GREAT BRITAIN.--DENMARK.--THE ISLANDS.--THE
VITHESLETH.--FYEN.--LAUENBURG.--HOLSTEIN.--SLESWICK.--JUTLAND.--ICELAND.
--THE FEROE ISLES.--NORWAY.--SWEDEN.--LAPPS.--KWAINS.--GOTHLANDERS.
--ANGERMANNIANS.--THEORY OF THE SCANDINAVIAN POPULATION.
As the ethnology of the British Islands is made the subject of a
separate volume,[18] the present notice will be confined to the simple
statement of the Irish, the Scotch Gaels, the Manksmen, and the Welsh
being Kelts, and the English, Germans; the Keltic populations being
indigenous, the German, intrusive.
Scandinavia comes next in order, the arrangement being strictly natural;
since, whatever may have been the original population of Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden, the present is of Germanic origin, and speaks a
language belonging to the great Gothic class; the Danish and Swedish
being mutually intelligible.
_The Islands._--The Danish Islands fall into two groups, one containing
the Isle of Fyen, the other the ancient _Vithesleth_, or the four
islands of Sealand, Laaland, Moen, and Falster. This division is
ancient, and in the eyes of some of the older writers of considerable
import; since the true country of _Dan_, the eponymus of the _Danes_,
was not Jutland, not yet Skaane (the southern part of Sweden), nor yet
Fyen. It was the Four Islands of the Vithesleth:--“Dan--rex primo super
Sialandiam, Monam, Falstriam, et Lalandiam, cujus regnum dicebatur
_Vithesleth_. Deinde super alias provincias et insulas et totum
regnum.”--Petri Olai Chron. Regum Daniæ. Also, “Vidit autem Dan regionem
suam, super quam regnavit, Jutiam, Fioniam, _Withesleth_, Scaniam, quod
esset bona.”--Annal. Esrom. p. 224.
That this word _Vithesleth_ is a compound, that its first element is a
Gentile name, and that the population which bore it was other than the
modern Danes will be suggested in the sequel. At present it is enough to
remember that the existing population of the four eastern islands is
Germanic on a hitherto unvestigated basis. The men of the _Vith_-es-leth
it is convenient to call _Vitæ_.
In Fyen the Gothic elements are the same as in the Vithesleth, the
_differentiæ_ consisting in the difference of the original basis,
provided that such existed. This may or may not have been the case;
since it by no means follows that because the islands of the Vithesleth
differed from Fyen, that difference was ethnological. It may have been
only political.
_Lauenburg._--In the tenth century Lauenburg is Slavonic; its occupants
being a population called _Po-labi_; called also _Po_-lab-ingii. As _po_
means _on_, and _Laba_ is the Slavonic form for the _Elbe_, the name is
a compound, like _Pomerania_ (_on the sea_). The _Polabi_, then, were
the Slavonians of the Elbe. They were an extreme population; since the
river Bille divided them from the Germans of Stormar, Holstein, and
Ditmarsh. But though the _Polabi_ of Lauenburg were a frontier
population they were not isolated. They were in geographical continuity
with the Linones of Luneburg, and the Obotrites of Mecklenburg. Reduced
by the Carlovingian Franks, Lauenburg became Low German; as it is at the
present time.
_Holstein._--The name of the duchy is German, and derived from a German
population--the _Holsati_. But the Holsati were neither the only
occupants, nor the only Germans of these parts. The Stormarii of
Stormar, and the Dietmarsi of Ditmarsh are equally mentioned by the
writers of the eighth century. Earlier still we hear of the Sabalingii
and Sigulones. The Holsati, Dietmarsi, and Stormarii, were either Angles
or Frisians.
So much for the western half of the duchy. The eastern was Slavonic;
even as Lauenburg was Slavonic, the particular population being that of
the _Wagri_. They are a frontier population; and this may, _possibly_,
be denoted by the name, which contains the same elements as that of the
_Ucri_ of _Ucker_mark, and the Malorussians of the _Ukr_aine.
_Sleswick._--With Slavonians on the Baltic, and Frisians on the
Atlantic, the original ethnology of Sleswick seems to have been that of
the sister duchy. In Sleswick, however, the Frisian population still
exists, extended from Husum to Tondern. In Sleswick also we have a
portion of the Jute population of Jutland.
