In Northern Mists Volume I Part 14

[Sidenote: Earliest mention of the Finns]

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. Ca.s.siodorus (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, fis.h.i.+ng 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 "Finnedi" 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 sh.o.r.es of the northern ocean [Finmark], and skin-clad men in the forests of the north, who may be Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps or Forest Lapps. In connection with this we may also refer to the mention of the Lapps in the "Historia Norvegiae":

Norway "is divided lengthways into three curved zones [i.e., parallel to the curved coast-line]: the first zone, which is very large and lies along the coast; the second, the inland zone, which is also called the mountain zone; the third, the forest zone, which is inhabited by Finns [Lapps], but is not ploughed." The Lapps, in the third zone, which was waste land, "were very skilled hunters, they roam about singly and are nomads, and they live in huts made of hides instead of houses. These houses they take on their shoulders, and they fasten smoothed pieces of wood [literally, balks, stakes] under their feet, which appliances they call 'ondrer,' and while the deer [i.e., reindeer] gallop along carrying their wives and children over the deep snow and precipitous mountains, they dash on more swiftly than the birds. Their dwelling-place is uncertain [it changes] according as the quant.i.ty of game shows them a hunting-ground when it is needed."

From the earliest accounts referred to, especially from that of Adam of Bremen, it looks as though there were Fis.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Men of the Woods in Northern Scandinavia (from Olaus Magnus)]

[Sidenote: The name "Finn"]

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 Fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng. This would provide a natural explanation of the curious circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstance is, perhaps, that the word Finn occurs in many place-names of south Scandinavia, from Finnskog and Finnsjo in Uppland, and Finnheden or Finnveden in Smland, to Finno in the Bokn-fjord [cf. Mullenhoff, 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 Finnedi) 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 Kvaens 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.

[Sidenote: Immigration to Scandinavia]

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 archaeological, anthropological and historical-geographical researches.

Mullenhoff [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 Kvaens, 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-G.o.ddess "Skai,"[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, "Landnam" [1904] and "Oldtidens Nordmaend" ["The Nors.e.m.e.n 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 Fis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sumption, 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.

[Sidenote: Southern Finns in Scandinavia]

This is doubtless a linguistic division, but to a certain extent it coincides with anthropological distinctions. Since the North was covered with ice till a comparatively recent period, we cannot expect any local differentiation of importance there since that time, but must suppose an immigration to the north and to Scandinavia of already differentiated races, from southern Europe. We may thus suppose that tribes belonging to the parent-races of brachycephalic Celts and Slavs, and dolichocephalic Germans, came in from the south and south-east, and Ugro-Finns and Mongoloid tribes immigrated from the south-east and east. In this way we may expect, at the commencement of the historical period, to find Celto-Slavs and Germans in southern and central Scandinavia, and Mongoloid and Finno-Ugrian people in the northernmost regions and towards the north-east and east (Finland and North Russia). This agrees fairly well with what is actually found. If we except the northernmost districts, anthropological measurements (princ.i.p.ally by Brigade-Surgeon Arbo) show that the people of Norway are descended not only from the tall, fair, and p.r.o.nouncedly dolichocephalic Germanic race, but also from at least one brachycephalic race, which was of smaller stature and dark-haired.[201]

Measurements in Sweden and Denmark show a similar state of things, but in Denmark and the extreme south of Sweden the short-skulls are more numerous than in the rest of Scandinavia. In order to explain these anthropological conditions, we must either suppose that the various Germanic tribes which have formed the people of Scandinavia were more or less mixed with brachycephalic people, even before they immigrated,[202] in proportions similar to those now obtaining, or that tribes immigrated to Scandinavia belonging to at least two different races, one specially dolichocephalic and one specially brachycephalic. The latter hypothesis will be, to a certain extent at all events, the more natural, and as it is not probable that the short-skulls arrived later than the long-skulled Germanic tribes, it is most reasonable to suppose that there was at least one short-skulled primitive people before they came. These primitive people were hunters and fishermen, and must therefore in most districts have wandered over a wide area to find what was necessary to support life. It was only the more favourable conditions of life in certain districts--for instance, the abundance of fish along the west coast of Norway--that allowed a denser population with more permanent habitation. As the taller and stronger Germanic tribes spread along the coasts, the older short-skulled hunters, who may have been Celts,[203] were in most districts forced towards the forest tracts of the interior, where there was abundance of game and fish.

