TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 87 



gives an account of certain Swedish populations in the islands, and along the shore, 

 between Reval and Memel. In Rogo, Odinsholm, haifNucko, half Worms, parts 

 of Dago, Runo, and a portion of the coast near Roslep, the population is Swedish 

 both in language and appearance. In Nargo, the other half of Worms, half Nucko, 

 and a few spots on the opposite coast, there are Swedes and Esthonians mingled. 

 In Manno, Kynb, parts of Osel, Moon, Dago, and patches of the continent, the 

 present population consists of Esthonians who have displaced Swedes. The earliest 

 notice of these Swedes is in the laws of the town of Hapsal, a.d. 1 294. Henry the 

 Lett mentions Swedes in Reval. The local names are Swedish, — Stoorby, Soderby, 

 Lyckholm, Kluttorp, Parsaker, &c. ; so are the personal,— Knuter, Mats, Lars, 

 &c. Runic letters are used in their calendars. Thursday is an unlucky day to 

 begin work on ; Friday a lucky one for marrying,— notions pointing to Freya and 

 Thor. Superstitions and legends are numerous. Dialects not fewer than 5 ; privi- 

 leges neither a few nor unimportant. 



A colony of these Swedes from Dago has been transplanted to the parts near 

 Berislav, in the government of Cherson ; their localities being Schlangendorf, Mil- 

 hausendorf, Gamle Svenskby, and Klosterdorf. The date of this is recent ; that of 

 island occupations uncertain. Probably it belongs to the 9th, or 10th, or llth. 

 centuries, t. e. the great epoch of the Scandinavian piracy. 



Going beyond the details of these small localities to the ethnology of the neigh- 

 bouring parts of the continent at large, we find that the displacements have been 

 inordinately great. The Prussians and Lieflanders belong to Prussia and Livonia 

 (Liefland) 'only as an Englishman does to Britain, and they are Prussians and 

 Livonians only as Englishmen are Britons. They occupy countries that originally 

 belonged to Liefa and Prussians, just as the Angles occupied countries which were 

 originally British. The true and original Liefs (Livonians) were Finns, of the same 

 branch with the present Esthonians ; indeed, a few true (Finns) Liefs exist, at the 

 present time, in Livonia. The Livonians, however, commonly so called, are Letts, 

 or Lithuanians. The true Prussians were Letts or Lithuanians ; the present Prussians 

 are Germans. How far, then, did the area of the Finn population akin to the 

 Liefs and Esthonians originally extend ? Certainly into Courland ; possibly at a 

 very early period (some centuries b.c.) to the mouth of the Elbe. And how far 

 extended the Lithuanian area ? Into West Prussia at least. If so, and if the west- 

 ward extension of the Finns be real, the direction of the Lithuanic must have been 

 from some part of the interior of Europe towards the coast. Did Lithuanian tribes 

 cross the Baltic ? The general tendency of opinion is to attribute all the commercial 

 or piratical activity of the Baltic tribes to the Scandinavian branch of the Germans. 

 The foundation of this doctrine is the name Goth. Few hesitate to consider the Goths 

 of Gothland (isle and provinces), the Jutes of Jutland, and the Gothones (Guttones) 

 of East Prussia as populations bearing a name essentially the same. Few doubt 

 about this name being German, and applied to Germans. Yet this fact, upon which 

 so much turns, is more than doubtful, a. No Germanic population can be shown 

 to have borne a name like g-i, previous to its having occupied the country of some 

 non-Germanic population, so-called ; so that the Germans of the several Goth 

 countries were Goths only as the Englishman is a Briton, i. e. not at all. b. The 

 population to which the term g-t can be shown to have been most unequivocally 

 and undoubtedly applied is Lithuanic («. e. the old Prussian of the country of the 

 Guttones, Gothones, or Gythones). Reduce the inferences derived from this 

 erroneous assumption to their proper dimensions, and then consider the ethnology 

 of Scandinavia. The two provinces of Gothland, the island Gothland, the Goth- 

 land (so to say) of the Guttones, must be placed in the same category. But the 

 Guttones can no longer be made German, on the strength of their name. The 

 evidence of their Germanic character is reduced to the single fact of their being 

 found in the ' Germania' of Tacitus. This is not sufficient to stand against the pre- 

 ponderating facts in favour of their being Lithuanians or Prussians. The author 

 believes that Scandinavia (in the first instance Finn) received two streams of 

 occupancy and conquest ; one Lithuanic for Gothland, &c., and one German, that 

 spread from Norway southwards and eastwards. The chief proofs of this lie in the 

 admitted facts of Scandinavian ethnology interpreted diflferently. There are numerous 

 Lithuanic words in the Scandinavian language ; there are the political and other 

 peculiarities of the Goth-lands ; there are elements common to the two mythologies. 



