138 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



further consequence of making their peculiar customs and 

 national life far better known to their northern neighbors. 1 



During the Middle Ages the territory about the Baltic 

 occupied by the Finns, the Ksthonians and the Lapps, 

 was regarded as the peculiar home and nursery of sor- 

 cerers, whither people from every land, even from distant 

 Greece and Spain, resorted for instruction or for special aid. 

 The Esthonians looked upon the Finns as greater sorcer- 

 ers than themselves, and the Finns in turn considered the 

 Lapps their superiors in magic skill. But the old writers 

 always single out the Finns by name, as the typical wizards. 

 The mediaeval Finns were a gloomy, earnest people, show- 

 ing on their faces the marks of their Tartar relation- 

 ship, and retaining in their families the same distinctive 

 appellations as the far-distant Chinese. In their wander- 

 ings from the cradle of the human race in Asia, perhaps, 

 they brought with them the Runic characters in which 

 are written the ancient inscriptions found both in the 

 north of Europe and on the Tartar steppes; but in common 

 with the other northern nations, their traditions came 

 down by word of mouth and in the songs of the Skalds 

 and minstrels. They were the earliest iron workers in 

 Northern Europe, and the Finnish swords anciently had a 

 reputation equal to that which the famous blades of Toledo 

 long afterwards acquired. Their great epic, the Kalevala, 

 a composite structure of no definite date, shows them also 

 to have been skilled as ship-builders, and in its descriptions 

 of battles and forays it is not unlike the Anglo-Saxon 

 poem of Beowulf, or the Norse Eddas and Sagas; but its 

 chief characteristic is its wild and gloomy legends of 

 sorcery and magic. 



In all forms of witchcraft the Finns were regarded as 

 masters. They devised the magic runes and spells which 

 overcame the enemy while protecting the wearer, the 

 impenetrable garments, the charmed weapons, and raised 



1 Vincent: Norsk, Lapp and Finn. N. Y., 1881. Peschel: The Races 

 of Man. N. Y., 1876. Sinicox: Primitive Civilization, cit. sup. 



