336 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



the Christian era. The Finno-Ugrian migrations are thus limited 

 to a period of not more than 2,600 years from the present time, 

 and this conclusion, based on archaeological grounds, agrees fairly 

 well with the historical, linguistic, and ethnical data. 



It is especially in this obscure field of research that the 

 eminent Danish scholar, Prof. Vilhelm Thomsen, has rendered 

 inestimable services to European ethnology. By the light of his 

 linguistic studies A. H. Snellman 1 has elucidated 

 Finns. tne origins of the Baltic Finns, the Proto-Esthonians, 



the now all but extinct Livonians, and the quite 

 extinct Kurlanders, from the time when they still dwelt east and 

 south-east of the Baltic lands, under the influence of the surround- 

 ing Lithuanian and Gothic tribes, till the German conquest of the 

 Baltic provinces. We learn from Jordan es, to whom is due the 

 first authentic account of these populations, that the various 

 Finnish tribes were subject to the Gothic king Hermanarich, 

 and Thomsen now shows that all the Western Finns (Esthonians, 

 Livonians, Votes, Vepses, Karelians, Tavastians, and others of 

 Finland), must in the first centuries of the new era have lived 

 practically as one people in the closest social union, speaking one 

 language, and following the same religious, tribal, and political 

 institutions. Earlier than the Gothic was the Letto-Lithuanian 

 contact, as shown by the fact that its traces are perceptible in the 

 language of the Volga Finns, in which German loan-words are 

 absent. From these investigations it becomes clear that the 

 Finnish domain must at that time have stretched from the 

 present Esthonia, Livonia, and Lake Ladoga south to the western 

 Dvina. 



The westward movement was connected with the Slav migra- 

 tions. When the Slavs south of the Letts moved 



Relations to 



Goths, Letts, west, other Slav tribes must have pushed north, 

 thus driving both Letts and Finns west to the 

 Baltic provinces, which had previously been occupied by the 

 Germans (Goths). Some of the Western Finns must have found 

 their way about 500 A.D., scarcely earlier, into parts of this 

 region, where they came into hostile and friendly contact with 



1 Finska Forminnesfdreningens Tidskrift, jfourn. Fin. Antiq. Soc. 1896, 

 p. I37sq- 