In districts where they lived closer together and had more permanent settlements, as on the west coast of Norway, they were not altogether displaced. For this dark primitive people, who were shorter of stature than themselves, and who hunted and fished in the outlying districts, the Germanic tribes may, in one way or another, have found the common name of "Finns," whether the people called themselves so or the name arose in some other way.[204] When the Germanic people then came across another short, dark-haired people of hunters and fishermen in the north, they applied the name of "Finn" to them too, although they belonged to an entirely different linguistic family, the Finno-Ugrian, and to an even more different Mongoloid race. But to distinguish them from the southern Celtic people of hunters, the northern were sometimes called "Skridfinns."

Gradually, as the southern Finns became absorbed into the Germanic population and disappeared as a separate people, the name in Norway remained attached to the other race and country (Finmark) in the north, and in Sweden to the very different people and country (Finland) in the north-east.

The southern Finns were an Aryan people, and as the Aryan languages at that remote time, when they became detached from the more southern short-skulls of Europe, the Celts and Slavs, did not vary very much, it is easily explicable that scarcely a single ancient place-name can be found in southern Norway which can be said with certainty to bear a non-Germanic character. If, on the other hand, the southern Finns, who are mentioned so late as far on in the Middle Ages, had been a Finno-Ugrian or other non-Aryan people, it is incredible that we should not be able easily to point to foreign elements in the place-names, which would be due to their language.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Skridfinns hunting (from Olaus Magnus)]

Scandinavian finds of skulls of the Stone Age, and later, are so few and so casual that we can conclude very little from them as regards the race to which the primitive population belonged. Further, it must be remarked that the early people of hunters, the short-skulled "Finns," must have been very few in number, and have lived scattered about the country, in contrast to the later Germanic tribes who had a fixed habitation. That among the earliest skulls found there should only be a few short ones is, therefore, what we should expect. It must also be remembered, of course, that the proportion of skulls left by each people depends in a great degree on its burial customs.

[Sidenote: Northern "Finns" in Finmark]

We now come to the northern Finns, of whom Ottar gives a sufficiently detailed description to enable us to form a fairly accurate picture of their culture. Since they were able to pay a heavy annual tribute in walrus-tusks, ropes of walrus-hide and seal-hide, besides other skins and products of fishery, we must conclude that they were skilled hunters and fishermen even at sea, and such skill can only have been acquired through the slow development and practice of a long period, unless they learned it from the Nors.e.m.e.n. But on the other hand they also kept reindeer, resembling in this the eastern reindeer nomads. These two ways of living are so distinct that they can scarcely have been originally developed in one and the same people, and we must therefore conclude that a concurrence of several different cultures has here taken place.

Now as regards whaling and sealing, it is remarkable that along the whole northern coast of Europe and Asia there is no trace of any other race of seafaring hunters. Not until we come to the Chukches, near Bering Strait, do we find a sea-fishery culture, but this is borrowed from the Eskimo farther east, and originally came from the American side of Bering Strait.

In Novaya Zemlya, it is true, there is a small tribe of Samoyeds who live by hunting both on sea and land, and who do not keep reindeer, but on the other hand use dogs for sleighing; but their sea-hunting is primitive, like the more casual sealing and walrus-hunting I have seen practised by the reindeer Samoyeds along the sh.o.r.es of the Kara Sea, with firearms, but without special appliances and with extremely clumsy boats. It is difficult to see in this the remains of an older, highly developed people of hunters.

This sealing culture which was found in Ottar's time in northernmost Norway and on the Murman coast cannot, therefore, have come from the east along the coast of Siberia, but must have been a local development, perhaps arising from the amalgamation of the original hunting culture of these "Finns" with a higher European culture from the south.

[Sidenote: Archaeological relics of "Finns" in Varanger]

It fortunately happens that at Kjelmo, on the southern side of the Varanger Fjord, a rich find of implements has been made, which must belong to the very same people of "Finns" who, as Ottar says, lived here and there along the coast (of Finmark and Terfinna Land) as hunters, fishermen and fowlers. Dr. O. Solberg in particular has in the last few years made valuable excavations on this island.[205] The many objects found lay evenly distributed in strata, the thickness of which shows that they must be the result of many centuries of acc.u.mulation. Solberg refers them to the period between the seventh and about the eleventh centuries.

