Pliny the Elder, who himself visited the shores of the Baltic in the first century after Christ, is the first to mention plainly the name of Scandinavia. He says that he has received advices of immense islands “recently discovered from Germany.” The most famous of the many islands situated in the Codanian Bay was Scandinavia, of as yet unexplored size; the known parts were inhabited by a people called hilleviones, who gave it the name of another world. When he speaks of the British isles, Pliny again gives notice of islands, situated opposite Britain in the Teutonic Sea, without suspecting their identity with Scandinavia. He mentions Scandia, Nerigon, the largest of them all, and Thule. Scandia and Scandinavia are only different forms of the same name, denoting the southernmost part of the peninsula, and is yet preserved in the name of the province of Scania. Nerigon stands for Norway, the northern part of which is mentioned as an island by the name Thule. It is not surprising to find the classical writers ignorant of the fact that Scandinavia was not a group of large islands, but one great peninsula, as the northern parts were as yet uninhabited and their physical connection with Finland and Russia unknown.
Tacitus is the first who mentions the Swedish name. In his work “Germania,” of such great importance for the knowledge of the ancient Teutons, their conditions and institutions, and written about 100 years after Christ, the Baltic is described as an open sea called the Suevian Sea, shut out from the west by the Danish mainland of Jutland, by the Romans called the Cimbric Peninsula. The eastern shore is the country of amber. The Swedes are by Tacitus called Suiones, and he speaks of them thus:
“Next occur the communities of the Suiones, seated in the very sea, who, besides their strength in men and arms, also possess a naval force. The form of their vessels differs from ours in having a prow at each end, so that they are always ready to advance. They make no use of sails, nor have they regular benches of oars at the sides: they row, as is practiced in some rivers, without order, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, as occasion requires. These people honor wealth; for which reason they are subject to monarchial government, without any limitations or precarious conditions of allegiance. Nor are arms allowed to be kept promiscuously, as among the other Teutonic nations: but are committed to the charge of a keeper, and he, too, a slave. The pretext is that the sea defends them from any sudden incursions, and men unemployed, with arms in their hands, readily become licentious. In fact, it is for the king’s interest not to intrust a noble, a freeman, or even an emancipated slave, with the custody of arms.”
These remarks by Tacitus, in all their brevity, are of great importance. Boats, exactly corresponding to the description as given, have been found in Swedish graves of this period, and that they were used for river traffic, to bring the gold and products of Rome and Byzantium up the Vistula and Oder, is evident. The great opulence in dress and temple service of which the archæological finds bear witness, and of which later writers also speak as characteristic of the Swedes, is a proof of the wealth that at all times has attended naval dominion. Thus far all the statements being fully corroborated, one cannot but place great importance upon those that follow. The Roman historian tells us that, on account of the honor which the Swedes held for wealth, they were subject to a monarchial government, without any limitations; that is, the crown was hereditary, not elective. This coincides in every way with Swedish conditions of political affairs, such as we know them from later times. The important conclusions to be gathered from the statements of Tacitus, are that the Swedes already at the dawn of the Christian era held the political supremacy in the Scandinavian peninsula, or at least in its eastern and southern parts, and that the various lesser communities stood in allegiance to the hereditary king of the Sviar (Svear), or Swedes in a limited sense, the inhabitants of Svealand.
The psychological conclusions made by Tacitus, on the basis of his own statements, hold good of the Swedes of to-day as well as of those of 2,000 years ago. They still honor wealth and a monarchial government and consider the sea their best defence against foreign foes.
Ptolemy, the Alexandrine geographer of the second century after Christ, speaks of the Scandinavian islands, situated east of the Cimbrian peninsula. The fourth and most easterly of these is the one originally called Scandeia. He enumerates six tribes which inhabit it, the names being unrecognizable, except the one of Gutai, Gauts or Goths, by him for the first time mentioned as dwelling in Scandinavia.
To this information, gathered from classical authors, nothing is added for the next four hundred years in regard to the countries of the North. Only in the sixth century, when Rome has succumbed before the Gothic invasions, and the Teutonic tribes have divided between themselves the provinces of the West Roman empire, new information about Sweden is given by a Byzantine author, Prokopios, a contemporary of emperor Justinian. He mentions Scandinavia by the name Thule, and says he bases his statements upon information obtained from people “who come from there.”
Prokopios says that in the immense island of Thule, in the northern part of which the midnight sun can be seen, thirteen large tribes occupy its inhabitable parts, each tribe having its own king. One of the largest tribes is the Gauts (the Gœtar, or the inhabitants of Swedish Gothaland). These tribes very much resemble the people of southern Europe, with the exception of the Skee Finns, who dress in skins and live from the chase.
Prokopios tells a remarkable story about an immigration to Sweden of Herulians, a Teutonic tribe closely connected to the Goths on the Danube. In the beginning of the sixth century, it happened that the Herulians, after an unsuccessful war with the Longobardians, were divided into two branches, of which the one received land from the emperor Anastasius south of the Danube, while the other made a resolve to seek a home in the Scandinavian peninsula. When they had passed the Slavs, they came to uninhabited regions, whence they continued to the country of the Varinians, and later to that of the Danes. The Danes granted them a free passage and the use of ships, in which they crossed to the island of Thule. Here the Herulians went to the Gauts and were well received by them. Some decades later the Herulians in South Europe were in want of a king. They resolved to send messengers to their kinsmen who had settled in Sweden, hoping that some descendant of their old royal family might be found there who was willing to assume the dignity of king among them. The messengers returned with two brothers who belonged to the ancient family of rulers, and these were escorted by two hundred young Herulians from Sweden. That this immigration really took place there is no doubt. The district of Sweden where these kinsmen of the Goths settled was early distinguished from the surrounding ones, inhabited by the Gauts of Sweden, through the peculiarities of its laws and customs, of which some survived into the commencement of the nineteenth century. This district forms the southern part of the province of Smaland, called Værend, its inhabitants Virdar, and the adjoining province of Bleking.
The Gothic historian Jordanes, or Jornandes, called Master Ardan, who was a contemporary of Prokopios, has taken upon himself to explain the reason of the strange resolve of the Herulians to seek a home in Sweden. He speaks of the traditions of the East Goths, which tell of their descent from the people of the North. Similar traditions also have existed among the West Goths, Longobardians, Gepidæ, Burgundians, Herulians, Franks, Saxons, Swabians and Alemannians. Thus Jordanes: “In the North there is a great ocean, and in this ocean there is a large island called Scandza, out of whose loins our race burst forth like a swarm of bees and spread over Europe.” The island of Scandza, he says, has been officina gentium, vagina nationum—the source of races, the mother of nations. And thence also the Goths have emigrated.