EMIGRATION FROM SWEDEN IN 

 ANCIENT TIMES 



BY 



OTTO V. FRIESEN 



UPPSALA 



THE GOTHIC HISTORIAN JORDANES IN A FREQUENTLY QUOT* 

 ed passage in his Getica (Gothic history) calls Scandia, i. e. the Scan* 

 dinavian peninsula, a »workshop where tribes are forged* and a »womb 

 of the peoples*. Jordanes wrote in 551 A. D. in Italy. He himself was of Gothic 

 birth and can thus be supposed to be quite familiar with the legends and songs 

 of their past fortunes that the Goths, like other Germanic tribes of the period of 

 migrations, preserved with extraordinary fidelity from generation to generation. 



His above^quoted statement starts out from the assumption that the great 

 region in the northern sea that was taken to be an island called Scadinavia or 

 Scandia by the geographers and historians of antiquity was the primeval home 

 of a number of the Germanic tribes that appeared in Middle and South Europe 

 during the period of migrations and whose onset at length overthrew the Roman 

 Empire, the great civilization of antiquity. He relates himself that his own people, 

 the Goths, under the leadership of King Berig once left this island and crossed 

 the sea in three ships. The first time they are mentioned in classical literature 

 they are settled on the south coast of the Baltic in the neighbourhood of the 

 estuary of the Vistula. Another of the leading Germanic tribes on the Continent, 

 the Gepids, has also, according to Jordanes, come over the sea from Scandia to 

 the islands in the delta of the Vistula, which were called Gepidoios after them — 

 the Gepidislands. Jordanes' general view of Scandia as the original home of a 

 number of tribes of that time also agrees with the traditions quoted by other 

 writers of the period of migrations. 



Paulus Diaconus, who during the time of Charles the great wrote the history 

 of the Langohards, tells us that this people came from the island of Scadinavia, 

 which they left because the country was unable to maintain the whole of their 

 populous tribe. The same legend is quoted a couple of centuries earlier in the 

 introduction to the statute=hook of King Rothar, the Langobardian king, and is 

 thus obviously based on an ancient tradition in the tribe. 



According to the tribal legend the Heruli too are one of the peoples who 

 emigrated from Scandinavia. Jordanes relates that they were expelled from their 

 native land by the Dani, who had issued from the tribe of the Svear. As early 

 as the 3rd century they appear by the side of the Goths in the south-east of 

 Europe, where they ravage the coasts of the Black sea and the Archipelago. But 

 on the other hand they also appear in the Viking expeditions along the shores 

 of Western Europe in France and Spain. The appearance of the tribe in these 

 widely separated regions along the two main commercial routes to the north from 