In North Varanger many heathen graves containing implements have been found. By the help of the latter Solberg has been able to show that the graves are partly of the same age and partly of a somewhat later time than the Kjelmo find, and certainly belong to the same people. By comparing these various finds we can form a picture of this people's culture and its a.s.sociations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 7-9, Fish-hooks (of reindeer-horn); 10, potsherds; 1-6, harpoon-points (of reindeer-horn), from Kjelmo; less than half natural size (after O. Solberg, 1909)]

In addition to a number of bones of fish, birds and mammals, the Kjelmo find contains a variety of implements, mostly made of reindeer-horn and bone, which have been remarkably well preserved in the lime-charged sand, while on the other hand the iron, with few exceptions, has rusted entirely away. There are also many fragments of pottery, baked at an open fire and made of clay found on the island. These hunters and fishermen, therefore, understood the art of the potter as well as that of the smith, and thus the culture of this northern district on the sh.o.r.es of the Polar Sea was not on such a very low level. But it was not of independent growth; the pottery shows a connection with that of the older Iron Age in south Scandinavia; while on the other hand a couple of bronze objects, especially the small figure of a bear, found in a grave in North Varanger, are typically representative of the early part of the Permian Iron Age in eastern Russia (from the eighth century). Many other objects found in the graves also point to connection with the south-east, partly with Russia or Ottar's Beormaland, and perhaps with Finland; while on the other side there may have been communication westwards and south-westwards (Ottar's route) with Norway. Solberg has found marks of owners.h.i.+p on the Kjelmo implements which he shows to have much resemblance to those still in use among the Skolte-Lapps.[206] But the use of owner's marks was an ancient and universal custom among the Germanic peoples, and the Finns probably derived it from them. The owner's marks found by Solberg bear a resemblance to many ancient Germanic ones [cf. Hofmeyer, 1870; Michelsen, 1853], and seem rather to point to cultural connection with the Nors.e.m.e.n.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Probable mode of using the harpoon-points from Kjelmo]

Among the implements of reindeer-horn and bone in the Kjelmo find there are especially many fish-hooks, which show that fis.h.i.+ng played an important part in the life of these people on the island, probably mostly in the summer months. Possibly there are also some stone sinkers which would show that they had nets. There are also fish-spears of reindeer-horn, which were used for salmon-fis.h.i.+ng in the rivers. Further, there is a quant.i.ty of arrow-heads; but of special interest to us are a number of harpoon-points of various form, which doubtless do not show so highly developed a sealing culture as that of the Eskimo, but which are nevertheless quite ingenious and bear witness to much connection with the sea. It is worth mentioning that, while some of these harpoon-points (Figs. 2 and 3 above) resemble old, primitive Eskimo forms, which are found in Greenland, another still more primitive form (Fig. 1 above) bears a striking resemblance to harpoon-points of bone which are in use, amongst other places, in Tierra del Fuego, and which are also known from the Stone Age in Europe. This proves how the same implements may be developed quite independently in different places.

It is curious that among the same people such different forms of harpoon-points should be found, from the most primitive to more ingenious ones. This may tend to show that their sealing culture was not so old as to have acquired fixed and definite forms like that of the Eskimo.

It is remarkable that by far the greater number of harpoon-points were made entirely of reindeer-horn, without any iron tip. Only on two of them (see Fig. 2, p. 214) are there marks of such a tip, which was let in round the fore-end, but which has rusted completely away. There is nowhere a sign of the use of any blade of iron (or stone), such as is used by the Eskimo. All these harpoon-points were made fast to a thong by deep notches at the base, or by a hole; and they have either a tang at the base which was stuck into a hole in the end of the harpoon-shaft, or else they have a hole or a groove at the base, which was surrounded by an iron ring, and into which a tang at the end of the shaft was inserted. As no piece of reindeer-horn or bone has been found which might serve as a tang for fixing the harpoon-points, it is possible that these were fastened directly on to the wooden shaft. With the help of the thong, which was probably made tightly fast (on a catch ?) to the upper part of the shaft, the point was held in its place. But when the harpoon was cast into the animal, the point remained fixed in its flesh and came away from the shaft, which became loose, and the animal was caught by the thong, the end of which was either made fast to the boat or held by the hunter; for it is improbable that it was made fast to a buoy or bladder, which is an invention peculiar to the Eskimo. All the harpoons found at Kjelmo are remarkably small, and cannot have been used for any animal larger than a seal. Among the objects found there is only one piece cut off a walrus-tusk, and none of the implements were made of this material, except, perhaps, one arrow-head. The explanation of this cannot be merely that the walrus was not common in the neighbourhood of Kjelmo; it shows rather that these Finns did not practise walrus-hunting at all; for if they had done so, we should expect their weapons and implements to be made to a large extent of walrus-tusk, which has advantages over reindeer-horn.

