The mysterious name “Adogit” is somewhat doubtful. P. A. Munch [1852, p. 93], and later also Müllenhoff [ii., 1887, p. 41], thought that it might be a corruption of Hálogi (“Háleygir,” or Helgelanders) in northern Norway. Sophus Bugge [1907] does not regard this interpretation as possible, as this name cannot have had such a form at that time; he (and, as he informs us, Gustav Storm also independently) thinks that “adogit” is corrupted from “ādogii,” i.e., “andogii,” meaning inhabitants of And or Andö in Vesterålen.[131] The termination -ogii he takes to be a mediæval way of writing what was pronounced -oji, i.e., islanders.[132] But it should be remembered how much the name “Screrefennæ” has been corrupted, and that it is very possible that other names may have been so equally.
Impossibility of forty days’ daylight in summer and night in winter
The statement that the Adogit had forty days’ daylight in summer and a corresponding period of night in winter is, unfortunately, of no assistance in the form in which it is given for deciding the locality inhabited by them, for no such phenomenon occurs anywhere on the earth. If we suppose that the Adogit people themselves observed the rising and setting of the sun above a free horizon, then we must believe that they reckoned the unbroken summer day from the first to the last night on which the upper limb of the sun did not disappear below the edge of the sea. And they would have reckoned the unbroken winter night from the first day on which the sun’s upper limb did not appear above the horizon at noon, until the first day when it again became visible.
If we reckon in this way, and take into account the horizontal refraction and the fact that the obliquity of the ecliptic about the year 500 was approximately 11′ greater than now, we shall find that at that time the midnight sun was seen for forty days (i.e., from June 2 to July 12) in about 66° 54′ N. lat., or in the neighbourhood of Kunna, south of Bodö; but at the same place more than half the sun’s disc would be above the horizon at noon at the winter solstice; it was therefore not hidden for a single day, much less for forty days. But, on the other hand, it was not until 68° 51′ N. lat., or about Harstad on Hinnö, that they had an unbroken winter night, without seeing the rim of the sun, for forty days (from December 2 to January 11); but there they had the midnight sun in summer for about sixty-three days. The fable of a summer day of the same length as the unbroken winter night cannot therefore have originated with the Northerners; it must have been evolved in an entirely theoretical way by astronomical speculations (in ignorance of refraction) which were a survival of Greek science, where the length of the northern summer day was always assumed to be equal to that of the winter night. But that information had been received at this time from the Northerners is probable, since the statement of a forty days’ summer day and winter night is not found in any known author of earlier date,[133] and Jordanes’ contemporary, Procopius, has an even more detailed statement, especially of this winter night (see later). The probability is that what the Northerners took particular notice of was the long night, during which, as Procopius also relates, they kept an accurate account of the days during which they had to do without the light of the sun, a time in which “they were very depressed, since they could not hold intercourse.” This must also have been what they told to the Southerners, while they did not pay so much attention to the length of the summer day, when of course they would in any case have plenty of sunlight. We must therefore suppose that the latitude worked out according to the winter night of forty days is the correct one, and this gives us precisely Sophus Bugge’s And—Andö, or, better still, Hinnö.
The more important tribal names in Southern Scandinavia, according to Jordanes
Northern Tribal Names
Jordanes counts about twenty-seven names of tribes or peoples in Sweden and Norway; a number of them are easily recognised, while others must be much corrupted and are difficult to interpret.[134] He mentions first the peoples of Sweden, then those of Norway. “Suehans” is certainly the Svear.
They, “like the Thuringians, have excellent horses. It is also they who through their commercial intercourse with innumerable other peoples send for the use of the Romans sappherine skins (‘sappherinas pelles’), which skins are celebrated for their blackness.[135] While they live poorly they have the richest clothes.”
We see then that at this time the fur trade with the North was well developed, as the amber trade was at a much earlier date. Adam of Bremen tells us of the “proud horses” of the Svear as though they were an article of export together with furs. In the Ynglinga Saga it is related [cf. Sophus Bugge, 1907, p. 99] that Adils, King of the Svear at Upsalir,