It has already been mentioned (p. 154) that the Greek writer Æthicus had already placed the Cynocephali on an island north of Germania. The revival of the Greek-Indian fable of dog-headed men seems, on the one hand, to be due to Greeks who had understood the word “Kvæn” as Greek κύων (dog), and either through Æthicus or some other channel the idea thus formed must have reached Adam. On the other hand, the notion of them as prisoners in Russia may be due to Germanic-speaking peoples, who misinterpreted the national name “Huns,” which was used both for Magyars and Slavs, and have taken it to mean Hund (dog).[183] But Adam himself did not understand the Greek name’s meaning of dog-heads, and confuses it with another fable of men with heads in their breasts [cf. Rymbegla, 1780, p. 350; Hauksbók, 1892, p. 167]. Of the Scandinavians Adam says [iv. 12]:

It does not seem as though Adam made any distinction between the names Norman and Norseman.

Sweden he describes as a fertile land, rich in crops and honey, and surpassing any other country in the rearing of cattle:

Uniped (from the Hereford map)

Adam relates much about these people, their customs, religion, and so forth:

It is probably the roving mountain Lapps that are here described. Descending suddenly into the plains with their herds of reindeer, they must then, as now, have done great damage to the peasants’ crops and pastures; and the peasants were certainly not content with killing the reindeer, as they sometimes do still, but also attacked the Lapps themselves. Although the latter are not a warlike people, they were forced to defend themselves, and that the Swedes and Norwegians are scarcely a match for them in strength and activity may be true even now.

Cannibals in Eastern Europe (from the Hereford map)

Elles (elk) and Urus (aurochs) in Russia (from the Ebstorf map, 1284)

Then follows a reference to Trondhjem and the ecclesiastical history of the country, etc.

Of the Western Ocean, from which the Baltic issues, Adam says [iv. 10] that it

Later [iv. 34], after the description of Norway, he says of the same ocean:

As will be seen, Adam obtained from the people of Scandinavia much new information and fresh ideas about the geography of the North, which add considerably to the knowledge of former times; but unfortunately he confuses this information with the legends and ancient classical notions he has acquired from reading the learned authors of late Roman and early mediæval times; and this confusion reaches its climax in the last tale, which is chiefly of interest to the folk-lorist. The first part of it (section 39) is made up from Paulus Warnefridi’s description of the earth’s navel, to some extent with the same expressions (see above, p. 157); the second part (section 40) is based upon legends on the model of the Odyssey, of which there were many in the Middle Ages. While his description gives a fairly clear picture of his views regarding the countries on the Baltic, it is difficult to get any definite idea of the relative position of the more distant islands; but it is probable, as proposed by Gustav Storm, that he imagined them as lying far in the north.

As Wineland is mentioned last, and as it is added that beyond this island there is no habitable land in this ocean, but that all is full of ice and mist, it might be thought that this is regarded as lying farthest out in a northern direction. But this would not agree with Adam’s earlier statement [iv. 10], where Iceland and Greenland are given as the most distant islands, and “there this ocean, which is called the dark one, forms the boundary.” The explanation must be that, as already remarked (p. 195), his statement about the ocean beyond Wineland is probably a later addition, though possibly by Adam himself. It is obviously inserted somewhat disconnectedly, and perhaps has been put in the wrong place, and this is also made probable by the quotation from Marcianus about Thyle, which has nothing to do with Wineland, but refers on the contrary to Iceland (cf. p. 193).[196] Omitting this interpolation, the text says of the geographical position merely that the King of the Danes also mentioned the island of Wineland, as discovered by many in that ocean, i.e., the outer ocean, and so far as this goes it might be imagined as lying anywhere. That no importance is attached to the order in which the islands are named appears also from the fact that Halagland is put after Iceland and Greenland, although it is expressly stated that it lay nearer Norway. That Adam, after having described the last-named country a long while before, here gratuitously mentions Halagland (Hálogaland) as an island by itself[197] together with Iceland and Greenland, shows how deficient his information about the northernmost regions really was.

