Dr. A. M. Hansen, therefore, in his suggestive works, “Landnám” [1904] and “Oldtidens Nordmænd” [“The Norsemen of Antiquity,” 1907], has put forward the hypothesis that the Finns of earliest history, whom he would include under the common designation of “Skridfinns,” were a non-Aryan people, wholly distinct both from the Finno-Ugrian tribes and from the Aryan Scandinavians, who formed the primitive population of northern Europe and were related to the primitive peoples of southern Europe, the Pelasgians, Etruscans, Basques and others. In Scandinavia they were forced northwards by the Germanic tribes, and have now disappeared through being partly absorbed in the latter. In the east and north-east they were displaced by the Finno-Ugrian peoples who immigrated later. The last remnants of them would be found in the Fishing Lapps of our time, and in the so-called Yenisei Ostyaks of north-western Siberia. This bold hypothesis has the disadvantage, amongst others, of forcing us to assume the existence of a vanished people, who are otherwise entirely unknown. In the next place, Dr. Hansen, in arbitrarily applying the name of Skridfinns to all the “Finns” in Scandinavia, does not seem to have laid sufficient weight on the difference which early writers make between Skridfinns in the north and the other Finns farther south.
In earlier times there was a strong tendency, due to old Biblical notions, to imagine all nations as immigrants to the regions where they are now found. But when a zoologist finds a particular species or variety of animal distributed over a limited area, he makes the most natural assumption, that it has arisen through a local differentiation in that region. The simplest plan must be to look upon human stocks and races in the same way. When we have tried in Europe to distinguish between Celts, Germans, Slavs, Ugro-Finns, etc., the most reasonable supposition will be that these races have arisen through local “evolution,” the home of their differentiation being within the area in which we find them later. As such centres of differentiation in Europe we might suppose: for the Celts, western Central Europe; for the Germans, eastern Central Europe; for the Slavs, Eastern Europe; for the Ugro-Finns, northern East Europe and western Siberia, etc.
Southern Finns in Scandinavia
This is doubtless a linguistic division, but to a certain extent it coincides with anthropological distinctions. Since the North was covered with ice till a comparatively recent period, we cannot expect any local differentiation of importance there since that time, but must suppose an immigration to the north and to Scandinavia of already differentiated races, from southern Europe. We may thus suppose that tribes belonging to the parent-races of brachycephalic Celts and Slavs, and dolichocephalic Germans, came in from the south and south-east, and Ugro-Finns and Mongoloid tribes immigrated from the south-east and east. In this way we may expect, at the commencement of the historical period, to find Celto-Slavs and Germans in southern and central Scandinavia, and Mongoloid and Finno-Ugrian people in the northernmost regions and towards the north-east and east (Finland and North Russia). This agrees fairly well with what is actually found. If we except the northernmost districts, anthropological measurements (principally by Brigade-Surgeon Arbo) show that the people of Norway are descended not only from the tall, fair, and pronouncedly dolichocephalic Germanic race, but also from at least one brachycephalic race, which was of smaller stature and dark-haired.[201] Measurements in Sweden and Denmark show a similar state of things, but in Denmark and the extreme south of Sweden the short-skulls are more numerous than in the rest of Scandinavia. In order to explain these anthropological conditions, we must either suppose that the various Germanic tribes which have formed the people of Scandinavia were more or less mixed with brachycephalic people, even before they immigrated,[202] in proportions similar to those now obtaining, or that tribes immigrated to Scandinavia belonging to at least two different races, one specially dolichocephalic and one specially brachycephalic. The latter hypothesis will be, to a certain extent at all events, the more natural, and as it is not probable that the short-skulls arrived later than the long-skulled Germanic tribes, it is most reasonable to suppose that there was at least one short-skulled primitive people before they came. These primitive people were hunters and fishermen, and must therefore in most districts have wandered over a wide area to find what was necessary to support life. It was only the more favourable conditions of life in certain districts—for instance, the abundance of fish along the west coast of Norway—that allowed a denser population with more permanent habitation. As the taller and stronger Germanic tribes spread along the coasts, the older short-skulled hunters, who may have been Celts,[203] were in most districts forced towards the forest tracts of the interior, where there was abundance of game and fish. In districts where they lived closer together and had more permanent settlements, as on the west coast of Norway, they were not altogether displaced. For this dark primitive people, who were shorter of stature than themselves, and who hunted and fished in the outlying districts, the Germanic tribes may, in one way or another, have found the common name of “Finns,” whether the people called themselves so or the name arose in some other way.[204] When the Germanic people then came across another short, dark-haired people of hunters and fishermen in the north, they applied the name of “Finn” to them too, although they belonged to an entirely different linguistic family, the Finno-Ugrian, and to an even more different Mongoloid race. But to distinguish them from the southern Celtic people of hunters, the northern were sometimes called “Skridfinns.” Gradually, as the southern Finns became absorbed into the Germanic population and disappeared as a separate people, the name in Norway remained attached to the other race and country (Finmark) in the north, and in Sweden to the very different people and country (Finland) in the north-east.
The southern Finns were an Aryan people, and as the Aryan languages at that remote time, when they became detached from the more southern short-skulls of Europe, the Celts and Slavs, did not vary very much, it is easily explicable that scarcely a single ancient place-name can be found in southern Norway which can be said with certainty to bear a non-Germanic character. If, on the other hand, the southern Finns, who are mentioned so late as far on in the Middle Ages, had been a Finno-Ugrian or other non-Aryan people, it is incredible that we should not be able easily to point to foreign elements in the place-names, which would be due to their language.
Skridfinns hunting (from Olaus Magnus)
Scandinavian finds of skulls of the Stone Age, and later, are so few and so casual that we can conclude very little from them as regards the race to which the primitive population belonged. Further, it must be remarked that the early people of hunters, the short-skulled “Finns,” must have been very few in number, and have lived scattered about the country, in contrast to the later Germanic tribes who had a fixed habitation. That among the earliest skulls found there should only be a few short ones is, therefore, what we should expect. It must also be remembered, of course, that the proportion of skulls left by each people depends in a great degree on its burial customs.
Northern “Finns” in Finmark
We now come to the northern Finns, of whom Ottar gives a sufficiently detailed description to enable us to form a fairly accurate picture of their culture. Since they were able to pay a heavy annual tribute in walrus-tusks, ropes of walrus-hide and seal-hide, besides other skins and products of fishery, we must conclude that they were skilled hunters and fishermen even at sea, and such skill can only have been acquired through the slow development and practice of a long period, unless they learned it from the Norsemen. But on the other hand they also kept reindeer, resembling in this the eastern reindeer nomads. These two ways of living are so distinct that they can scarcely have been originally developed in one and the same people, and we must therefore conclude that a concurrence of several different cultures has here taken place.