Whether the harpoons, which we know to have been used later by the Nors.e.m.e.n, resembled those from Kjelmo, and whether they learned the use of them from the Finns, or the Finns had them from the Nors.e.m.e.n, are points on which it is difficult to form an opinion. Nothing has been found which might afford us information as to the kind of boats these northern sealers used. It is possible that they were light wooden boats, somewhat like the Lapps' river-boats, and that they used paddles. Nor do the Kjelmo finds tell us whether these people kept tame reindeer. It is true that bones of dogs have been found, like the modern Lapp-hound; but whether they were used for herding reindeer cannot be determined, nor can they have been common on the island, since otherwise the animal bones would have shown marks of having been gnawed by dogs.

The ma.s.ses of bones found show that the people lived on fish to a great extent, many kinds of birds, among them the great auk (Alca impennis), reindeer, fjord-seal (Phoca vitulina), the saddleback seal (Ph.

grnlandica), grey-seal (Halichrus grypus),[207] porpoise, beaver, etc.

It will be seen that everything we learn from this find agrees in a remarkable way with the statements of Ottar, with the single exception that there are no indications of walrus-hunting, beyond the one piece of tusk mentioned.[208]

As has been said, this sealing of the Finns must be regarded as a locally developed culture, which was not diffused farther east than Ter or the Kola peninsula. But with their reindeer-keeping the opposite is the case; this has its greatest predominance in Asia and north-eastern Europe, and is specially a.s.sociated with the Samoyeds. It seems, therefore, most probable that it was brought to north Scandinavia from the east.

[Sidenote: Ottar's "Finns"]

If, then, Ottar's description of his Finns' and Terfinns' diffusion towards the east (as well as the description in Egil's Saga) tallies almost exactly with the diffusion of the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps and Reindeer Lapps of our time, and if what he tells us of the Finns' manner of life agrees in all essentials with what we know of the life of the Lapps long after that time, down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then this in itself points to Ottar's "Finns" having been essentially the same people as the present-day Lapps. But to this may be added the statement of Ottar, who must have known the Finns and their language well: that they and the Beormas spoke approximately the same language. Since, then, the Lapps of our time--who live in the same district as Ottar's Finns--and the East Karelians--who live in the same district, on the western side of the White Sea, as Ottar's Beormas--speak closely related languages, and since, further, the Karelians are a people with fixed habitation like the Beormas, then it will be more natural to suppose that they are the same two peoples who lived in these districts at that early time, instead of proposing, like Dr. A. M. Hansen, to replace them both by an unknown people, who spoke an unknown language.[209]

The correctness of this hypothesis is also supported, as we have seen, by the rich Kjelmo find, which shows that in Ottar's time there was in the Varanger Fjord a well-developed sealing culture, to which we know no parallel from finds farther south, and which both in date and characteristics is distinct from the Arctic Stone Age. Through grave-finds in North Varanger, belonging to later centuries, we have, as Solberg shows [1909], a possible transition from the Kjelmo culture to that of the Lapps of our own time, and there is thus a connected sequence.

[Sidenote: Ancient Lappish skulls]

In old heathen burial-places on the islands of Sjholmen and Sandholmen, in the Varanger Fjord, Herr Nordvi found a number of skulls and portions of skeletons, which probably belonged to the same people as the dwellers on Kjelmo. Some of these skulls are in the collection of the Anatomical Inst.i.tute at Christiania, and have been described by Professor J. Heiberg [1878]. They are brachycephalic with a cephalic index between 82 and 85; one was mesocephalic with an index of 78. Dr. O. Solberg has also found a few such skulls. Time has not permitted me to subject these heathen skulls at the Anatomical Inst.i.tute to a detailed examination; I have only made a purely preliminary comparison between them and half a dozen skulls of modern Reindeer Lapps and Skolte-Lapps, and found that in certain features they differ somewhat from the latter. Doubtless the Lapps and Skolte-Lapps of our time are very mixed, partly with the Finns (Kvaens) and partly with Norwegians and others; but the typical Reindeer Lapp skulls are nevertheless quite characteristic, and as they are somewhat more brachycephalic than the skulls from the heathen graves, it is difficult to suppose that this is due to any such recent mixture of race. As possible differences the following may be noted: the heathen skulls as compared with the Reindeer Lapp skulls are not quite so typically brachycephalic; seen from the side they are somewhat lower (i.e., the length-height index is less, according to Heiberg's measurements it would be about as 77 to 86); the forehead recedes somewhat more from the brow-ridges, which are more prominent than in the typical Reindeer Lapp skulls. The Skolte-Lapp skulls examined were of more mixed race, and were more mesocephalic; but they bore most resemblance to the Reindeer Lapp skulls, although some of them also showed a transition to the heathen skulls. According to this it does not look as though the heathens to whom these graves belonged can be accepted offhand as the ancestors of our Reindeer Lapps. They may have been an earlier, kindred race who, to judge by Ottar's statements, spoke a similar language, closely related to Karelian. The Reindeer Lapps must in that case have immigrated later.

