IX.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 339 



to the Lapps of Scandinavia and Russia is formed by the still 

 almost nomad, or at least restless Kzvcens, who for- 



.... The Kwsens. 



merly roamed as far as the White Sea, which in 

 Alfred's time was known as the Given See (Kwaen Sea). These 

 Kwaens, who still number nearly 300,000, are even called nomads 

 by Prof. j. A. Friis, who tells us that there is a continual move- 

 ment of small bands between Finland and Scandinavia. " The 

 wandering Kwaens pass round the Gulf of Bothnia and up 

 through Lappmarken to Kittala, where they separate, some going 

 to Varanger, and others to Alten. They follow the same route 

 as that which, according to historians, some of the Norsemen 

 followed in their wanderings from Finland 1 ." The references of 

 the Sagas are mostly to these primitive Bothnian Finns, with 

 whom the Norsemen first came in contact, and who in the 6th 

 and following centuries were still in a rude state not greatly 

 removed from that of their Ugrian forefathers. As shown by 

 Almqvist's researches, they lived almost exclusively by hunting 

 and fishing, had scarcely a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture, 

 and could prepare neither butter nor cheese from the milk of their 

 half-wild reindeer herds. 



Such were also, and in some measure still are, the kindred 

 Lapps, who with the allied Yurak Samoyads of 

 Arctic Russia are the only true nomads still sur- 



vivinsj in Europe. Mr A. H. Cocks, who travelled Permian 



Finns. 



amongst all these rude aborigines in 1888, describes 

 the Kwaens who range north to Lake Enara, as "for the most 

 part of a very rough class," and found that the Russian Lapps of 

 the Kola Peninsula, " except as to their clothing and the addition 

 of coffee and sugar to their food supply, are living now much the 

 same life as their ancestors probably lived 2000 or more years 

 ago, a far more primitive life, in fact, than the Reindeer Lapps 

 [of Scandinavia]. They have not yet begun to use tobacco, and 

 reading and writing are entirely unknown among them. Unlike 

 the three other divisions of the race [the Norwegian, Swedish, and 

 Finnish Lapps], they are a very cheerful, light-hearted people, 



1 Laila, Earl of Ducie's English ed. p. 58. The Swedish Bothnia is stated 

 to be a translation of Kiucen, meaning low-lying coastlands ; hence Kaimtlaiset, 

 as they call themselves, would mean " Coastlanders." 



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