_Jutland._--If the combination, _J_+_t_ as it occurs in the word _Jute_,
being the same as the _G_+_t_ in _Got_, or _Goth_, we have a reason in
favour of one of its earlier populations having been Lithuanic.
Then we have the Slavonians of Holstein and Sleswick to the south. How
far these extended northwards is uncertain. Between the two, however, I
believe that eastern Jutland, at least, was Sarmatian before it was
German.
The next elements were Frisian; since traces of the Frisian occupancy
are found as far north as the Liimfjord--and beyond it.
The present language is Danish.
Originally the area of the non-Germanic _Jutæ_, Jutland, took its first
Germanic population from the Frisian area, its second from that of the
early Scandinavians. Where this was, and what the Jutæ were, however,
are complex questions which will be noticed towards the end of the
chapter.
_Iceland._--The Icelanders are one of the purest populations in the
world. Foreign elements arising out of the admixture of any population
antecedent to the present there are none. Foreign elements in the
original stock are but few; since it was from Norway and not from
Denmark that, in the ninth century, the island was peopled; and the
Norwegians are the purest portion of the Scandinavian stock. As a
general rule, the islanders are somewhat taller than the Norsemen of the
continent. In the other external points of appearance they are similar.
But an observation of Dr. Schleisner’s respecting their animal heat is
important. “The internal warmth of the human body is between 36.50° and
37° centigrade, and this passes for being the general temperature in all
latitudes, and in all climates, for all human beings, except new-born
children. But with a very delicate thermometer, well-fitted for the
purpose and which had previously been tried by other excellent
instruments, I have found from experiments on twelve healthy individuals
that the temperature within the cavity of the mouth was as follows:--
AGE. DEGREES.
23 37.3°
18 37.5°
17 37.2°
19 37.5°
24 37.°
20 36.5°
18 37.8°
17 37.6°
19 36.8°
37 37.4°
23 37.5°
20 37.2°
Average 37.27° centigrade.”[19]
As far as this differs from that of the Norwegians--a point upon which
our information is so incomplete as to make the previous table
suggestive rather than conclusive--the difference must be put down to
climate and similar external influences, rather than to that of what is
called _race_.
The Icelandic language has altered so little within the last one
thousand years that it is nearly the same as that of the old Sagas and
poems; Sagas and poems which every Icelander can read. On the other
hand, the change on the continent has been so great that no modern
dialect of Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, is intelligible to an Icelander.
Neither is any dialect that of the old Scandinavian literature.
_Feroe Isles._--Here the population is from Norway, as pure as that of
Iceland; and the form of speech is Icelandic also. The popular songs of
the Feroe Islanders have drawn considerable attention, and been well
illustrated. They read the critic a lesson of caution, in showing the
extent to which a foreign subject may be thoroughly naturalized; so much
so as to wear the appearance of being indigenous. Yet the subjects are
those of the Nibelungen-Lied, and, as such, continental in their origin;
in their immediate origin, Scandinavian, in their remote origin, German.
_Norway._--The population of Norway is essentially Lapp and Norwegian,
with the addition of a few Kwain settlements.
The Norwegian calls the Lapplander a _Fin_, so that the district or
_march_ of the Lapp population of Norway is called Fin-mark. But it is
found considerably southwards as well.
The following table shows the distribution of the Fin (Lapp) population
of Norway in 1724, 1845, and four intermediate periods:--
+---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+
| |1724.|1756.|1768.|1825.|1835.| 1845.|
| +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+
|Finmark |2825 |3210 |3260 | - | - |12,506|
|Nordland |3928 | - | - | - | - | 1735|
|North Trondjem | 478 | - | - | - | - | 181|
|South Trondjem | - | - | - | - | - | 75|
|Hedemarken[20] | - | - | - | - | - | 41|
+---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+
No census was taken for the years and districts to which no number is
assigned. The table, however, invalidates the current notion that all
the so-called savage races are in a state of decrease.
