Sweden. Victor Alfred Nilsson
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.
Material is lacking to prove the historical truth of the Teutonic traditions which point to Scandinavia as the cradle of the Teutonic tribes. But Jordanes, the first historian of Teutonic birth who speaks of Scandinavia, stands at the cradle of Swedish history, and, as a modern historian has expressed it, his shadow throws an umbrage across the whole field of Swedish historical research. The mistake, based upon Jordanes’ history, of identifying the Swedish Gauts with the Goths has caused a great deal of mischief and ridiculous chauvinism, Gothic and Swedish history and royal lines being mixed up or put in connection with each other.
In leaving aside the Teutonic traditions of the island of Scandza, or Scania, as the cradle of the race, let us quote a remark by Tacitus which seems to point to the conclusion that such traditions were current already in the first century of the Christian era: “I should think that the Teutons themselves are aborigines, and not at all mixed through immigrations or connections with non-Teutonic tribes. For those desiring to change homes did not in early times come by land, but in ships across the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean—a sea seldom visited by ships from the Roman world.”
The Old English poem of Beowulf must also be mentioned among the sources which throw light on early Swedish history. Whether the Geátas of Beowulf are identical with the Jutes of Denmark, or with the Gauts of Sweden, is a much disputed question. Although, phonetically, the Old English name Geátas corresponds to the Old Swedish Gautar, it seems most plausible to suppose that by this term is meant the Jutes, and not the inhabitants of Swedish West or East Gothland. This accepted, the poem does not contain much about the Swedes. But the information, therein given, of the Swedish kings is of great value, because it renders the service of a firm chronological support to the facts gathered from another source. This source, of vastly greater importance, is the Ynglinga Saga, or rather the poem around which it is spun, in Heimskringla, of which more in the next chapter.
The first information of the religion practiced by the inhabitants of Scandinavia is given by Prokopios, who says that they worshipped many gods and spirits of the sky, air, earth, sea, and also some who were supposed to dwell in springs and rivers. Offerings were constantly made, the chief ones being of human beings, for which the first prisoner made in a war was destined. This sacrifice was made to “Mars,” who was the highest god. The statements of Prokopios without doubt are correct. The Scandinavian war-god who corresponds to the Mars of classical mythology was Tyr. Odin, originally the ruler of the wind, became the highest god during the Viking Age. He is an aristocratic god, the god of the select few, whose cult succeeded that of Tyr as the cult of the latter had succeeded that of Thor, the thunderer, as the highest god. The idea of a supreme God was probably unknown until the contact with Christianity, or at least not common. Thor, the peasant god, is probably the oldest of the gods of Teutonic mythology, the representative of stern power and law-bound order. Thor was the most popular god of the Swedes, to judge from the great number of ancient Swedish proper names of which his forms a part. Besides Thor, Odin and Frey were the most honored. All the other gods and goddesses mentioned in Old Norse literature were probably known, but few of them much worshipped in Sweden.
CHAPTER II
Dawn of Swedish History—Heimskringla and Ynglingatal
Snorre Sturleson, the great historian and poet of Iceland, of the earlier half of the thirteenth century, is considered to be the author of the history of the kings of Norway which, after the first words of the first chapter, has been called Heimskringla. As an introduction to the work he has put the saga of the Yngling kings of Sweden, of whom many of the Norwegian kings were supposed to be descendants. The Ynglinga Saga is a paraphrase to the much older song of Ynglingatal, a poem composed by the Norwegian poet Thiodulf of Hvin (who lived in the latter part of the ninth century) in praise of the supposed Swedish ancestors of the Norwegian king Ragnvald. The Ynglings were probably not identical with the kings of Upsala, who were of the race of the Skilfings, but of South Swedish or Danish origin. It is either out of ignorance, or out of sagacity, that the poet selected the Upsala rulers as originators of the Norwegian line of kings, but he has been unfortunate in the choice of a name for the dynasty. The poem itself is a trustworthy historical document, at least as far as the times are concerned which come comparatively close to the time of its own composition, the first part containing many traits of a mythical character. The saga spun around it is far from trustworthy. Of the poem evidently the first, or first few, strophes are missing, but the “historian” supplies the vacuum with stories of the gods Odin, Niord and Frey, whom he, according to the ideas of his time, changes from gods into historic kings, the first who ruled Svithiod (Sweden). Among learned men in Snorre’s day there was a craze for tracing the pedigree of all nations of any renown back to some of the heroes of ancient Troy. Snorre serves us a saga of Odin’s migration from Troy which, besides being confuse, would appear only ridiculous, if it had not wielded about as highly disastrous an influence upon correct conceptions of Swedish history as the work by Jordanes. This migration saga is found in a still more elaborate form in an introduction to Snorre’s Edda, and is responsible for the erroneous opinion held by earlier Swedish historians, that the Swedes had migrated from Asia under the leadership of a chief who called himself Odin, and that the Swedes and the Gauts were, if not of different origin, at least of a habitation of differing age in their present locations.
Based upon the information found in Ynglinga Saga we will give a review of the history of the early kings of Sweden, although the first dozen, and more, of these kings are of a doubtful “historic” character. At the dawn of history, Sweden was, like most other countries of Northern Europe, divided into petty communities, each ruled by a king. These communities seem to have been nearly identical with the “lands” or later provinces into which Sweden is yet divided, although the administrative divisions are different. In