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blended with other Finns, although in a subject
state. Among the inhabitants of Finnmark are
expressly noted several races of “Finns, with
Lapps and Carelians [1],” whence it appears that the
Finnish name was used in a more comprehensive,
as well as a restricted application. Below
Finnmark was Quenland, where the Kajaners or Quens
roamed, but among them too, and in contact with
them, Lapps are found, for in an inroad by the
former tribe into Norway, these are represented as
opposing them and being defeated [2].
Among these nomadic races the first Swedish
settlers in Norrland shew themselves, at first
partaking, afterwards levying tribute upon the
produce of their hunts, herds, and fisheries, but from
the beginning distinguished by fixed dwelling-places,
husbandry, and trade; wherefore the Lapp
deduced the name by which he spoke of the Swedes
from the relations under which these first became
known to him [3]. Expulsion was the lot reserved for
the wanderer, but the process was of gradual
accomplishment. The new settlers mostly followed
the coast-line, and the interior long remained
in the same condition as of old. In the eleventh
century we find a Swedish prince going to
dispossess the Quens [4], and in the same age
Helsingland was still called the main seat of the
Skridfinns [5]. They roamed over wide tracts of
wilderness into the forests of Vermeland [6], and
were probably the same with those Lapps, of
whom memorials and traces are still to be found
in Dalecarlia [7]. That Lapps and Finns therefore
were found formerly as at present in Norrland
and the Lappmarks, does not admit of doubt.
Probably this also applies partly to middle Sweden,
although their position is more obscure, cultivation
being here older, and the nomadic life passing
away before it was reached by the dawning light
of history. The isles of Aland and Quarken have
been from early times stations of transit between
Sweden and Finland. Swedish colonies found their
way by this passage, some along the Gulf of
Finland to Nyland and Russia, others to East
Bothnia; and earlier, in remote antiquity, Lapps
and Finns had crossed by the same route to
Sweden [8]. Aland, with a Swedish population
which, as the graves show, existed in the age of
cremation, is full of traces of Lappic and Finnish
inhabitants still more ancient [9]. From these
islands they arrived in Roslagen, and Northern
Upland, to many places in which they have given
names [10], and it is probable that the Finns, properly
so called, spread farther into the country. Their
former intercourse with Roslagen is the more
undoubted, as they applied this name to the whole
of Sweden [11]. That during the middle age they
were still to be found in the interior, may be
inferred from the tradition which ascribes to the
Finns the discovery of the chief mines of middle
Sweden [12]. Their manner of living in the forests,
where the mining districts were afterwards formed,
gave currency to this notion. The preparation of
marsh-iron was known to them from an early
period [13]; an old Finnish Rune sings of the birth of
iron [14]. In the Fennic tongue every handicraftsman
is called a smith [15], and Finnish swords are
mentioned in the Icelandic sagas. The most famous
smith known to the ancient north, and celebrated
in the Edda, is the son of a Finnish king on
the borders of Suithiod [16], and in later times the
Finns retained the praise of excelling in the labours
of the forge. The most southerly vestige of Finns
Proper in Scandinavia is to be found in the saga of
the discovery of Norway; which represents a chief
of the Quens as finding kinsmen on the little island
of Lessö in the Cattegat.
Yet the Lapps and Finns appear to have stood
in dissimilar relations to ancient Suithiod. That
intercourse subsisted at an early period between
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