In the copper districts of the north of Norway there is a considerable
number of Kwain settlers, chiefly employed as steady and industrious
labourers in the mines. There is also a Kwain colony in the districts of
Soloers called _Finskoven_ (the _Fin Wood_) in the southern part of
Norway and on the frontier of Sweden.
The rest of the population is of the same Germanic origin as the Danes
and Swedes; though purer than either. The recent and superadded elements
are but few, German being the chief; and Bergen and Christiania being
the towns where they are commonest. Of the Danish elements no account is
taken; the two populations being so closely allied. Jewish blood is
non-existent; owing to rigorous laws of exclusion, ill-assorted with the
liberal constitution of the most republican government in Europe.
A Lapp population common to Russia and Norway is common to Sweden also;
the districts in the last-named countries being called _Lap_-mark, and
the population _Lapps_.
Populations more or less allied to the Lapps, covering the southward
extension of the present Lapp area were originally the native
population of both Sweden and Norway. This is generally admitted. So it
is that the present Germanic populations are not aboriginal.
That the Swedes and Norwegians are the newest elements, and that certain
Ugrians were the oldest, is undoubted. But it by no means follows that
the succession was simple. Between the first and last there may have
been any amount of intercalations. Was this the case? My own opinion is,
that the first encroachments upon the originally Ugrian area of
Scandinavia were not from the south-west, but from the south-east, not
from Hanover but from Prussia and Courland, not German but Lithuanic,
and (as a practical proof of the inconvenience of the present
nomenclature) although not German, _Gothic_.
Sweden to the south of the Malar-See is called _Goth_-land. The opposite
coast of Prussia and Courland was the land of the _Gutt_-ones,
_Goth_-ones, or _Gyth_-ones; in the eyes of a German and in the German
language, a _Goth_-land also. An island in the Baltic, midway, is called
Goth-land as well. What is the natural inference from this? Surely, the
close relationship of the three populations.
When the main argument rests upon some single fact of primary weight or
importance, a single fact to which nothing of equal magnitude can be
opposed, the neglect of subordinate details is excusable--at least, in a
short work. If they come spontaneously, and are of a satisfactory
character--well and good. They are no part of the leading argument.
In some cases, perhaps, it should be a matter of principle to abstain
from them; for example, when the leading argument, although good in
itself, is liable, either from its novelty or from the amount of
previous opinions which it contradicts, to be undervalued. In such a
case, the display of subsidiary minutiæ subtracts from its weight. They
make it look weaker than it is; weak enough to require all the support
that the skill of its author can devise. In deducing the Greeks from
Italy, the relations between the Greek and Latin tongues, the great
difficulty of explaining them otherwise than by a geographical
continuity, and the equal difficulty of effecting this continuity by any
of the ordinary means formed the palmary argument. Such details as fell
in with this view were put down to gain (_apposita lucro_). They were
also good against similar details on the opposite side. But they were
_ex abundanti_--at least in the first instance. To have neglected them
altogether would not have been too bold. To have paraded them
unnecessarily would have subtracted from the value of the real argument.
A comparative depreciation of subsidiary details appears in the present
question; wherein it is held that certain members of the Lithuanian
family extended their area across the Baltic into parts of Scandinavia,
and peopled the southern provinces of Sweden. These were the Goths of
Gothland, the Jutes of Jutland, the Vites of Withesleth, the old name of
the Danish islands, anterior to their occupation by the Danes. The
critic who doubts whether the names are the same as that of the Goths,
on the strength of the difference of form, is free to do so; but by
doing so, he will only impugn a part of the present doctrine. That the
Goths of Gothland are the Gothones, Guttones, or Gythini of the opposite
coast of Prussia and Courland is the important inference; and that the
appearance of identical or similar names on the opposite coasts of an
inland sea of no considerable breadth is a phenomenon which, until it
can be explained otherwise, must be presumed to denote ethnological
affinity is the principle which supports it. Whether the Gothones of
Courland were really and truly Lithuanian is a point upon which there
may be a difference of opinion; but there should be no difference of
opinion as to the explanation of the presence of Goths in the opposite
country of Gothland. The common-sense view of the matter, and the
ordinary habits of interpretation should take their course.