As will be further shown in the later chapter on Wineland, Adam’s ideas of that country, of the wine and the corn there, must be derived from legends about the Fortunate Isles, which were called by the Norsemen “Vínland hit Góða.” This legend must have been current in the North at that time, and possibly it may already have been connected with the discovery of countries in the west. But it is, perhaps, not altogether accidental that Wineland should be mentioned immediately after Halagland. For as the latter name was regarded as meaning the Holy Land,[198] it may be natural that Wineland or the Fortunate Isles, originally the Land of the Blest, should be placed in its neighbourhood. To this the resemblance in sound between Vinland and Finland (or, more correctly, Finmark, the land of the Finns or Lapps) may, consciously or unconsciously, have contributed; later in the Middle Ages these names were often confused and interchanged.[199] Finns and Finland were sometimes spelt in German with a V; and V and F were transposed in geographical names even outside Germany, as when, in an Icelandic geographical tract attributed to Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Thverá (ob. 1159), Venice is transformed by popular etymology to “Feneyjar” [cf. F. Jónsson, 1901, p. 948]. It is particularly interesting that the Latin “vinum” (wine) became in Irish legendary poetry “fín,” and the vine was called “fíne,” as in the poem of the Voyage of Bran [Kuno Meyer, 1895, vol. i., pp. xvii., 9, 21].

The so-called St. Severus version, of about 1050, of the Beatus map (eighth century)

It is not clear from Adam’s description whether he altogether held the conception of the earth, or rather the “œcumene,” as a circular island or disc divided into three, surrounded by the outer ocean (the Oceanus of the Greeks, see p. 8), as represented on the wheel-maps of earlier times (cf. p. 151, and the Beatus map); but his expression that the Western Ocean extends northwards from the Orchades “infinitely around the circle of the earth” (“infinites orbem terræ spaciis ambit”) may point to this. It is true that immediately afterwards he has an obscure statement that at Greenland “ibi terminat oceanus qui dicitur caligans,” which has usually been translated as “there ends the ocean, which is called the dark one” (?); but it is difficult to get any sense out of it. One explanation might be that he imagined Greenland as lying out on the extreme edge of the earth’s disc, near the abyss, and that thus the ocean (which in that region was called dark ?) ended here in that direction (i.e., in its breadth), while in its length it extended farther continuously around “the circle of the earth.” This view would, no doubt, conflict with his statement in another place that the earth was round, which can only be understood as meaning that it had the form of a globe. But this last idea he took from Bede, and he has scarcely assimilated it sufficiently for it to permeate his views of the circle of the earth and the universal ocean, as also appears from his mention of the gulf at its outer limit. If we had been able to suppose that Adam really thought the Western Ocean on the north flowed past the Orchades, and thence infinitely towards the west around the globe of the earth (instead of the circle of the earth), this would better suit the statement that Ireland lay to the left, Norway to the right, and Iceland and Greenland farther out (also to the right ?). This would agree with the statement that Norway was the extreme land on the north, and that beyond it (i.e., farther north ?) there was no human habitation, but only the infinite ocean which surrounds the whole world, and in which opposite (“ex adverso”) Norway lie many islands, etc. According to this, these islands must be imagined as lying to the west, and not to the north of Norway. But besides the fact that such a view of the extent of the ocean towards the west would conflict with the prevailing cartographical representation of that time, it is contradicted by his assertion that Greenland lies farther out in the ocean (than Iceland) and opposite the mountains of Suedia and the Riphean range, which must be supposed to lie on the continent to the north-east of Norway; this cannot very well be possible unless these islands are to be placed out in the ocean farther north than Norway, and there is thus on this point a difficult contradiction in Adam’s work. The circumstance that Hálogaland is spoken of as an island after Iceland and Greenland is also against the probability that the ocean, in which these islands lay, was imagined to extend infinitely towards the west; the direction is, in this manner, given as northerly. The same thing appears from the description of the voyage of the Frisian noblemen: when they steered northward with the Orkneys to port and Norway to starboard they came to the frozen Iceland, and when they proceeded thence towards the North Pole, they saw behind them all the islands previously mentioned. Dr. A. A. Björnbo has suggested to me that according to Adam’s way of expressing himself “terminat” must here mean “forms the boundary,” whereby we get the translation given above (p. 192), which seems to give better sense; but in any case Adam’s description of these regions is not quite clear.

We are told that Magister Adam obtained information about the countries and peoples of the North from Svein Estridsson and his men; but as regards Iceland he might also have had trustworthy information from the Archbishop of Bremen, Adalbert, who had educated an Icelander, Isleif Gissursson, to be bishop. The latter (who is also mentioned by Are Frode) might also have told him about Greenland and Wineland; but Adam says distinctly that he had been informed about the latter country and the wine and corn there, which must have seemed very remarkable to him, if he imagined the country to be in the north, by the Danish king, and that the information had been confirmed by Danes. We shall return later to these countries, to Adam’s ideas of Wineland, and to the alleged polar expeditions of King Harold and of the Frisian noblemen.