[Sidenote: Place-names of the Lapps]

It remains to examine what place-names can tell us. It is remarkable, as Qvigstad [1893, p. 56 f.] has pointed out, that while the Lapps have genuine Lappish names for the inner fjord coasts--e.g., Varanger, Tana, Lakse, Porsanger, and Alten fjords--all their place-names for the outer sea-coasts, even in Finmark, are of Norwegian origin, if we except the names of a few large islands, such as "Sallam," for Soro in West Finmark and for Skogero in Varanger, and "Sievjo," for Seiland in West Finmark. It would therefore seem as though the Norwegians arrived on the outer coasts before either the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps or Reindeer Lapps, while the latter came first to the inner fjord coasts. This conclusion may be supported by the fact that the Lapps' names for sea-fish and sea-birds are throughout loan-words from Norwegian, as also are their words for appliances belonging to modern boats and sailing, which may indicate that they learned fis.h.i.+ng and navigation from the Norwegians. Their name for walrus has probably also originally come from Norwegian, but on the other hand, the names of river fish, and their numerous names for seals, are as a rule genuine Lappish [Qvigstad, 1893, p. 67]. This conclusion, however, does not agree with Ottar's description, which distinctly says that "Finns,"

who were hunters and fishermen, lived scattered along the coasts of Finmark and the Kola peninsula, while the Norwegians (i.e., Norwegian chiefs) did not live farther north than himself, and did not practise whaling farther north than, probably, about Loppen. Dr. Hansen therefore thought to find in this a support for his theory, that the "Finns" of that time, whom he called Skridfinns, were a non-Aryan primitive people entirely distinct from the Reindeer Lapps of our day. But this bold hypothesis is little adapted to solve the difficulties with which we are here confronted. Thus, in order to explain the Lappish loan-words from Norwegian, one is obliged to a.s.sume that these Skridfinnish ancestors of the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps first lost their own language and their own place-names and words for the implements they used and the animals they hunted, etc., and adopted the Norwegian language entirely; and then again lost this language and adopted that of the later immigrant Reindeer Lapps, who chiefly lived in the mountainous districts of the interior. At this later change of language, however, they retained a number of Norwegian words, especially those used in navigation and place-names; but strangely enough they acquired new, genuinely Lappish names for certain large islands, and moreover they adopted the many names for seals, which were the most important object of their fishery, from the nomadic Reindeer Lapps, who previously had known nothing about such things. The question arises of itself: but if these Skridfinns were capable of undergoing all these remarkable linguistic revolutions, why may they not just as well have begun by speaking a language resembling Lappish, and gradually adopted their loan-words and place-names from Norwegian? This will be a simpler explanation. Nor, as we have seen, is Dr. Hansen's a.s.sumption probable, that the Beormas also belonged to these same Skridfinns, and spoke their language, while they were not replaced by the Karelians until later;[210]

but still less so is the hypothesis which is thereby forced upon us, that the Reindeer Lapps came as reindeer nomads from the district east of the White Sea, and learned their language, allied to Karelian, through coming in contact with the Karelians on their journey westward round the south of the White Sea. This contact cannot have lasted very long, as the country on the south side of the White Sea is not particularly favourable to reindeer nomads. And if in so short a time they lost their old language and adopted an entirely new one, it will seem strange that they have been able to keep this new language comparatively unchanged through their later contact with the Norwegians, to whom moreover they were in a position of subjection. In any case it must be considerably less improbable that an original people of hunters, established in Finmark, who from the beginning spoke Karelian-Lappish, should have adopted loan-words and place-names from the later immigrant and settled Norwegians, to whom they were subject, and who were skilled sailors with better seagoing boats. In more or less adopting the Norwegians' methods of navigation and fishery, with better appliances, they also acquired many loan-words from them. But on the whole we must not attach too much weight to such linguistic evidence, when we see that the Lapps have such a great quant.i.ty of loan-words from other languages.

