UXAYVIIL 
Norwecians 
A FINE RACE. 
LoNnGEVITY+ 
7 OO ORe SP 
the Cwen Sea, and who wore fnow-fhoes. The country about the Dwina was well 
inhabited by a people called Beormas, far more civilized than the Finnas. The 
map attending ALFRED’s Oro/ius places them in the country of the Samoieds, a race 
at prefent as uncultivated as mankind can be: we therefore muft fuppofe thofe 
Beormas to have been Ruffians. Odéther fays, that in this fea he met with Horfe- 
Whales (Walrufes) and produced to the prince fpecimens of their great teeth, 
and of thong-ropes made of their fkins; a mark of his attention to every thing 
curious which occurred to him *. 
J muft not leave Norway without notice of its chief of animals, Man. Scandi~ 
navia, in the courfe of population, received its inhabitants by colonies of hardy 
Scythians, who, under the name of Sarmatians, extended themfelves to the coafts 
of the Baltic. In after-times their virtue was exalted by the arrival of their coun- 
tryman, Odin, and the heroes he fettled in every part of the country. The feverity 
of the climate has not checked the growth, or diftorted the human form. Man 
here is tal], robuft, of juft fymmetry in limbs, and fhews ftrongly the human face 
divine. Their hair is light: their eyes light grey. The male peafants of the 
mountains are hairy on their breafts as Bears, and not lefs hardy : active in body : 
clear and intelligent intheir minds. Theirs certainly is length of days; for out of 
fix thoufand nine hundred and twenty-nine, who died in 1761, in the diocefe of 
Chriftiana, three hundred and ninety-four lived to the age of nintey ; fixty-three to 
that of a hundred; and feven to that of a hundred and one +. The Norwegians 
juitly hold themfelves of high value; and flightingly call their fellow-fubjeGts, the 
the Danes, Futes{. The Danes tacitly acknowlege the fuperiority, by compofing 
almoft their whole army out of thefe defcendants of the all-conquering Normans. 
I fhall here fupply an omiffion in my account of the Scandinavian antiquities, 
.p. xxxvi. by mentioning the famous tomb, about feven Swedi/h yards long and two 
broad, found at Kivike, a parith of Schonen in Sweden, in the centre of a vaft tumu- 
lus of round ftones. It was oblong, and confifted of feveral flat ftones, the infide 
of which is carved with figures of men and animals, and the weapons of the age, 
axes and fpears heads. A figure is placed in a triumphal car; cornets feem found~ 
ing : captives with their hands bound behind, guarded by armed men; and ficures, 
fuppofed to be female, form part of the conquered people. It is fuppofed that the 
Roman fleet made an accidental defcent here, had a fuccefsful fkirmifh with the 
natives, might have loft their leader, and left this mark of their victory amidft the 
* The Tranflation of Orofius, by the Hon. Daines Barrington, p..9, &c. and Hacklayt, i. 4. 
Phil. Tranf. vol. lix. 117. ¥ Lord Molefworth's Account of Denmark, 25. 
barbarous 