This may be admitted, and yet an objection be taken to the effect that
the _Goths_ of the southern _Gothland_ (the _Goth_-ones, _Gyth_-ini,
_Gutt_-ones) were not Lithuanic but German. The primary argument on this
point lies in the undoubted fact of the Goths of the Lower Danube, in
the third and fourth centuries, being German.
But this primary argument is considerably invalidated by the fact, too
often overlooked, of those Germans having been known under the name of
_Goths_ only when they have settled in the country of the _Getæ_ and
_Gaudæ_, a fact which makes the name just as foreign to the Teutonic
dialects as _Briton_ was to the Anglo-Saxon. From which it follows that
all other populations which were, in respect to their _name_, in the
same predicament as the Goths of Alaric and Theodoric, were connected
not with the German invaders, but with the occupants of the country
invaded; just as the Bretons of Brittany are connected not with such
Englishmen as call themselves patriotically and poetically “Britons,”
but with the Welsh representatives of the original occupants of the
Keltic island _Britannia_. Now the populations thus linked together by
some such name as _G-th_, _G-t_, _J-t_,[21] and _V-t_ (all of which have
been admitted to be but different forms of the same word) are numerous;
three of them being now before us.
The real Goths, like the real Britons, were something very different
from their German conquerors.
But the Gothic historian Jornandes, deduces the Goths of the Danube
first from the southern coasts of the Baltic, and ultimately from
Scandinavia. I think, however, that whoever reads his notices will be
satisfied that he has fallen into the same confusion in respect to the
Germans of the Lower Danube and the Getæ whose country they settled in,
as an English writer would do who should adapt the legends of Geoffroy
of Monmouth respecting the British kings to the genealogies of Ecbert
and Alfred or to the origin of the warriors under Hengist. The legends
of the soil and the legends of its invaders have been mixed together.
Nor is such confusion unnatural. The real facts before the historian
were remarkable. There were Goths on the Lower Danube, Germanic in
blood, but not Germanic in name; the name being that of the older
inhabitants of the country. There were Gothones, or Guttones, in the
Baltic, the essential part of whose name was Goth-; the -_n_- being,
probably, and almost certainly, an inflexion.
Thirdly, there were Goths in Scandinavia, and Goths in an intermediate
island of the Baltic. With such a series of _Goth_-lands, the single
error of mistaking the old _Getic_ legends for those of the more recent
Germans (now called _Goths_), would easily engender others; and the most
distant of the three Gothic areas would naturally pass for being the
oldest also. Hence, the deduction of the Goths of the Danube from the
Scandinavian Gothland.
The exception, then, to the Lithuanic origin of the _Gothlander_, which
lies in the application of the name _Goth_ to a population undoubtedly
Germanic, is itself exceptionable; and the common-sense interpretation
of the existence of similarly designated populations on the opposite
coasts of an inland sea must take its course.
The exact degree to which Jornandes confounded the German invaders with
the original Goths is uncertain. Some of his facts are unequivocally
Getic, as his notice of Zamolxis. Others are as truly Germanic. The name
Hermanric is this.
Each, however, is an extreme instance, and it is only at its extremities
that the question is easy. In my own mind, I think that Getic legends
and Getic history is the rule, Germanic the exception; in other words,
that the so-called Gothic history is the history of the _indigenæ_
rather than that of the invaders of the soil. It is even likely that
Hermanric’s empire was German only as the present Austrian empire is
German, _i.e._, German in respect to its chief. Zengis-Khan’s was
Mongolian in the same way, the mass of his subjects and major part of
his area being Turk. What leads to this is the likelihood of even the
names of the royal families amongst the Ostrogoths and
Visigoths--Amalung and Baltung--being Lithuanic. They have every
appearance of having arisen out of _eponymias_. At any rate it is a
strange coincidence to find one of the localities of the amber-district
called sometimes _Abalus_, and sometimes _Baltia_--the latter name being
connected with the _Belt_ and _Baltic_. Pliny (writes Prichard) “in
giving an account of the production of amber says, that, according to
Pytheas, there was an estuary of the ocean called Mentonomon, inhabited
by the Guttones, a people of Germany. It reached six thousand furlongs
in extent. From this place an island named Abalus was distant about one
day’s sail, on the shore of which the waves throw up pieces of amber.