[Sidenote: Conclusions as to the origin of the Northern "Finns"]

To sum up what has been said here, the following explanation may be the most natural: in prehistoric times the coasts and inland districts of north Scandinavia and the Kola peninsula were inhabited by a wandering people of hunters, who belonged to the same race or family as the Fis.h.i.+ng and Reindeer Lapps, and who were thus related to the Samoyeds farther east; but through long contact with the Karelians on the White Sea and with the Kvaens they had acquired a Karelian-Finnish language. Their language, however, as Konrad Nielsen has shown, contains also many words which resemble Samoyed, whether this be due to original kins.h.i.+p or to later influence. These people were called by the Nors.e.m.e.n Finns, or, to distinguish them from the other sort of Finns farther south, Skridfinns, because they were in the habit of travelling on ski in the winter. People of this race of hunters learned the domestication of reindeer from contact with reindeer nomads, the Samoyeds, farther east. Most of them continued their life of hunting, sealing and fis.h.i.+ng, but adopted reindeer-keeping to some extent as an auxiliary means of subsistence. The Eskimo are a good example of how, in northern regions, a wandering people of hunters may have a fairly uniform culture and language throughout a much greater extent of territory than is here in question; for they have essentially the same culture and language from west of Bering Strait to the east coast of Greenland. A tribe related to these hunter Finns, who spoke very nearly the same language but lived farther east, where there was certainly hunting to be had on land but little at sea, gradually became transformed entirely into reindeer nomads, and diffused themselves at a comparatively late period over the mountainous tracts westward, and along the Kjolen range southward. As the Nors.e.m.e.n pressed northward along the coast of Nordland they encountered the hunter Finns or Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps. Through this contact with a higher culture these Lapps learned much, but on the other hand the Nors.e.m.e.n learned something from their sealing and hunting culture, which was well adapted to these surroundings. Thus a higher development of sea-hunting arose. Originally the Lapps had a light boat, the planks of which were fastened together with osiers, with a paddle, which was well adapted to sea-fis.h.i.+ng, and for which they still have a genuine Lappish word in their language. From the Nors.e.m.e.n they learned to build larger boats and to use sails, whence most of their words for the new kind of navigation were Norse loan-words. We see from Peder Clausson Friis's description that in the sixteenth century the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps even "had much profit of their s.h.i.+pbuilding, since they are good carpenters, and build all the sloops and s.h.i.+ps for the northward voyage themselves at their own cost and to a considerable amount.... They also build many boats...." In other words, we see that they had completely adopted the Norwegians' boat- and s.h.i.+p-building, and with it the words connected therewith. In the same way they certainly acquired better appliances for sea-fis.h.i.+ng than those they originally had; consequently in this too they learned of the Norwegians, and it was therefore natural that they gradually adopted Norse names for sea-fish too, even if they had names for them before; besides which they were always selling this fish to the Norwegians. It was otherwise, however, with sealing, which had previously been their chief employment on the sea. In this they were superior to the Nors.e.m.e.n, as the implements of the Kjelmo find show, and here the Nors.e.m.e.n became their pupils. For this reason then they kept their own names for seal, and the many genuine Lappish words they have for them prove that this was an important part of their original culture. If we should imagine that the Lappish language came in at a comparatively late period with the Reindeer Lapps, as Dr. Hansen thinks, we should be faced by incomparably greater difficulties in explaining how they acquired these many genuine Lappish words for seal, than would confront us in explaining how they got loan-words for reindeer-keeping from the Norwegians, or how the original Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps took Norse loan-words for sea-fis.h.i.+ng and the use of boats.

And now as regards place-names, it is not improbable that these were determined for later times princ.i.p.ally by the permanent settlements of the Nors.e.m.e.n, along the outer sea-coast, and not by the scattered Finns (Lapps), who led a wandering life as hunters and fishermen, and who no doubt were driven out by the Nors.e.m.e.n. If we suppose that these Finns were kept away from a place, a fis.h.i.+ng-centre or a district, by the Norwegian settlement, it would only require the pa.s.sing of one or two generations for them to forget their old place-names, and in future they would use those of the Norwegians settled there. But that they once had names of their own is shown by the genuine Lappish names for some of the larger islands. Within the fjords, where the Norwegians were late in establis.h.i.+ng themselves, and where the Finns (Lapps) could live with less interference, it was different, and there they kept their own names.