Just as these pages are going to press I have received from Dr. Axel Anthon Björnbo his excellent essay on “Adam of Bremen’s view of the North” [1909]. By Dr. Björnbo’s exhaustive researches the correctness of the views just set forth seems to be confirmed on many points; but he gives a far more complete picture of Adam’s geographical ideas. The reasons advanced by Dr. Björnbo for supposing that Adam imagined the ocean as surrounding the earth’s disc, with Iceland, Greenland, etc., in the north, are of much interest. His map of the North according to Adam’s description is of great value, and gives a clear presentation of the main lines of Adam’s conceptions. With his kind permission it is reproduced here (p. 186). But, as will appear from my remarks above (pp. 197 f.), I am not sure that one is justified in placing Winland so far north, in the neighbourhood of the North Pole, as Dr. Björnbo has done in his map. Possibly he has also put the other islands rather far north, and has curved the north coast of Scandinavia somewhat too much in a westerly direction.

Through Dr. Björnbo’s book I have become acquainted with another recently published work on Adam of Bremen by Hermann Krabbo [1909], of which I have also been unable to make use; it also has a map, but not so complete a one as Björnbo’s as regards the northern regions.

CHAPTER VI

The Finns are mentioned, as we have seen (p. 113), for the first time in literature by Tacitus, who calls them “Fenni,” and describes them as exclusively a people of hunters. Procopius does the same, but calls them “Skridfinns,” and removes their home to the northernmost Thule or Scandinavia. Cassiodorus (Jordanes) also mentions the “Skridfinns” as hunters in the same northern regions, but speaks moreover of “Finns” and “Finaiti,” and another people resembling the Finns (“Vinoviloth” ?) farther south in Scandinavia. The Ravenna geographer also mentions the “Skridfinns” (after Jordanes). Then comes Paulus Warnefridi, who speaks of the ski-running of the Skridfinns, though indeed in a way which shows he did not understand it very well, and mentions a deer of whose skin they made themselves clothes, but does not say that this deer was domesticated. Next King Alfred mentions “Skridfinns,” “Finns,” and “Ter-Finns,” and in the information he obtained from Ottar he speaks of the hunting, fishing and whaling of the “Finns,” and of their keeping reindeer in the north of Norway. This description is in accordance with what we learn of the Lapps from later history, with this difference only, that on account of the killing-off of the game their hunting in recent times became of small importance. Lastly we have Adam of Bremen’s description of the Finns, which contains nothing new of note. He mentions “Finnédi” or “Finvedi” between Sweden and Norway (near Vermeland) and “Skridfinns” in northern Scandinavia. Besides these he speaks of a small people who come down at intervals, once a year or every three years, from the mountains, and who are probably the Mountain Lapps with their reindeer. He mentions also a people skilled in magic on the shores of the northern ocean [Finmark], and skin-clad men in the forests of the north, who may be Fishing Lapps or Forest Lapps. In connection with this we may also refer to the mention of the Lapps in the “Historia Norvegiæ”:

From the earliest accounts referred to, especially from that of Adam of Bremen, it looks as though there were Fishing Lapps and Reindeer Lapps in northern Scandinavia in those remote times, as there are now, and they were called Finns or Skridfinns; but besides these there were people who were called Finns in southern Scandinavia, from whence they have since disappeared. This has led to the hypothesis that the primitive population in southern Scandinavia also was composed of the same Finns (Lapps) as are now found in the northern part, to which they were compelled to retreat by the later Germanic immigrants [cf. Geijer, 1825, pp. 411 ff.; Munch, 1852, pp. 3 ff.; Sven Nilsson]. But for various reasons this hypothesis has had to be abandoned, and the question has become difficult.

Men of the Woods in Northern Scandinavia (from Olaus Magnus)

The word “Finn” as the name of a people does not occur, so far as is known, outside Scandinavia. The only place farther south where there are place-names which remind one of it is in Friesland, where we find a Finsburg. The origin of the national name “Finn” is unknown. Some have thought that it might be connected with the word “finna” (English, to find), and that it means one who goes on foot.