The inhabitants make use of it for fuel, or else sell it to their
neighbours the Teutones.” Pliny says that Timæus gave full credit to
this story, but that “he called the island not Abalus, but Baltia.”
Out of this _Abal-_, and this _Balt-_, I believe the eponymic names of
_Abal_-ung (_Amal_-ung and _Balt_-ung) grew, just as Hellen did out of
Hellas. And that they were other than German is shown by Tacitus, since
the amber country was the country of the Æstyii, whose language was
_Britannicæ proprior_--_Britannicæ_ meaning _Prussian_, as I have shown
elsewhere.
In bringing within the same class all the population denominated
Gothini, Gothones, Guttones, Gothi, Gautæ, Gaudæ, Getæ, Jutæ, and Vitæ,
I only do what nine out of ten of my predecessors have done before me. I
differ, however, from them in determining the character of the class by
that of the Guttones of the amber country, instead of that of the Goths
of Alaric and Theodoric--these last being Goths only as the English are
Britons, or the Spaniards, Mexicans. At the same time I am fully aware
that any evidence whatever showing that the Germans of the Lower Danube
were called _Goths_ anterior to their arrival in the land of the _Getæ_,
would shake my doctrine, and that unexceptionable evidence would throw
it to the ground altogether.
The theory of the Scandinavian populations is different for the three
different kingdoms.
1. _Norway._--Norway agrees with Sweden in the likelihood of its
earliest population having been Ugrian--Ugrian of the Lapp type, and
continued southwards from Lapland or Finmark. Upon these the ancestors
of the present Norwegians encroached.
2. _Sweden._--In Norway the Germanic population came in immediate
contact with the Ugrian; in Sweden it was, to a great extent, preceded
by one from Courland and Prussia--the Goths. Hence, the ethnological
elements in Sweden are one degree more complex.
3. _Denmark._--Denmark differs from both Norway and Sweden in respect to
its primary population; inasmuch as it is bounded on the north by the
sea, so that its relations to the Ugrian area of the aboriginal
Scandinavia are those of an island.
Does this prevent us from assuming a continuity of population? I cannot
say. Although the north of Jutland is separated by a considerable
breadth of water from the south of Scandinavia, Sealand is within sight
of the southwestern coast of Sweden, and the south-western population of
Sweden might easily have been extended into Denmark. On the other hand,
however, the population which occupied the neck of the Chersonesus may
with equal, if not greater reason, be considered to have been continued
northward. But this population is itself complex, for instead of
belonging to a single stock, we find, at the beginning of the historical
period, Germans on the western, and Slavonians on the eastern half of
Holstein. Which of these populations was continued into the Cimbric
Chersonese? Or was there a third stock different from either? Or did
each fill up a portion of the area, and if so, in what proportions? My
own opinion in respect to these complexities is, that originally the
southern half (at least) of the Cimbric Chersonese was Slavonic, even as
the Mecklenburg and Lauenburg frontiers were Slavonic; and that,
subsequently, a twofold displacement set-in--the Vitæ having invaded the
islands and the north-eastern parts of Jutland from Prussia and Courland
by sea, and the Frisians having pressed forwards from the Lower Elbe by
land. Still, it would be hazardous to assert, that, during those
primitive periods, when the whole of Norway and Sweden were Ugrian--as
they, once, unquestionably were--the Danish Isles and the Cimbric
Chersonese were not Ugrian also. It would be hazardous even to pronounce
that the whole of the southern coast of the Baltic was not Ugrian
also--since both the Slavonic populations of Mecklenburg and Pomerania,
and the Lithuanians of Prussia and Courland belonged to the encroaching
divisions of our species. That a Ugrian population extended as far
southward and westward as the Elbe is a doctrine that may be maintained
without going to the full recognition of the so-called Finnic
hypothesis; which carries the populations akin to the Ugrian as far
south as the Pyrenees, and sees in the Basques of Biscay and the Lapps
of Lapland, the fragments of a vast population once continuous, but,
subsequently, broken up and displaced by the Keltic and Germanic
occupancies of Gaul and Germany respectively.
