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The History of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. S. A. Dunham
Читать онлайн.Название The History of Denmark, Sweden and Norway
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isbn 4064066395247
Автор произведения S. A. Dunham
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
That the Goths were resident in the north of Europe before the times which we denominate historic—that they had for ages, perhaps, been there when the Romans came into contact with them, is very probable. “Many vestiges,” says Gibbon, “which cannot be ascribed to popular vanity, attest the residence of the Goths in the countries beyond the Baltic.” Still no man in the least conversant with antiquity—unless, indeed, like Joannes Magnus and Rudbeck, he has prejudices which no information can remove—will contend that they were the first settlers: it may even be doubted whether they constituted the second immigration into those regions. The Cimmerians, or Cimbri, were in Jutland, at least, before them; but whether even these were the first people that forsook their Asiatic abodes for western Europe is very doubtful: probably they were preceded by some other swarms whose very name time has destroyed, just as they were the predecessors of the Celts, a race sprung from themselves. The Finns and the Lapps, whose manners, language, and character are so different from those of the other European nations, are probably tribes of some race which arrived in more southern regions at a period lost in the depth of antiquity; and which the hostile incursions of Cimmerians, Celts, Goths, and other barbarians, exiled into the snows of the north.[8]
Such are the conclusions of reason. They are not opposed to authority. What ancient history really informs us concerning the people of the north may be comprised in a few lines. They were split into tribes; and of these the Swiones—the Swiar of the middle ages—were the most conspicuous. They were a rich and powerful maritime nation; and, if Tacitus is to be credited, their kings were despotic. Lest they should turn against one another, or, what was worse, against their rulers, their arms were taken from them, and kept by the royal slaves. They were, no doubt, a tribe which inhabited Sweden. In the same region were the Guttones, or Goths, another tribe, probably, of more ancient arrival. As the lands of the two were conterminous, the Swiones must have often called on their king for weapons, unless, indeed, their enemies, too, had been disarmed. But this alleged disarming is pure fable, and we know not how Tacitus could be so thoughtless as to relate it. The Dankiones—probably the Danskir or Danes—bordered on the Guttones. Whether they were confined merely to the islands now forming the Danish monarchy, or were also spread over, at least, part of Jutland, may be disputed. If, by Cadononia, Tacitus really means the peninsula, the Teutones were also there. There can be no doubt that all these tribes were kindred: they all came from Asiatic Scythia, however different the periods of their arrival. But, in regard to the Fenni, who are manifestly the Finns, he doubts whether he should call them a Teutonic or a Sarmatian tribe. Ptolemy locates them in western Lithuania; Tacitus, more to the north; and from the close affinity which a modern Polish professor has established between the Letts and the Finns, we may safely infer that they are of the same origin. Probably the stream of colonisation passed from Livonia across the gulf.[9]
The distinction of tribes inhabiting northern Europe being granted, and authentic history assuring us that the Scythian Goths were the last people that reached western Europe—the Slavi, their hereditary enemies, scarcely penetrating to the centre—we naturally inquire, “At what period did they arrive?” Most antiquaries of the north, as we have already shown, have not hesitated to affirm that it was immediately after the deluge, and, consequently, that the Goths were the original inhabitants. Other writers, however, are satisfied with a more recent origin, and place this arrival about two thousand years before Christ. Others, again, are willing to deduct a full millenium from this latter antiquity; but it may be doubted whether a single tribe of Goths had set foot in the north five centuries before Odin’s arrival. Few tribes of them were probably there when he introduced a new faith. The opposition which his followers encountered in their political, no less than their religious character—in their conquests no less than their preaching—confirms this supposition; and the fact that nearly all the kings of the north boasted of their descent from some one of Odin’s royal sons, almost elevates this hypothesis to the dignity of an historic fact. As the Goths—both those who accompanied Odin and those who had preceded him—were the conquering and, therefore, the dominant caste, the sceptre was generally held by princes of that nation; the conquerors were comparatively few in number; and the original inhabitants, though they constituted the bulk of the population, were constrained to bend in sullen acquiescence before the power of the strangers. By degrees, the amalgamation of these strangers with the former race (or, perhaps, races) produced that form of society peculiar to the north. The more we reflect on this subject the more we incline to the opinion that prior to the Odinic times the Goths were not very numerous in Scandinavia. They might have kings four or five centuries before Christ; probably there were immigrations of Goths from Asia before even that period; still there is more safety, because more reason, in the conclusion that, from remote antiquity to the arrival of Odin, the bulk of the population in those countries were of native, that is, of Finnish or Jutish stock, and that the sons of the Asiatic conqueror were the first Gothic monarchs of the north.[10]
That the original inhabitants, whether Finns, or Jutes, or Laplanders, or a combination of all the three, differed widely from the Gothic conquerors, in language, manners, religion, and character, is certain. The earliest poems of the latter—those traditionary relics of a far more ancient age—are filled with allusions to this distinction. They represent the Finns and Lapps as magicians, as invested with uncontrollable authority over the elements; and the Jutes as at once giants and magicians. But the warriors of Odin arrogated to themselves no such powers, though their priests might. Legend, indeed, records some instances in which these powers were communicated to fortunate Gothic heroes; but the old inhabitants were the teachers, and what knowledge they imparted—which was always grudgingly imparted—was little in comparison with that which they retained. In the old Sagas, in the collection of Snorro Sturleson, in Saxo Grammaticus, and even in later authorities, we everywhere discover a marked antipathy between the victors and the vanquished. It originated in a twofold cause—in the difference of religion no less than that of race; and it was embittered in the same degree that it was perpetuated by mutual hostilities. The Finn, indeed, was unable to cope with the powerful Goth; but this sense of inferiority sharpened his invention, and made his hostility to be dreaded in proportion to its secrecy. The blow was struck in darkness; and the Goth, who had a sovereign contempt for the valour of his foe, was led to attribute it to supernatural rather than to human agency.[11]
We have already seen the meagre sum of information which Tacitus has bequeathed to us respecting the state of the north in his time. For many centuries afterwards, no great additions were made to it. In the fifth we learn that between the Elbe and the Baltic—no doubt, too, on both sides of that river, to some extent—were Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Of these the first had no other seat. The second were doubtless a bastard colony from the more northern parts of the peninsula; and the last were an offset from the great Saxon confederation. The Jutes were the fewest in number; yet they were the progenitors of the men of Kent and the Isle of Wight, and of a tribe among the West Saxons. The rest of the Saxons—West, East, and South—were derived from the Saxon division of the colonists. The Angles gave their name to the people who bore it (the East Angles and Middle Angles) and likewise to the Mercians and Northumbrians. Such, according to that venerable authority the Saxon Chronicle, was the connection between these people and our island. But, reverting to the state of northern Europe after the time of Tacitus, yet before geography made us well acquainted with it, king Alfred, in his epitome of Orosius, adds some particulars which he had learned from his own inquiries. These particulars he derived from Otter, a Norwegian, and Wulfstan, a Danish seaman. The former said that he lived north of all the Northmen, in Halgoland, opposite to the west sea; that north of him there was an immense waste land, some parts of it, however, being visited by the Finns for hunting in summer and fishing in winter; that he had once sailed round the North Cape to the White Sea, and on the coast had found a people called Beormas, who spoke a kindred language with the Finns. “This Otter,” says the king, “was a rich man, according to the opinion of his own country: he had 600 tame deer, and six decoy ones, whose value in catching the wild deer was incalculable: hence these decoy deer were much esteemed by the Finns.”