led to the need for a new title to distinguish the expanded realm from its predecessor.