The history of the present Scandinavians, Danes, Swedes, and
Norwegians--must be considered in respect to (1) the line of conquest;
(2) the date of the invasion; (3) the amount of foreign blood
introduced.
1. Ptolemy’s notice of Scandia is, that “the western parts are occupied
by the _Chadeinoi_, the eastern by the _Phauonai_ and _Phiræsoi_, the
southern by the _Gautæ_ and _Daukiônes_, the middle by the
_Leuônoi_.”--Lib. 11. ii. 33. We are not in the habit of considering
these _Phiræsoi_ to be _Frisii_, yet it would be difficult to give a
reason against doing so. The Frisian occupancy of Jutland, at an early
period, is undoubted, and it is equally undoubted that, of all the
German dialects, the Frisian is the likest to the Scandinavian.
It is on the eastern side of _Norway_ that these _Phiræsoi_ must be
placed, probably to the south of the Miösen, where they came in contact
with the _Chad_-einoi of _Hede_-marken. There is a little forcing of the
geography here. The Goths were, at the same time, in possession of the
south of Sweden. These Goths seem to have been harder to reduce than the
Ugrians, so that the line of the Frisian (Phiræsian) conquest ran, at
first, from south to north, but afterwards changed its direction, and
effected the reduction of the parts between the southern border of
Lapland and the Malar Lake; the Goths of Gothland being the last to be
reduced.
What justifies these details? The Goths of Gothland have already been
considered. They reached as far as the parts about Stockholm. Now,
_North_ of these come the men of the _South_, _i.e._, of
_Suder_-mannaland, or _Suder_-mania; a name which is explained if we
make them the most southern of the invaders from Norway, but not easily
explicable otherwise. This is the case of our own county of
_Suther_-land repeated; which was the most southern part of Norway,
though the most northern part of Britain. Further details of
distribution are necessary to account for the name of the province of
_West_mannaland nearly, but not quite, on the _eastern_ coast of Sweden.
The district between it and the sea was reduced first.
2. The date must have been earlier than the time of Ptolemy; indeed,
early enough to allow for the development of the differences between the
Norse and Frisian languages. Reasons for believing that this requires no
inordinate length of time I have given elsewhere.[22]
3. The intermixture of blood, and, consequently, the purity of the
present stock, I believe to have varied with the different populations
with which the Germanic invaders came in contact. Although both the Lapp
and Kwain (_i.e._, the Laplander and the Finlander) are Ugrian, there is
this important difference in respect to their relations to the Swedes
and Norwegians. The Kwain and Scandinavian intermarry; the Lapp and
Scandinavian do not. Hence we infer that in proportion as the original
Ugrians of the southern and central parts of Scandinavia approached the
Lapp type, displacement and extermination was the rule, intermixture the
exception; whereas, on the other hand, the natives of the Kwain type may
have amalgamated with their invaders. If so, the present Scandinavian
stock is pure or mixed in proportion as the area it occupied was Lapp or
Kwain. The details of this question are difficult. As a rough rule,
however, we may say that the basis becomes less and less Ugrian as we
proceed northwards; inasmuch as the type became more and more Lapponic,
and the Germanic intermixture less and less.
The Gothlanders from the first were, probably, half-bloods, _i.e._,
Ugrian on the mother’s side, as the invasion was maritime. The extent to
which they are, at present, Germanic in blood as well as language, is
uncertain.
The Goths from Prussia effected settlements in Sweden, why not also the
Kwains of Finland? I think I find traces of their having done so in the
name _Anger_-man-land, or _Angria_, which can scarcely be supposed to
resemble the name of the _Inger_-man-land or _Ingria_, on the Gulf of
Finland, by accident. But what if the name were not native, as I think
it was not? In that case it is Goths who give it--both to the Ingrians
and the Angrians. If so, Gothland must, at one time, politically, at
least, have reached as far as 64° north latitude, the parallel of
Angermania.
But the name may have been a _common_ rather than a _proper_ one, and
have meant simply the _March_. If so, a Kwain settlement is unnecessary,
and _Anger-manna_-land=the _Land of the men of the frontier_, that
frontier being Lapp. If so, _Lapp_-mark is its Swedish equivalent.