Since in Swedish and Norwegian the name has come to be applied to two such entirely different peoples as, in Norway, the Fishing Lapps and Reindeer Lapps and, in Sweden, the people of Finland, we must suppose that in the primitive Norse language it was a common designation for several non-Germanic races, whom the later Germanic immigrants in south Scandinavia drove into the wastes and forest tracts, where they lived by hunting and fishing. This would provide a natural explanation of the curious circumstance that Jordanes, as well as Adam of Bremen (later also Saxo), mentions Finns, Finvedi, and other Finn-peoples in many parts of south Scandinavia; in our saga literature there are also many references to Finns far south. But the most decisive circumstance is, perhaps, that the word Finn occurs in many place-names of south Scandinavia, from Finnskog and Finnsjö in Uppland, and Finnheden or Finnveden in Småland, to Finnö in the Bokn-fjord [cf. Müllenhoff, ii. 1887, p. 51; A. M. Hansen, 1907]. It may be quoted as a strong piece of evidence that a people called Finns must have lived in old times in south Norway, that the oldest Christian laws, of about 1150, for the most southern jurisdictions, the Borgathing and Eidsivathing, visit with the severest penalty of the law the crime of going to the Finns, or to Finmark, to have one’s fortune told [cf. A. M. Hansen, 1907, p. 79]. It may seem improbable that here (e.g., as far south as Bohuslen) this should have referred to Finns (Lapps) in the north, in what is now called Finmark; and we should be rather inclined to believe it to refer to the Finns (and Finnédi) mentioned by Jordanes and Adam of Bremen nearer at hand, in the forest tracts between Norway and Sweden, where we still have a Finnskog, which, however, is generally connected with the later immigration of Kvæns or Finns from Finland (the so-called wood-devils; compare also Finmarken between Lier and Modum). But it might be thought that these Christian laws were compiled more or less from laws enacted for northern Norway, and thus provisions of this kind, which were only adapted for that part of the country, were included. And it must be borne in mind that the northern Finns (Lapps) in particular had an ancient reputation for proficiency in magic and soothsaying, and, further, that Finmark in those times was often regarded as extending much farther south than now, as far as Jemteland and Herjedalen.

It is difficult to decide with certainty what kind of people the “Finns” who were found in many parts of south Scandinavia may have been. The supposition that they were the same people as the Finns (Lapps) of our time has had to be abandoned, as we have said, in the face of more recent archæological, anthropological and historical-geographical researches. Müllenhoff [ii. 1887, pp. 50 ff.] has proposed that the word “Finn” may originally have been a Scandinavian common name for several peoples who were diffused in south Scandinavia, but who in his opinion were Ugro-Finnish, like the Kvæns, Lapps and others [cf. also Geijer, 1825, pp. 415 f.]. He even goes so far as to suppose that the very name of Scandinavia may be due to them (like that of the ski-goddess “Skaði,”[200] who was a Finn-woman, cf. p. 103). But it has not been possible to point either to linguistic or anthropological traces of any early Finno-Ugrian people in any part of south Scandinavia, and there are many indications that the southern diffusion of the Mountain Finns (Reindeer Lapps) is comparatively late.

Dr. A. M. Hansen, therefore, in his suggestive works, “Landnám” [1904] and “Oldtidens Nordmænd” [“The Norsemen of Antiquity,” 1907], has put forward the hypothesis that the Finns of earliest history, whom he would include under the common designation of “Skridfinns,” were a non-Aryan people, wholly distinct both from the Finno-Ugrian tribes and from the Aryan Scandinavians, who formed the primitive population of northern Europe and were related to the primitive peoples of southern Europe, the Pelasgians, Etruscans, Basques and others. In Scandinavia they were forced northwards by the Germanic tribes, and have now disappeared through being partly absorbed in the latter. In the east and north-east they were displaced by the Finno-Ugrian peoples who immigrated later. The last remnants of them would be found in the Fishing Lapps of our time, and in the so-called Yenisei Ostyaks of north-western Siberia. This bold hypothesis has the disadvantage, amongst others, of forcing us to assume the existence of a vanished people, who are otherwise entirely unknown. In the next place, Dr. Hansen, in arbitrarily applying the name of Skridfinns to all the “Finns” in Scandinavia, does not seem to have laid sufficient weight on the difference which early writers make between Skridfinns in the north and the other Finns farther south.

In earlier times there was a strong tendency, due to old Biblical notions, to imagine all nations as immigrants to the regions where they are now found. But when a zoologist finds a particular species or variety of animal distributed over a limited area, he makes the most natural assumption, that it has arisen through a local differentiation in that region. The simplest plan must be to look upon human stocks and races in the same way. When we have tried in Europe to distinguish between Celts, Germans, Slavs, Ugro-Finns, etc., the most reasonable supposition will be that these races have arisen through local “evolution,” the home of their differentiation being within the area in which we find them later. As such centres of differentiation in Europe we might suppose: for the Celts, western Central Europe; for the Germans, eastern Central Europe; for the Slavs, Eastern Europe; for the Ugro-Finns, northern East Europe and western Siberia, etc.