THE BALTIC PROVINCES. 235 



vessels, and attributed to Scanian or Norse immigrants of the first period of the 

 Middle Ag-es, anterior to the Danish invaders who overran Esthonia in the 

 beginning of the thirteenth century. Their presence is also revealed by numerous 

 Scandinavian graves and the Norse names of several places, notably the islands 

 of Dago, Worms, Odensholm, Nucko, Mogo, Kuhno, E-uno. They arrived in 

 still greater numbers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Esthonia 

 and Livonia formed temporarily a part of the Swedish domain. But they are 

 now reduced to a few thousands in Dago and other Esthonian islands, Avhere they 

 call themselves Eibofolket, or " Islanders." In Runo they remained free, all 

 equally owners of land and sea. 



The Slav elements are still more strongly represented than the Norse in these 

 lands. Thousands of Poles settled, especially in Kurland while it was incorporated 

 with Poland, from 1561 to 1765, and there are still about 15,000 in the 

 three provinces. The Russians began their invasions early in the eleventh 

 century, when they founded Derpt (Dorpat) and other towns. But their military 

 colonisation was arrested by the German conquest. Later on, the religious 

 persecutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove hither many 

 Raskolniks from Muscovy. There are 8,000 in one of the suburbs of Riga, and 

 over 20,000 in all the country, besides about 30,000 other Russians settled mostly 

 in towns, and especially in Riga. 



Some 80,000 Ehstes and 50,000 Letts profess the Orthodox Greek religion, 

 mostly converted since the great famine of 1840 and 1841. The peasantry 

 hoped, by adopting " tlie religion of the Czar," to recover the lands of which they 

 had been deprived by the German nobles. In the years 1845 and 1846 alone 

 60,000 conformed, but this having in no way bettered their prospects, their 

 zeal abated, and was even partly followed by a reactionary movement. 



The Germans were long the political rulers, and even when they had ceased 

 to rule with the sword, they continued to do so with their wealth, for they had 

 usurped all the lands and monopolized the trade of the country. Their first 

 appearance at the mouth of the Dvina in 1159 was as shipwrecked mariners: 

 being well received, they returned as traders, and finally assumed the rôle of 

 proselytizers and masters. Strongholds and fortified convents of cloistered 

 knights crowned every summit, completely commanding all the land, while 

 trading places were founded in favourable spots for the development of intercourse 

 between the Baltic and Central Russia. Thus arose above the enslaved natives 

 two almost exclusively Germanic classes, the landed aristocracy and the burgesses, 

 who after seven hundred years still retain much of their former power. They built 

 cities, laid down highways, ofiicially converted the Letts and Ehstes first to 

 the Roman, then to the Reformed religion. They imposed tithes and taxes, but 

 they failed utterly to Teutonise the people, and they do not at present number, 

 probably, more than one-fifteenth of the population. They are even relatively 

 diminishing, the birth rate being lower in the urban than the rural districts. 

 The discrepancies in the statistical returns are probably due to the fact that the 

 Jews, upwards of 40,000, are frequently included amongst the Germans. The 



