r~ 



EMIGRATION FROM SWEDEN 



23 



If the newcomers did not succeed in arranging matters peacefully they had 

 recourse to force of arms. If they were fortunate, the fugitives obtained possession 

 of greater or smaller parts of the country and expelled its former owners. This 

 throws light on Jordanes' statement that the Dani (Danes) were Svear who drove 

 the Heruli forth from their homes in Scania. The name Dani seems really to 

 means dwellers on the plain and there is reason to assume that the Danish king* 

 dom was formed by these Scanians, who gradually subdued the Danish islands 

 and Jutland as well. 



But the main region to which the emigrants directed their course was the 

 German coast of the Baltic past of the mouth of the Oder. Century after century 

 fresh hordes arrived there and succeeded in gaining a foothold there. Each time it was 

 necessity that paved the way, but when the emigrants found themselves at home 

 in the new country and had experienced its fertility and the greater security of 

 its sustenance, a message was sent across the seas to their relatives at home. 

 They needed to strengthen their ranks against the former owners attempts to expel 

 the newcomers and regain their land. 



Thus one great tribe after another grew up on the fertile south coast of the 

 Baltic and penetrated up the valleys of the Vistula and the Oder. 



In language too these East Germanic tribes show a closer affinity to the 

 Scandinavians than the Germans, Dutch, Frisians or English. 



Finally from the beginning of our epoch the East Teutons moved farther to 

 the south-east, south and southwest down towards the frontiers of the great 

 Roman empire, to districts favoured by a still more fertile nature and rich with 

 the flourishing culture of hundreds and thousands of years. But then they had 

 left their maternal hearth, the meagre soil and severe climate where in their 

 struggle for a human existence amid troubles and hardships at the limits of the 

 cultivable world they had grown strong in body and will. Amidst the abundance 

 of Central Europe and the Mediterranean there was a gradual transformation of 

 the qualities that had given them their character, their physical and spiritual ele 

 vation. After five hundred years all the political edifices they had erected had 

 collapsed. A few centuries later their language and their national qualities had 

 in most cases disappeared. And now only anthropology can trace them with 

 difficulty in some Italian, Spanish, and African settlements, where blue eyes, light 

 hair and beards, and unusual height bear witness to an ancient Northern weft in 

 the inhabitants. 



