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 Uckermark, and the Malorussians of the Ukraine.

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:—

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:—

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 Westmannaland 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.