[112] Some MSS. read “Vergos.”
[113] Tacitus, “Agricola,” c. 10; see also c. 38. Cf. also Bunbury, 1883, ii. p. 342.
[114] Tacitus, “Agricola,” c. 28.
[115] Here Tacitus is mistaken, as amber was extensively employed for amulets and ornaments even in the Stone Age (see above, [p. 32]).
[116] Much [1905, p. 133] connects the name with “ge-swio” == “related by marriage.” It may be just as reasonable to suppose that the name means “burners” (“svier”), since they cleared the land by setting fire to the forests [cf. Müllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 499].
[117] Cf. Müllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 502.
[118] This might be thought to show that arms of metal, especially of iron, were still rarities in Scandinavia, which only rich and powerful chiefs could obtain, and this might agree with the statement about the esteem in which wealth was held among this particular people. But perhaps the more probable explanation is that the idea may have arisen through foreign merchants (South Germans or Romans) having been present at the great annual “things” and fairs at some well-known temple, e.g., Upsala [cf. Müllenhoff, 1900, p. 503], where for the sake of peace and on account of the sacredness of the spot it was forbidden to carry arms, and where arms were therefore left in a special “weapon-house,” like those which were later attached to churches in Norway, and there guarded by a thrall. The foreigners may have seen this without understanding its meaning, and Tacitus may have given his own explanation.
[119] The name “Sitones” reminds one forcibly of the “Sidones” mentioned by Strabo and Ptolemy [cf. Geijer, 1825, p. 82]; but the difficulty is that Strabo includes the latter among the Bastarni, with the Peucini who lived on the north and east of the Carpathians and therefore far to the south of the Baltic [cf. Ahlenius, 1900, p. 36]. Ptolemy’s “Sidones” also lived in the neighbourhood of the Carpathians, and to the north of them. But it is nevertheless possible that Tacitus may have heard a similar word and confused it with this name, or he may have heard a story of a reigning woman or queen among Strabo’s Sidones, somewhere north of the Carpathians, and thought that anything so unheard of could only be found in the farthest north. It is also to be noted that Tacitus himself mentions “Peucini” or “Bastarnæ” as neighbours of the “Fenni” (Finns), and therefore inhabiting some distant tract bordering on the unknown in the north-east; on the other hand he does not mention the Sidones in this connection, though they are spoken of in conjunction with the Bastarnæ both by Strabo before him and by Ptolemy after him. Add to this the similarity of names between Sitones and Suiones, and it seems likely that he thought they must be near one another. Müllenhoff [ii., 1887, p. 9] supposes that the word “Sitones” may have been an appellative which has been mistaken for the name of a people, and he connects it with Gothic “*sitans,” Old Norse “*setar,” from the same root as the Norwegian “sitte” (to sit, occupy). If this is correct we might suppose it to be used in the sense of colonists (cf. Norwegian “opsitter”). Much [1905, p. 31] suggests that perhaps it may be derived from Old Norse “siða” == to practise witchcraft (cf. “seid”), and mean sorcerers. On the “Sidones” cf. Much, 1893, pp. 135, 187, 188; Müllenhoff, 1887, pp. 109, 325.
[120] Wiklund [1895, pp. 103-117] thinks that the “Kvæns” in north Sweden were not Finns, but colonists from Svearike (middle Sweden).
[121] Cf. Zeuss, 1837, p. 157; Müllenhoff, ii., 1887, p. 10.